DanSheffield

Response to the "narrative of decline"

There's a narrative that many churches in Canada are hearing on a consistent basis – we are in decline. Earlier this year I presented a paper at the Wesley Studies Symposium, sponsored by Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, ON. Here are  few excerpts...

Last year, James Emory White commented on a Canadian report from Alpha Canada and Flourishing Congregations Institute. White is a former president of Gordon-Conwell Seminary. He says, “The church is in decline because we are turned inward instead of outward. Our hearts are not breaking for what breaks the heart of God, which is people facing a Christ-less eternity. And sadly, only a simple “invite” is all that is often needed: “Come and see, come and hear, come and explore.”

The antidote that I hear in much of this narrative of decline, is that “we need to do something.” WE need to DO something. White says we just need to “invite people.” We need to turn outward instead of inward. Others say we just need to pray more. Or just modify our orthodox theology. And then our congregations will be thriving again, people will love us again, we will be relevant again. And then we will return to the place of privilege/influence in Canadian society (if that were ever true). But is that really the goal?

“We are becoming a secular society. The church is in decline, we are losing our voice in the public space, and we must do something about it.” That is the word of caution and concern that we are hearing.

That’s the backdrop, now let me take you on a brief journey of reflection. More than 40 years ago, Malcolm Muggeridge, British journalist and social analyst, delivered a lecture at the U of Waterloo. The lecture was published as The End of Christendom. He was describing social circumstances that were contributing to the decline of Christendom in western society. I remember reading at the time, this statement: “in these circumstances why should anyone expect Christendom to go on forever, or see in its impending collapse a cosmic catastrophe?” Coupled with this pessimistic reflection, he offered this optimistic word, “amidst the shambles of a fallen Christendom, I feel a renewed confidence in the light of the Christian revelation with which it first began.”

Muggeridge then suggests where his renewed confidence comes from – the thriving of Christian faith and community in locations where it has been most repressed -- in his historical context (1978), the underground church in Communist Russia. His conclusions: “let us then, as Christians, rejoice that we see around us on every hand the decay of the institutions and instruments of power… For it is precisely when every earthly hope has been explored and found wanting, when every possibility of help from earthly sources has been sought and is not forthcoming… it’s then that Christ’s hand reaches out sure and firm.”

Muggeridge was describing the impact of modernity upon inherited forms of Christian expression, suggesting that decline might not be a bad thing.

 

In a recent article in Faith Today, Canadian church consultants, Chris Bosch and Lon Wong commented, “There are megatrends, like the decline of Christianity in Canada, that a local church can’t do anything about, … Just as death is a natural part of human life, it is part of life for churches. Churches have come and gone in different regions of the world, but that doesn’t mean the faith is irrelevant or all is lost.” They go on to say, “A healthy church can benefit from asking questions about why it exists.”

Not what should we do, or how should we do it, but why do we exist? Why does this “called-out” community of Christian believers exist? That’s a question I reflect on fairly frequently. Not out of a sense of despair regarding the future, but to continually adjust my focus, when things are getting blurred by this narrative of concern or that strategic planning exercise.

Charles Taylor talks about the importance of social imaginary, or the articulation of a story, a narrative, that shapes who we are and where we want to go, what we are trying to bring about.

If I was continually reflecting on the narrative of decline, that would probably lead to despair. If I was continually reflecting on the narrative of “we have got to do something!”, that could very easily lead to burnout.

In Matthew 11:20-24, Jesus laments (denounces) the towns that were unresponsive to his ministry, including Capernaum where he had invested significant time. He carries on in verses 25-30, “I praise you Father… because you have hidden these things from the learned and the wise and revealed them to little children.” He concludes with, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’”

I hear a narrative in this passage. “All my energy invested there had limited results. The Father reveals to whom he chooses to reveal, and these (disciples) are the ones he gave me. Come to me and I will give you rest. If you work with me, the work is easy and the burden is light.” That’s an alternative narrative to, -- “you’re not being effective, so speed up and do something.”

So here’s my alternative Wesleyan narrative. It’s not a formula, but a story I tell myself that centres my call to ministry in these times.

