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Friends,
This is a longish read on the Church in New Zealand by Dr. Kevin Ward Phd.
It is insightful and challenging. This is part of a longer work available here :
Christendom, Clericalism, Church and Context | Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand
I would be keen to hear feedback, as these issues being addressed are common throughout the world and are relevant to the shape of future Church.
1. The Shadow of Christendom. The forms of church life that exist today have been shaped and formed by existing for eighteen hundred years in what has been known as Christendom, a period where western culture and society was shaped by a Christian understanding, with the church a significant player in determining the values and culture of that society. While that state began to break down in the nineteenth century, it still continued to at least be given lip service until the second half of this century. What has emerged in the west since the end of the war, and particularly since the "cultural revolution" of the sixties, [42] is a society whose values and culture are no longer shaped by a Christian understanding. The church meanwhile has continued to maintain forms, values, language and rituals that come out of that framework. These are intensely meaningful and helpful to those brought up within that churched (or Christendom) culture, and it is their concerns that largely shape what churches do. However they are meaningless (when they can actually be understood) and irrelevant to the vast majority of those brought up in post sixties western culture. Hence the diminishing involvement in churches,as we have seen, amongst Baby Boomers and even more so among Gen Xers. Most of the attempts to renew, or build new kinds of churches, are still largely determined by the inherited forms and patterns of the past. A case in point that illustrates this is the huge emphasis still placed on coming to worship on Sunday as the primary point of commitment for Christians. Sunday as a special day for worship was a product of Christendom. In the post Christendom culture in which we live it is just another day of the week for increasing numbers of, particularly young, New Zealanders, and for many attending a church service is not possible with work, family or sporting commitments. Yet for so many churches it is still the only real option offered.
Or take what happens in services. Shaped by our Christendom heritage the main fare is worship in the form of corporate singing and listening to a 30 or 40 minute monologue, with no opportunity to interact. Where else in our society do we attempt to create a sense of belonging and community in this way? Where else do these forms of communication happen? I think the experience of Alpha illustrates this. Both in Britain and in New Zealand this seems to have had some success in getting people to think and talk about Christianity, and often to come to some kind of faith commitment (although I suspect the vast majority of those are not too distantly removed from the church [43]). What I found in talking with people in Britain though was a growing concern that very few of the vast numbers going through Alpha seemed to be ending up in a local church. On asking that question of those involved in running courses in New Zealand I have invariably found the same response. My hunch is that people are coming into a context where they can share a meal together, meet and discuss in an open non-judgemental way with a group of equals their life and spiritual concerns, where their story is respected and they find people who care about them as persons. In other words it provides a way of belonging with which they can connect. Then they are told, sorry this is just the introduction, the real thing happens on Sunday at 10am or 7pm. After a few weeks of attendance they drift off never to be sighted again, thinking "this is not what I understood Christianity was all about and is just irrelevant to my life and needs".
We need to see new forms of church developed that are not shaped by the values and forms of Christendom but by a genuinely mission encounter between the gospel and culture of 21st century New Zealand. My belief is that these cannot be developed by those of us who have lived in the church for thirty or twenty or maybe even ten years (and so are already shaped by the inherited culture) but must be developed by those who have been brought up in the context of that culture and who have come to faith out of it. In other words we need to change from a patronising "come" mentality - this is what we have developed to meet your needs - to a "go" mentality, where we seek to sow the seed of the gospel in the lives of communities of people outside of established churches and see what new forms and shapes that new life creates. This of course raises all kinds of issues of authority and control and so brings us to the second point.
