Over at the Lay Anglicana blog, Laura Sykes has been putting together a ‘wish list’ for the sort of person who should be appointed as the new Archbishop of Canterbury. In her view, very early on in the process each candidate should be required to write their own answer to the fundamental question ‘Who is the Church of England for?’ (in the sense of ‘for whose benefit does it exist?’).
It seems to me that this is exactly the right sort of question that we should be asking, and a change in leadership is the right time to ask it. It’s so easy for churches to get caught up in the nuts and bolts of administrative structure and maintenance. Even worse, we could get caught up in the trappings of leadership (Who should wear what sort of ceremonial clothing? What title should we give them? Should they be male or female or gay or straight? How should we appoint them to their position? etc.) without asking the basic question ‘What is the leadership structure there for in the first place?’
So – what is the Church for? Conventional answers usually have to do with Sunday mornings – the Church exists to worship God, and so it needs trained leaders to lead its worship, preach the word in the congregation, administer the sacraments etc. Certainly in the Anglican branch of the Church, we have made worship gatherings our ‘raison d’être’. In fact, we define our membership in terms of the number of people who ‘come to church’.
But in fact, in the Bible, worship is only one of the purposes of the Church, and you could make a good argument to the effect that it’s not even the most important one. Yes, we know from the Book of Acts and the other New Testament letters that Christians from earliest times have met on the Lord’s Day to worship together (‘very early in the morning’, so the church fathers tell us – because of course, in those days, Sunday was a working day like any other), but nowhere does Jesus specifically command us to ‘hold services on Sunday mornings’. He does tell us to ‘do this in remembrance of me’, yes, but he leaves the timing and the exact nature of those gatherings up to us to work out.
What he is most urgently concerned about, however, appears in the words of commission with which he sends out his followers in all four gospels and in the Book of Acts. We are told to go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them and teaching them to obey everything Jesus has commanded us (Matthew 28:16-20). We’re told to go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation, and that all who believe it and are baptised will be saved (Mark 16:15). We’re told that repentance for the forgiveness of sins is to be preached in the Messiah’s name to all nations, and that we are witnesses of these things (Luke 24:47-48). We’re told that as the Father sent Jesus, so now Jesus is sending us (John 20:21). And we’re told that we will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon us so that we can be witnesses for Jesus to the world’s farthest ends (Acts 1:8).
So our work is to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ and to be his witnesses. We are to invite people to receive the forgiveness he offers and to become his disciples; we are to baptise them in the name of the Trinity, and to teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded us. And as this is a supernatural task, we are promised the help of the Holy Spirit, and in fact are commanded to wait for him to fill us before we try to do anything for him!
Why this emphasis on spreading the gospel and making disciples?
Well, it’s related to the central theme of Jesus’ teaching ministry: the Kingdom of God. Virtually all scholars agree that the Kingdom of God was the primary concern of Jesus: the wonderful news that God is setting the world to rights through Jesus and his ministry. And how does this kingdom grow in the world today? Not by political machinations or military prowess, but by the willing submission of human hearts to God’s anointed king, Jesus. The Kingdom of God grows one heart at a time, as human beings respond to Jesus’ invitation and commit themselves to living as his disciples. It then becomes their business to learn to follow the teaching and example of Jesus in their daily lives. As they do so, their lives gradually take on the shape of Christ’s life, the shape of the Kingdom of God, and so, as Jesus taught is to pray, God’s kingdom comes and God’s will is done on earth as in heaven.
So the Church is primarily a missionary organisation, a fellowship of growing disciples committed to making new disciples for Jesus. And there is nothing mysterious about what the lives of those disciples are meant to look like. The teaching of Jesus is dauntingly clear on the subject, especially in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters 5-7).
It seems to me that everything else in the Church’s life takes shape around this primary theme of being disciples and making disciples. What sort of Christian community do we need in order to make disciples who are a living incarnation of the Sermon on the Mount? What sort of leaders can help grow such a community and help to coach these disciples? What sort of gathering for worship and teaching will be most effective in shaping us into such a community? Once we put discipleship and mission at the centre of the Church’s life, these questions take their most fundamental and helpful shape. The sacraments, too, find their place naturally around this central purpose of the Church: baptism is the way we become disciples of Jesus, and Holy Communion recalls for us the death and resurrection of Jesus and nourishes us in his grace so that we can then go out and do the work of mission, of making and training new disciples.
What sort of buildings do we need? What sort of robes should ministers wear? What kind of liturgy should we use for our worship? Should we use organ music or rock bands? Should it be only an ordained priest who presides at Holy Communion, or should a lay reader be allowed to do it too? These are all fascinating questions, but in the end they also have the potential to be fascinating distractions. The more fundamental questions for us to answer are these:
- What is the good news of Jesus Christ?
- What does a disciple of Jesus Christ look like? What is his/her lifestyle? How do we train people in this life of discipleship?
- How do we equip every single member of the Church to be a witness for Christ and to participate in the work of making new disciples?
- What sort of Christian communities do we need in order to grow disciples of Jesus who will transform the world and further the kingdom by the way they live their lives at their homes, at their schools, at their places of work, and in their leisure time?
- What sort of people do we need to lead those communities and coach those disciples?