We are living in challenging times, as a minority people, in a society from which God seems to be absent, and most people are fine with that. My task as a spiritual leader is to equip, to prepare, the congregation that I serve for their daily, ministry interface within this set of circumstances in which we find ourselves. To aid our daily ministry,

1. we need to experience the living, resurrected Christ as present in our lives; that we are being healed and made whole as we surrender our lives, increasingly, to the renovating work of the Spirit;
2. we need to experience the encouraging, Spirit-directed promptings of our brothers and sisters in Christ as life-giving, as necessary, something we can’t do without;
3. we need to experience opportunities for engaging with, perhaps serving, those who are different from ourselves (age, gender, education, language, culture, economic position, life-stage), because Christ will meet us in those encounters, in ways we cannot imagine.

In short, we exist to affirm that the living God is not absent from our society, and that truth impacts how we live our lives. As we do this, we bear faithful witness.

John Wesley on embracing neighbours and strangers

John Wesley said this almost 300 years ago. Seems relevant for our current cultural moment...

 

A genuine Christian “is full of love to his neighbour.”

 

"This is: universal love, not confined to one sect or party, not restrained to those who agree with him in opinions, or in outward modes of worship, or to those who are allied to him by blood or recommended by nearness of place. Neither does he love those only that love him, or that are endeared to him by intimacy of acquaintance…

 

It soars above all these scanty bounds, embracing neighbours and strangers, friends and enemies; yea, not only the good and gentle but also the froward, the evil and unthankful. For he loves every soul that God has made, every child of man, of whatever place or nation."

 

(from his pamphlet/essay "A Plain Account of Genuine Christianity.")

 

my thoughts on how this essay engages with our life in a multicultural context can be found here.

God hates visionary dreaming

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious.

Whoops. No commentary needed. Read on...

The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it  be realized by God, by others and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with demands, sets up his own laws and judges the brethren and God accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds people together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to pot. So he becomes first an accuser of the brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into the common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients. We thank God for what he has done for us. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by his call, by his forgiveness and his promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what he does give us daily. And is what has been given us not enough: brothers, who will go on living with us through sin and need under the blessing of his grace? Is the divine gift of Christian fellowship anything less than this, any day, even the most difficult and distressing day? Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will not his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Jesus Christ?

Thus the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by the one Word and Deed which really binds us together -- the forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus. When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

mission, witness and prevenient grace

I just finished reading my friend and missionary colleague Chris Payk's great little book, Grace First: Christian Mission and Prevenient Grace in John Wesley. It is the product of his master's thesis a few years ago, with a foreword by Howard Snyder. Chris and family are have been living in Taipei, Taiwan for some years and he is starting work on a Ph.D -- courses conducted and dissertation to be completed in Mandarin Chinese.

According to Wesley, prevenient grace is given by God to draw, enlighten, and convict persons. Church leaders would be wise to analyze the church's ministries in order to determine whether or not the divine-human relationship in each ministry is the primary concern, so as to identify where ministry energies are being mobilized, and to what extent the church's social, cultural and worldview models are culturally sensitive in light of the transcultural character of prevenient grace. This would help the church to be as effective as possible in communicating the realities of the gospel. (p91)

These Wesleyan insights have helped shape content for the study curriculum that my colleague Jared Siebert and I have developed over the past couple years, Bearing Faithful Witness. One of the sessions explores the Cornelius story in Acts 10, where God had been preparing him in various ways for the visit of Peter, who had likewise been prepared in advance to engage with this outsider to the Jewish tradition. Chris Payk urges us to "pay attention, to notice" where God has already been at work, because that helps us to shape our conversations as we build bridges between God's prevenient activity and the fuller revelation of the Jesus story.

practice gives the words their sense

Just about finished reading Wittgenstein's biography by Ray Monk. Some thoughts from the last year of his life...

Actually I should like to say that in this case too the words you utter or what you think as you utter them are not what matters, so much as the difference they make at various points in your life. How do I know that two people mean the same when each says he believes in God? And the same goes for belief in the Trinity. A theology which insists on the use of certain particular words and phrases, and outlaws others, does not make anything clearer (Karl Barth). It gesticulates with words, as one might say, because it wants to say something and does not know how to express it. Practice gives the words their sense.

