More thoughts on what is church

In 1982, my husband and I, along with more than a dozen other young adults, were commissioned by our church (a big thriving Seattle church) to go to a small, aging congregation to try to help revitalize it. We, the younger crowd, felt that the first thing to do was to start small groups that would meet in people’s homes. The older crowd at our new church, mostly born in the first two decades of the twentieth century, thought Bible studies and prayer were a good idea, but they felt that all small groups should meet in the church building. They wondered how church leaders can exercise influence over what people believe and think if people are meeting in homes. As you can imagine, their attitude precipitated a lot of discussion about how and where God works and how and where church activities can and should happen.

In recent decades, I have observed a significant shift among Christians as they talk about where God works. We understand more clearly now that God works beyond the walls of a church building. And we see that God works even beyond what we consider to be the Christian community. I don’t know if any of you have seen the musical “Les Miz,” but there’s a line in it that has shaped popular thinking: “To love another person is to see the face of God.” That line has some truth in it. But how much truth?

I want you to think hard about how you define church. The definition that Tim proposed last night in the audioconference – the church is any group of people gathered to talk what matters to them (my paraphrase) – goes too far for me. In my view, the church has to have some commitment to Christ. However, it’s clear that the popular understanding of church has changed dramatically in the past one or two generations. We no longer believe an activity has to take place in a church building in order to be called church.

So spend some time pondering. Are the people gathered at Parachute the church? Or part of the church? Or an outreach from the church? Is a home group the church? Or only part of a larger church? Some of you talked last night about Christian practices or sacraments being necessary for a group of people to be considered the church. Which Christian practices do you believe to be essential for the church?

I recently heard a British man talk about the mission-shaped church movement called “fresh expressions” that is attached to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s office in the UK. He showed videos and slides of several “churches” that have been funded by the fresh expressions movement. One was a youth center with skateboard ramps. One was a group of people who gather once a week to bake bread and then eat it together. Both had arisen after ministers walked the streets of their community to try to figure out what that particular community needed as a gathering place centered around people’s spiritual needs. It was clear to me that the leaders of these two fresh expression churches were deeply motivated by Christ’s love, but it wasn’t clear how prominent Jesus was in the actual functioning of each church. So it made me wonder, in the same way that Tim’s definition of church makes me wonder, to what extent and in what ways does the place of Jesus need to be central in order for a gathering to be called "church"?

Next audioconference March 30

At the end of last night’s audioconference, I said something like, “See you next week.” I should have said, “next time,” because the next audioconference is two weeks away, on March 30. (Note that because this blog is hosted in the U.S., the blog post date says Monday, but I'm writing it in New Zealand on Tuesday.)

Ideas for this week's posts

This is going well! I'm very interested in the responses you all are posting. I very much appreciate your honesty and insights, and I hope you are all reading what the other students are posting. I was hoping we would be able to learn from each other, and that appears to be beginning to happen.

I have two ideas for blog posts for this week, and you're free to write about other things as well. Here's the first idea: someone gave me a link to a website: http://www.missionalnetworkweb.com/
I don't have time to look around that website this week. If some of you would like to look it over and see if there's anything helpful on it, feel free to do that. Give us the exact links to any articles you think are good and tell us why you think they're good.

Here's the second idea. Last week I was telling someone about this missional church paper, and I said, "I know what a missional church looks like, because I've been in one, but I don't know how to help a church become more missional." The person I was speaking to said, "You have to begin with people's view of God. It all depends on that." Based on the readings for next Monday, feel free to respond to the idea that the place to start is with people's view of God. Do you agree? Disagree? What about our view of God influences our understanding of being missional? How would you go about changing congregation members' (or small group members') view of God? What aspects of their view of God would you want to change?

Questions about journal entries

I've gotten two questions about the journal entries, so I must not have been clear in the coursebook. Sorry about that. I expect you to write a journal entry every week, and there are questions for each week. So the questions for the week before an audioconference are for one journal entry, and the questions for the week after an audioconference are for another journal entry. Let me know if you have more questions.

Thanks, Grahame and Craig

To Grahame and Craig, who were bold enough to be the first people to make posts on the blog, thanks so much for your thoughts.

As a follow-up to Craig's post, here's a question. Do you think Minatrea is equating mission-minded and maintenance? I'm not sure he was doing that, and I'm not sure I would equate being mission-minded with being focused on maintenance. It seems to me some churches are mission-minded and missional, and some churches are mission-minded and focused on maintenance. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on this.

Another thought I had is that even the most missional-minded person has maintenance thoughts sometimes, and probably many people focused on maintenance sometimes think missionally. So perhaps sometimes we should say, "When I'm thinking along maintenance lines, I find myself worried about . . . " or "When a person is in maintenance mindset, they might say . . ." This would help us from thinking there are two categories of Christians or two categories of churches.

Some blog post ideas

One clarification about posting to this blog. You will be posting by clicking on "comments" below one of my blog posts.

One of the topics I'd like to see addressed in blog posts this week or next week is the question of what "maintenance" looks like in congregations. I see it most clearly when (1) people talk about what they fear and (2) when I listen to people pray for the needs of their congregation. So I'd be happy to see some of you address these questions: What are the fears that are often expressed by people who view maintenance as the major role for congregations today? What are the kinds of things people pray for when they are most concerned about maintenance? And you may want to address the related questions of what do people fear and what do they pray for when their concerns are missional?

You may have many other ways to illustrate what maintenance looks like in a congregation. I'd love to read your observations.

Here's another topic I'd like to see addressed in blog posts: What is the church? And how does your proposed definition help us connect with missional church issues?

Missional Church

Welcome to the Missional Church paper at the University of Otago. I'm looking forward to "meeting" you all tonight at the audioconference. I'm looking forward to the dialog we will have during the audioconferences and on this blog. Students at the 300 level are welcome to read this blog and make posts.

Students at the 400 level are required to make posts during most weeks of the semester. I set up the paper this way because I want you to learn from each other online as well as in the audioconferences. You can write about

• something you read about the missional church that you found interesting, either in an assigned reading for the class or elsewhere
• something we talked about in the audioconference that you want to follow up on
• questions you have about the missional church
• or other topics related to the missional church

Here's one thing I would really appreciate. I intended to order Steve Taylor's book, The Out of Bounds Church?, for the Otago library. In fact, I thought I ordered it, but evidently I forgot to. Some of you have undoubtedly read his book and some of you probably read his blog. I would appreciate comments about what you learned from his book, particularly as it relates to our discussions about the missional church. And if you see something interesting on his blog, please post a link on this blog for the rest of us.

For this first week, feel free to write about anything in the bulleted categories above or to write about Steve Taylor's book. If I think of more specific questions after the audioconference, I'll post those questions.