2. The stranglehold of clericalism. Fundamental to Christendom is the distinction between clergy and the laity. "A professionalized cast of Christians, with it's own hierarchical gradations, is separated from other Christians by various forms of ordination and induction." [44] While the markers of this separation may have changed, from 'priest' to 'senior pastor,' from 'Roman tunic' to 'blue suit and white shoes' and from 'confessional' to 'corner office,' it is still kept firmly in place. Everyone knows who calls the shots and who gets the money. As we have seen one of the core value changes of the sixties, was a deep seated anti-institutionalism. Roof, writing about this in a religious context, notes in his long term research that "Boomers in great numbers questioned religious authority when they were growing up and have remained somewhat distrustful of institutions even as they had aged."[45] While many contemporary churches endeavour to disguise any signs of hierarchy and talk a language of tolerance and "permission giving," to outsiders they appear dominated by hierarchies and deeply concerned over issues of control. In most churches whether something is allowed to happen or not, whether it is some new venture by young people, or a new ministry that someone wants to begin, permission has to be sought from the appropriate authority before it can begin - usually in the end the "man" at the top. In a culture which encourages you to do your own thing and follow your own dream people bristle at this kind of control over what often seem to be fairly minor things. "Who can tell me who can meet in my home or what we do there?" "Why shouldn't a group of us be able to meet together to worship the way we want to when we want to?" Often people suspect the real issue is that the leaders are afraid of losing control of what people think or do. One of the values that has become central in our culture is that people resent being told what to do by others and want to have a say in decision making. Most innovative and growing companies achieve this by devolving a lot of decision making down to small groups and teams. In most churches, however, there is still a small and central decision making body dominated by the minister, staff, vestry or elders. Feeling they have no say in what is happening increasing numbers of thinking church goers are drifting off, while, given the postmodern suspicion of control, few are attracted in to an organisation that smacks of this kind of culture of control.
Another area of great suspicion is in regard to money. It is a regular and seemingly increasing preoccupation of most churches, inevitable given the declining levels of giving among Christians and the increasingly expensive costs of running a church and supporting a ministry. Partly this is also a consequence of the current emphasis on the importance of seeking to grow large churches with modern facilities and technology, and increasingly dependent on the contribution of full and part time paid staff. If church leaders appear to be preoccupied with questions of status, control and money, they will inevitably find a growing reaction among many people. A suspicion that the church is out to get your money ranks high on people's negative perceptions of church. In a culture where church was central to the social order, and priest or minister performed many important social and cultural functions for society as a whole, a privileged professional class could be warmly regarded but in today's climate they can so often be seen as seeking to maintain or grow the institution for their own benefit. As we look for new forms of church life,so we need to look for new forms of ministry that are non hierarchical, inclusive and open, which will loosen controls in church life and free up resources to be used in helping people rather than supporting and meeting the needs of the institution. Indeed it is sobering to note, on the one hand, the continuing decline of institutional forms of religion, and on the other hand the rapid spread and growth of the relatively uncontrolled, eclectic, loosely networked forms of spirituality in the alternative religious movements, that can be loosely defined as "New Age".
3. The idolatry of church. I recently talked with someone who had just begun as the pastor of a church. He had spent his first period of time meeting with people in the church and asking them how they viewed the church at the moment. What he heard repeatedly went something like this: "I am just absolutely flat out and stressed out at the moment. My job is taking about 50 hours a week, my wife is working a fairly pressured job and the demands of the children both in their education and leisure activities just seems to increase all the time. And all I ever hear from the church is they want more. We should be supporting their programs more. They want to start off a new ministry and need people to run it. We need to be giving more." That perspective is not unique to that church. It is a refrain I hear repeatedly from people who are married, with significant work and family commitments. I believe that one of the problems we face today is that the local church has become an idol. This is a consequence of the church growth and church management approaches which have interpreted the gospel in terms of what happens to the church. It becomes the focus and centre of attention. A church leader in Canada[46] told me "We keep asking the wrong question. We keep asking what is the right form for the church. We should be asking what does it mean to be an authentic follower of Jesus today - and the church should take its form out of that." It seems that so often today our preoccupation is with the church as an institution instead of living out the gospel. We become focused on keeping the institution going, on making it bigger and better, on what is happening at church, inside the institution. It becomes idolatrous, and in the end any idol takes from life rather than gives life. Research on church leavers indicates that has been the experience of many,[47] and those looking on from the outside say I don't want to have any part of that.
