Some interesting thoughts by Steve, particularly for Sanctus1 as a community that has close ties to the institution.
http://smallritual.blogs.com/small_ritual/2005/06/uneasy_emerging.html
I think that the comments need to be listened to and reflected on. My immediate, unreflective, reaction is to agree with the fact that Christian theology is centred on death and resurrection, but to also highlight the fact that although Christ's post-resurrection body was different it was also still recognisably him. Christ did not die and come back a completely different person, he was resurrected as fully man and fully God - Still the same person.
Therefore what does this mean in regard to the death of the Church. I think that it is a bit naive to say that the institutional church will die and disappear and something new will emerge. I think that it is far more likely that the church will go through a process of radical reform; a death in certain areas and new life in others. It will fragment, dissolve and disappear fully in places but I do not believe that it will die and cease to exist.
Perhaps I'm just an optimist and protecting my pension...
3 comments:
Hmmmm... Steve's arguments are quite abstract so I am unsure exactly what he is uneasy about.
Is it the fact that there are plenty who don't regard Sanctus or other emerging churches as "real church", because we don't sing hymns or worship songs on a Sunday morning? I agree we have to defend ourselves against that sort of small mindedness.
But if Steve is worried about voices compromising 'the vision', others of us have probably been equally wary of what sometimes sounds like a rather arrogant, triumphalist "we are the future!" attitude in some EC/alt.worship circles. I don't like the idea of ripping everything down and starting again, like history doesn't matter. How many times in history do we have to repeat that same disastrous mistake before we realise it's a bad, bad idea?
In trying to avoid the mistakes of existing/established forms of church, we always run the danger of being blind to new dangers. And there are plenty of problems which we share with older forms... in some good ways and some bad ways, we're maybe not as different as we think.
I read it thinking that it's a bit of a strawman. His argument seems to be that you either need to be 'new church' or 'old church' with no shades of grey in between. The whole 'Old=Bad,New=Good' thing makes me more uneasy TBH.
What about being both at the same time?
There's a lot to admire in the church. Yes it does sometimes get buried in misplaced traditions and even occasionally misses the point entirely, but I don't think throwing it all away is remotely productive.
Perhaps it's down to the whole label thing. I'm always wary when new ideas get a label.. 'emerging church' suddenly has to define itself within narrow parameters otherwise it's not legitimate in some peoples' eyes.. I'd rather avoid that altogether TBH. Sanctus is a community of people that 'does church' in a particular way at this particular point in history.. does that need a label? How do we stop such a label starting to define what we do and how we do things?
I quite agree Daniel, the arguments are too abstract to make immediate sense of. On the one hand he argues that historical forms of Church should inform rather than determine our own:
“we need tradition to inform the present - not to determine it… we've got to be careful in revisiting the past. for instance, forget about the forms of monasticism. ask what was it for? … if that intention is worth pursuing now, what forms does it call forth now, without reference to the past? if it looks similar, fine. but to seek similar forms is romantic nostalgia.”
And on the other he seems to rant against the very institution of church itself:
“i think we're swallowing the institution's arguments about what church is … church isn't an organization. maybe it's an ecology of relationships. there's a story to live by, not a checklist. and the canonical story stops before anything gets to be an institution - maybe to save us.”
It seems to me that Steve is both in favour of having a church (albeit a reformed story church), and at the same time getting rid of the institution of church altogether. How is this compatible? Is it possible to have his un-organised pro-story church outside the institution of church? Is Steve the Christian equivalent of neo-socialist anarchistic (Lib-Dem perhaps? – couldn’t resist).
He wants the freedom to reinvent what church is, but not to re-build it inside an institution. He wants a collection of relationships that tell a story, but leave nothing behind once that story has been told. He argues that canonical truth can only be relived if we shed ourselves of the chains of organised religion, but who wrote the truth and canonised it in the first place?
For a liberal such as I it does appeal, but surely our Christian institutions are the products of the story, leaving a marker of those who trod before, so the next generation can pick up and carry on. The warning shouldn’t be about using the institutions, simply how we use them. Perhaps with more development this is what Steve is saying after all. He does hint at such early on, but comes out too strongly against institution later to make this obvious:
“i feel like a lot of the show atm is being run by the church-fixers [witting and unwitting] rather than the church-dissolvers. people want to fix the church because they can't imagine a resurrection after its death”
Steve starts off pleading for us to build a church using the wisdom of old to aid and inform, but then throws it all away with his call for it’s death and resurrection – it’s as if he’s caught between two narrow points, one where he feels safe to start re-building (correctly) and one where he can’t start to rebuild before the process of destruction is complete.
Frustratingly he sounds like Cromwell – indicating his willingness to implement the radicalism of the Levellers, yet unwilling to construct a competing model until the institution of the crown is destroyed. I only hope history isn’t repeated - and as the ashes of the institution are surveyed we are suddenly and painfully aware we are unprepared to replace it with anything strong enough to hold.
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