Kerk(voort)planting 2
Een paar leuke linksEn enkele gedachten van Rowan Williams / Archbisshop of Canterbury
anglicans have often thought that the question of what church is will look after itself. but actually this isn't true. at heart it is about working out what difference jesus has made and working out how that might affect our life together. read the gospels afresh and its hard to see that jesus thought his ministry was about founding an institution called the church! jesus is not implementing a programme to which people sign up. he does help develop a set/network of relationships around him of the apostles. the point is simply that the church may not be an institution founded by jesus but neither it is an afterthought. jesus creates relationships. by his presence among them shaping their relations, jesus is the living presence of god among them. so from the start where jesus is there is church. church is the immediate effect of jesus being there. a new creation happens when people are drawn into relationship with jesus. the church is part of this new creation, the firstfruits of god's reclaiming of creation for himself so that one day it will fully reflect who he is. developing a mission theology might begin here - a new creation. church is about this new creation and it's what happens when jesus is there. the presence of jesus transfigures the environment. all our attempts to be church need to be tested against this.
moving on.... any institution's structures should if they work well facilitate this mission. when we look at the church do we see the new creation is happening? do they let the event of an encounter with jesus happen again and again? if not the church has become something very different - it has become something that says once there was an encounter with jesus and we like to remember that! we should note that people in the gospels encountered jesus in many different ways. likewise the body of christ can facilitate a diverse way of encountering jesus, sharing his life and table (in fact this is what sacramental life is about). internally the church structures have to deal with continuity and stability - this does mean they need at some level to be conservative (i.e. conserve the tradition of sacrament and word) but externally i.e. outside that internal life of the church what structures enable encounter? that is where the challenge lies.... we're learning rather slowly about structures that enable this transforming encounter with jesus. what is extraordinary at the moment is the amount of stories of where this is happening! god is showing us then examples of what the church is in startling new ways. here is god doing something, here is god drawing people together - what are we going to do? do we approach it with self protective nervousness (with questions such is it anglican? does it fit with what we know and like? is it co-opted into our culture?) or with gratitude (and this requires humility)? i think/hope that we are learning gratitude. the second mission principle i want to suggest (the first is the new creation) is patience (there is also an impatience in that we want to see the kingdom come) - and this can be hard.
One of the most interesting things i remember rowan saying in the last bit was about leadership and training for ministry. he suggested that we need to shift how we think about what ministry is 'away from just servicing the community to animating a network of relations both inside and outside the community'
posted by Peter Wierenga @ 3:48 p.m.
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