The gospel is not primarily about building churches, it is about living in the world with a spirituality shaped by gospel values. The local church exists in two modes: gathered and scattered. It is gathered when we meet together to worship corporately, to encourage and disciple each other so that when we are scattered in the world we can authentically live as Christians and so bear witness to the gospel. Jesus is primary, the church is secondary. The problem is we have made the church in its gathered form all pervasive and forgotten that it loses its rationale if it is not primarily resourcing its members for their life when it is scattered. When this happens people say, as they are in increasing numbers, it is simply irrelevant to my life. What is desperately needed is a whole change of perspective about "church" as an institution (in other words when it is gathered) that actually puts it in its right perspective. Rather than the church in this sense demanding that people serve it, it should be seeking to serve people by resourcing them so that they can live as authentic followers of Jesus in the world, at work, at home, in education or in leisure and so point others to him. Dietrich Bonhoeffer described Jesus as "the man for others," the one who was willing to give away his own life that others may live. The church that goes by his name is called to follow his pattern and give away its own life that others may live.
For the church to be the church in New Zealand and Australia in the twenty first century I believe these are three of the major issues with which we need to wrestle. What will the church be like when it manages to break free of the shadow it has inherited from its form in Christendom, when it is no longer dominated by the control of the clergy and when rather than demanding that its members serve it, it in fact seeks to serve them so can live their lives in the world as Christ intended. Peter Brierley, the key researcher on the church in Britain, and a deeply committed church person, said to me in an interview that "I believe we are entering a time of churchless Christianity." What he meant was not that Christianity will no longer exist in communal forms, it inevitably must if it is to survive let alone thrive, but that the forms of Christian community that it will take, the way belonging is expressed, will bear little resemblance to "church" as we have known it. I don't know what exactly it will look like, but I do believe it will be vastly different from the form of even the most innovative of those churches regarded as contemporary. Roof who we saw earlier claims that the absence of Boomers and Gen Xers from churches is less a protest of religion in the deepest sense than a response to institutional styles that are unfamiliar or at odds with their life experience, suggests that three key parameters will be that it "privileges open discussion, shared experiences and attention to spiritual development." [48] Those qualities will be a good place to begin because the way ahead will not be pointed to by some great guru pointing the way ahead from inside the institution, but rather a collective sharing of insights of all who claim to belong.
One final helpful sociological insight comes from looking at the nature of "sets." Sets refer to the way we group categories of people or things together. In examining this mathematicians speak about a variety of different types of sets, and one helpful distinction is that between 'bounded' or 'closed' sets on the one hand and 'fuzzy' or 'open' sets on the other. [49] A closed set has a clear boundary, and things either belong inside the set or are outside it. Open sets on the other hand have no sharp boundary and categories flow into one another. In western society after the Reformation the church has often functioned as a closed set. It was clear who was in and who was out, there were a variety of boundary markers, and for someone to come into the set they had to come through these, often defined in terms of belief and the various rites associated with it. The usual institutional factors of hierarchy, control and sanction came into play. This model is most marked in the conservative, evangelical and Pentecostal stream. In an open set the focus is not on the boundary: who is inside and who is outside. Rather the nature of the set is determined by a focus on the centre, which holds the set together. In the case of the church this is obviously Jesus Christ. Thus the concern is not on who is in and who is out (institutional concerns), but rather whether people are moving toward the centre, Christ (gospel concerns). If conversion is regarded as a process, and belonging needs to be experienced before believing happens (and hopefully eventually behaving results), then it is obvious this model of church needs to be that which is embraced. The church is then an open community of people who are seeking to help each other in their journey with Jesus. To do this they then need to 'privilege open discussion, shared experiences and attention to spiritual development.'