"discover" solutions by paying attention to the basics

I have been reading Alan Roxburgh's book, Missional Map-Making: Skills for Leading in Times of Transition. He makes some interesting connections to the field of biomedicine. Dr Arthur Kornberg received the Nobel Prize (1959) for his work in isolating the first DNA polymerizing enzyme. A long-time professor at Stanford University, in 2000 he had this to say:

With regard to medical research, the best plan over many decades has been no plan at all. ... the pursuit of understanding the basic facts of nature has proven throughout the history of medical science to be the most practical, the most cost-effective route to successful drugs and devices... Investigations that seemed irrelevant to any practical objective have yielded most of the major discoveries in medicine: X-rays, MRI, penicillin, polio vaccine.

He suggests that the way to "discover" solutions is to:

1. invest one's energies and skills in engaging the most fundamental questions of the system
2. be shaped by the long tradition within which one has lived
3. invest oneself in raising up a new generation who are able to do this foundational reflection within the tradition
4. recognize that one is not in control of predicting what these practical, revolutionary solutions are going to look like

Of course, we should probably apply those insights to how we need to imagine the way forward for Christian witness in these in-between times that we find ourselves in.

• We need a lot more basic "lab" work going on in Christian communities. Paying attention to the basics - leitourgia (the work of the people in public worship); koinonia (forming caring, transformative communities); manthano (make/form disciples of Jesus); and diakonia (serve, minister, to those in need). What do those basic rhythms of Christian community need to look like in our time and space and cultural context?
• We need to pay attention to the shaping practices and notions of the Christian life that have formed our traditions. In my case, the Wesleyan tradition with Catholic, Anglican and Arminian roots which directs me to the disciplines and practices of the means of grace (acts of piety, acts of mercy); to the notion that all should have access to the good news (wherever and whatever form that may take); to Christian community as fundamental to growth in grace (no solitary Christianity); and a particular vision of what it means to be healed and whole in Christ ("How can I be the kind of person that God created me to be, and that I long to be, a person holy in heart and life?")
• We need to be proactive in developing others who will understand, live in, and pass on the tradition. 
• And recognize that if we pay attention to these things, unimaginable possibilities will emerge, with which our Father will be well pleased. 

making disciples the Wesleyan Way

Last week I had the opportunity to spend 5 days and 4 nights living in community with a small group of pastoral leaders wrestling with understanding intentional disciple-making through a Wesleyan lens. We read some books in advance of gathering together (Invitation to a Journey by Robert Mulholland and Making Disciples by Sondra Higgins Matthaei). We wrestled with statements like this: "when holiness is your goal, you do evangelism differently" (Richard Heitzenrater). And this one from John Wesley himself:

That part of our method, the private weekly meetings for prayer, examination and particular exhortation, has been the greatest means of deepening and confirming every blessing that was received by the word preached, and of diffusing it to others, who could not attend the public ministry; whereas without this religious connection and conversation, the most ardent attempts by mere preaching have proved of no lasting value. (Works, VIII:252)

We talked about the de-toxification/de-construction that is required of our first formation in the patterns of our culture (consumerism), before we can be formed by the new patterns, habits and practices of the life in Jesus. This is where Wesley's "method" is particularly helpful, the means of grace (acts of piety and mercy) are habits and practices that open us up to the ongoing formation of the Holy Spirit -- a rival formation to the patterns we have already been shaped by. We liked this video clip from Alan Hirsch.

 

We recognized that all the various "discipleship" resources are not solve-all plans, but just helpful tools if we already have an understanding of what it means to grow up in Jesus, following the Jesus Way, which we suggested is a journey, a path, rather than a particular destination, or set of beliefs. A key insight was to recognize that much of our ministry activities lead to mushy, anemic Jesus followers (the kind who struggle with Luke 14:25-27) rather than active, surrendered, Jesus-centred, others-oriented, disciples. The goal of the experience was that participants would discern a way forward for their own intentional disciple-making within their own ministry contexts.

This is the fourth group of pastors that we have entered into this kind of learning experience with. It's not a "course with students," but a multi-dimensional learning experience with co-labourers/learners.

New book on John Wesley Haley

John Wesley Haley (1878-1951) was/is a relatively unknown Canadian Free Methodist missionary who served as a church-planter and pastor in Saskatchewan and Ontario as well as in Mozambique and South Africa (1902-1934), finally initiating new ministry in Burundi and Rwanda (1935-1946).

