Being A Missional Gospel For The Institutional Church?

April 30th, 2007 by Fernando Gros

For some time now it has been a fash­ion amongst Chris­tian futur­ists of a low-church bent to talk about the demise of the insti­tu­tional church. So, it’s not sur­pris­ing that a number of writers in the emerging/missional camp have taken this sort of line, some­times being so bold as to name a time­frame — 30 years being the cur­rent figure picked from the ether. I guess if one is trying to market a book or sem­inar based on rad­ical and urgent moment we appar­ently live in, then choos­ing a number that sits well within the life­time of one’s target audi­ence would make sense.

Not that we don’t need rad­ical changes in how we do church; but maybe we don’t need to gloat about the death of a failed eccle­si­olo­gical cul­ture quite so loudly and arrogantly?

It’s a thought that came to mind repeatedly while read­ing Charles Taylor’s recent piece in the NYRB, A Dif­fer­ent Kind of Cour­age. Taylor reviews Jonathan Lear’s book, Rad­ical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cul­tural Dev­ast­a­tion, a work that does not dir­ectly address the ques­tion of church struc­ture at all, but does address the chal­lenges and struggles faced by those who see their cul­ture des­troyed by social change.

Of course, this is a massive issue for many in our world today — not just those within the church.

But maybe, those of us pro­claim­ing new ways of express­ing our faith, new ways of enga­ging with our world could pause a little more often to count the cost for those who are strug­gling to adapt. It’s all to easy, when we hear the accus­a­tions from those who do not under­stand our pro­ject, to miss the pain in their voices. Glob­al­isa­tion, con­tin­gency, post­mod­ern­ism, mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism — these have never not been a part of my life and I’ve chosen them as much as they’ve chosen me. But for many, these are now being forced upon them, not by choice and there is a fight to adapt.

Per­haps instead of mer­rily announ­cing the immen­ent demise of the insti­tu­tional church, cel­eb­rat­ing the death of that cul­ture, we should instead be asking ourselves how we are “good news,” or “gospel” to those who are still God’s people within those structures?

Posted in Missional Church | 6 comments

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6 comments on this post.

  1. Paul:

    May 1st, 2007 at 7:34 pm

    the col­lapse of IC always seems to me to more spring­ing from ideal­isa­tion empire build­ing that emer­ging church is some­how a better way and ther­fore must be the future — there is a lot of great stuff that the church of eng­land is doing to pion­eer fresh expres­sions and i think i’m with mark twain that news of their demise has been greatly exagerated.

    I wonder how a move towards a deep eccle­si­ology would help us share our mis­sion together as churches rather than as friendly rivals — but then again i wouldn’t want to get all ideal­istic now ;)

  2. Fernando Gros:

    May 1st, 2007 at 11:10 pm

    Oh, I agree that rumours of the insti­tu­tional church’s demise are greatly exager­ated — which makes me wonder about the cheer­lead­ers for it. Maybe the rivalry is not all that friendly?

    That said, I’m glad you brought up deep eccle­si­ology, because I sus­pect that con­nects and broadens what I was trying to say. Maybe it’s a para­dox of the emer­ging and mis­sional scene that we try to be real about our fail­ures, but some­times become unreal­istic about the instu­tional church and our mis­sion to and along­side it?

  3. Paul:

    May 3rd, 2007 at 9:49 am

    yes, i wonder why we become so unreal­istic — maybe its a desire to be dif­fer­ent and put clear purple water between the them and the us? or we’re just in denial about how simil­iar we are and there­fore how closely related? or we’re seek­ing our iden­tity and doing so by work­ing out what we’re against rather than what we are for — so our focus is on the lim­ited points of style but ignores so much of what we have in common/share? all of them? none of them? What do you think?

  4. Fernando Gros:

    May 5th, 2007 at 8:42 am

    Paul, I sus­pect that for a number of people I’ve read and spoken to, the real­ity of past hurts and dis­ap­points sits very close to the sur­face. The neg­at­iv­ity and unreal­istic out­look arises from a “good” desire to create some­thing that doens’t embody as many of the sys­tems that either hurt us, or the people we love. That sits quite well with a few of the points you’ve noted.

    But, along with that there is also, maybe less often, an unhealthy tend­ency to feel spe­cial, novel, innovative.

  5. Paul:

    May 9th, 2007 at 5:09 am

    thanks Fernando, your thoughts have inspired my own post on the demise of the insti­tu­tional church…

  6. Fernando Gros:

    May 9th, 2007 at 11:22 am

    Paul, I’m look­ing for­ward to the other two posts in your cur­rent series!