Rev Dr Kevin Ward
MA(Hons) (Canterbury); BD, DipEd, DipTchg, PhD (Otago); DipMin (NZBTC); MCAIRANZ
This is a longish read on the Church in New Zealand by Dr. Kevin Ward Phd.
It is insightful and challenging. This is part of a longer work available here :
Christendom, Clericalism, Church and Context | Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand
I would be keen to hear feedback, as these issues being addressed are common throughout the world and are relevant to the shape of future Church.
1. The Shadow of Christendom. The forms of church life that exist today have been shaped and formed by existing for eighteen hundred years in what has been known as Christendom, a period where western culture and society was shaped by a Christian understanding, with the church a significant player in determining the values and culture of that society. While that state began to break down in the nineteenth century, it still continued to at least be given lip service until the second half of this century. What has emerged in the west since the end of the war, and particularly since the "cultural revolution" of the sixties, [42] is a society whose values and culture are no longer shaped by a Christian understanding. The church meanwhile has continued to maintain forms, values, language and rituals that come out of that framework. These are intensely meaningful and helpful to those brought up within that churched (or Christendom) culture, and it is their concerns that largely shape what churches do. However they are meaningless (when they can actually be understood) and irrelevant to the vast majority of those brought up in post sixties western culture. Hence the diminishing involvement in churches,as we have seen, amongst Baby Boomers and even more so among Gen Xers. Most of the attempts to renew, or build new kinds of churches, are still largely determined by the inherited forms and patterns of the past. A case in point that illustrates this is the huge emphasis still placed on coming to worship on Sunday as the primary point of commitment for Christians. Sunday as a special day for worship was a product of Christendom. In the post Christendom culture in which we live it is just another day of the week for increasing numbers of, particularly young, New Zealanders, and for many attending a church service is not possible with work, family or sporting commitments. Yet for so many churches it is still the only real option offered.
Or take what happens in services. Shaped by our Christendom heritage the main fare is worship in the form of corporate singing and listening to a 30 or 40 minute monologue, with no opportunity to interact. Where else in our society do we attempt to create a sense of belonging and community in this way? Where else do these forms of communication happen? I think the experience of Alpha illustrates this. Both in Britain and in New Zealand this seems to have had some success in getting people to think and talk about Christianity, and often to come to some kind of faith commitment (although I suspect the vast majority of those are not too distantly removed from the church [43]). What I found in talking with people in Britain though was a growing concern that very few of the vast numbers going through Alpha seemed to be ending up in a local church. On asking that question of those involved in running courses in New Zealand I have invariably found the same response. My hunch is that people are coming into a context where they can share a meal together, meet and discuss in an open non-judgemental way with a group of equals their life and spiritual concerns, where their story is respected and they find people who care about them as persons. In other words it provides a way of belonging with which they can connect. Then they are told, sorry this is just the introduction, the real thing happens on Sunday at 10am or 7pm. After a few weeks of attendance they drift off never to be sighted again, thinking "this is not what I understood Christianity was all about and is just irrelevant to my life and needs".
We need to see new forms of church developed that are not shaped by the values and forms of Christendom but by a genuinely mission encounter between the gospel and culture of 21st century New Zealand. My belief is that these cannot be developed by those of us who have lived in the church for thirty or twenty or maybe even ten years (and so are already shaped by the inherited culture) but must be developed by those who have been brought up in the context of that culture and who have come to faith out of it. In other words we need to change from a patronising "come" mentality - this is what we have developed to meet your needs - to a "go" mentality, where we seek to sow the seed of the gospel in the lives of communities of people outside of established churches and see what new forms and shapes that new life creates. This of course raises all kinds of issues of authority and control and so brings us to the second point.