A new book, John Wesley Haley and Building the Indigenous Church, has recently been published edited by John McCready, Haley's grandson. McCready came across a manuscript that Haley was writing at the time of his death in 1951. He decided to bring the manuscript to life with some fresh reflection on Haley's life and ministry.

Haley has intrigued me for decades because of the attention he paid to the work of mission strategist Roland Allen. McCready knew of my interest and asked me to write a chapter for the book reflecting on Haley's influences and the significance of his work in light of present missiological thinking.

My chapter is, "The Mission Temporary, The Church Permanent," from a phrase Haley wrote emphasizing that the role of the missionary is only temporary, for proclamation and initial catechism, giving free reign for the Holy Spirit to direct the development of indigenous methods and structures, while the missionary moves on to a new, unreached, location. 

When Haley wrote or taught about his approach in the 1930s and 40s he was seen as unusual, but respected. This manuscript may have been prompted by his invitation to speak at the EFMA/NAE conference in 1949 about his method in light of colonial tensions at the time particularly in East Asia, with the removal of all missionaries from China in the wake of Mao's revolution.

Dr Howard A Snyder writes a foreword where he states that Haley "is timely and prophetic today because of the way he conjoined theory and practice in pioneering deep church planting in Central Africa -- and reflected on this in his writings."

Commitments that "make" a faith community

Over the years I have been involved in numerous faith "communities." Some lasted for a summer and were profoundly formative. Some lasted for a year or so and taught me stuff about myself that I would have rather avoided. Some lasted for years and didn't form me or teach me anything.

The last 7 or 8 years I have been part of a small faith community that has challenged me, formed me, taught me stuff about myself that I would have rather avoided, provided for times of receiving forgiveness and giving forgiveness, been full of great joy and deep anguish. And given me glimpses of what God was imagining with this business about his kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven.

I came across this article by Karina Kreminski entitled: Four Everyday Practices you must have to Experience Community, that I found helpful and challenging. 

She starts the article by saying: "I'm tired of Christians using the word community without meaning it."

Her 4 practices:

The Discipline of Stubborn Loyalty

How can we practice this “stickability” in a culture which is distracted, transient and essentially does not value loyalty? Can we express a kind of faithfulness and a constant reliance on one another and to the place where we live that will make the world gasp at our manifest fidelity?

The Discipline of Kenosis

We have to be willing to let go of our own selves in order to create true community. Truly surrendering to each other feels like we are losing our sense of self to some extent, and in our narcissistic society where individualism reigns, this is anathema.

The Discipline of Interdependence

what I found impressive was the awareness that each person had regarding fostering community. They realized that they affected one another. It was not just about the individual but each person keenly observed that the individual was a part of a community and so had responsibilities towards that community.

The Discipline of Welcoming "the Other"

We have a long way to go in order to learn the discipline of truly welcoming the other. Women, singles, marginalized people, ethnic minorities, refugees, these should be feeling at home in our congregations. Yet usually I hear the opposite. Many of these groups of people I have just mentioned crave community yet they leave the church gathering often feeling more lonely than when they walked in.

 

Discipling the few

Pete Scazzero shared this helpful graphic and a few thoughts on disciplemaking in a recent newsletter. 

Jesus focused a disproportionate amount of time discipling the Twelve -- and one of them didn't even work out. This was His upside down strategy to reach the world with the love of the Father.

Yet we have programs to run, meetings to lead, people to pray for, money concerns, attendance to monitor, administration to be done, messages to prepare, strategies to execute, visions to cast, and crises that won't wait till tomorrow.

We live in the great tension of the big and the small -- a tension I carry with me each week as I set priorities. How do I focus on the few, my Twelve, when modern culture demands the big! and now?

It helps me to remember that so much in and around me resists focusing on the few. Why?

• Discipling the few is slow. The kingdom of God is a mustard seed and always will be.

• Discipling the few is hard. People are complex and formation is messy.

• Discipling the few is limiting. Limits and rebellion are closely related. We have been resisting limits since the Garden of Eden.

• Discipling the few demands a lot from me. I cannot give what I do not possess, and cannot help but give what I do possess.  It requires I keep growing and learning.