2. The stranglehold of clericalism. Fundamental to Christendom is the distinction between clergy and the laity. "A professionalized cast of Christians, with it's own hierarchical gradations, is separated from other Christians by various forms of ordination and induction." [44] While the markers of this separation may have changed, from 'priest' to 'senior pastor,' from 'Roman tunic' to 'blue suit and white shoes' and from 'confessional' to 'corner office,' it is still kept firmly in place. Everyone knows who calls the shots and who gets the money. As we have seen one of the core value changes of the sixties, was a deep seated anti-institutionalism. Roof, writing about this in a religious context, notes in his long term research that "Boomers in great numbers questioned religious authority when they were growing up and have remained somewhat distrustful of institutions even as they had aged."[45] While many contemporary churches endeavour to disguise any signs of hierarchy and talk a language of tolerance and "permission giving," to outsiders they appear dominated by hierarchies and deeply concerned over issues of control. In most churches whether something is allowed to happen or not, whether it is some new venture by young people, or a new ministry that someone wants to begin, permission has to be sought from the appropriate authority before it can begin - usually in the end the "man" at the top. In a culture which encourages you to do your own thing and follow your own dream people bristle at this kind of control over what often seem to be fairly minor things. "Who can tell me who can meet in my home or what we do there?" "Why shouldn't a group of us be able to meet together to worship the way we want to when we want to?" Often people suspect the real issue is that the leaders are afraid of losing control of what people think or do. One of the values that has become central in our culture is that people resent being told what to do by others and want to have a say in decision making. Most innovative and growing companies achieve this by devolving a lot of decision making down to small groups and teams. In most churches, however, there is still a small and central decision making body dominated by the minister, staff, vestry or elders. Feeling they have no say in what is happening increasing numbers of thinking church goers are drifting off, while, given the postmodern suspicion of control, few are attracted in to an organisation that smacks of this kind of culture of control.
Another area of great suspicion is in regard to money. It is a regular and seemingly increasing preoccupation of most churches, inevitable given the declining levels of giving among Christians and the increasingly expensive costs of running a church and supporting a ministry. Partly this is also a consequence of the current emphasis on the importance of seeking to grow large churches with modern facilities and technology, and increasingly dependent on the contribution of full and part time paid staff. If church leaders appear to be preoccupied with questions of status, control and money, they will inevitably find a growing reaction among many people. A suspicion that the church is out to get your money ranks high on people's negative perceptions of church. In a culture where church was central to the social order, and priest or minister performed many important social and cultural functions for society as a whole, a privileged professional class could be warmly regarded but in today's climate they can so often be seen as seeking to maintain or grow the institution for their own benefit. As we look for new forms of church life,so we need to look for new forms of ministry that are non hierarchical, inclusive and open, which will loosen controls in church life and free up resources to be used in helping people rather than supporting and meeting the needs of the institution. Indeed it is sobering to note, on the one hand, the continuing decline of institutional forms of religion, and on the other hand the rapid spread and growth of the relatively uncontrolled, eclectic, loosely networked forms of spirituality in the alternative religious movements, that can be loosely defined as "New Age".
3. The idolatry of church. I recently talked with someone who had just begun as the pastor of a church. He had spent his first period of time meeting with people in the church and asking them how they viewed the church at the moment. What he heard repeatedly went something like this: "I am just absolutely flat out and stressed out at the moment. My job is taking about 50 hours a week, my wife is working a fairly pressured job and the demands of the children both in their education and leisure activities just seems to increase all the time. And all I ever hear from the church is they want more. We should be supporting their programs more. They want to start off a new ministry and need people to run it. We need to be giving more." That perspective is not unique to that church. It is a refrain I hear repeatedly from people who are married, with significant work and family commitments. I believe that one of the problems we face today is that the local church has become an idol. This is a consequence of the church growth and church management approaches which have interpreted the gospel in terms of what happens to the church. It becomes the focus and centre of attention. A church leader in Canada[46] told me "We keep asking the wrong question. We keep asking what is the right form for the church. We should be asking what does it mean to be an authentic follower of Jesus today - and the church should take its form out of that." It seems that so often today our preoccupation is with the church as an institution instead of living out the gospel. We become focused on keeping the institution going, on making it bigger and better, on what is happening at church, inside the institution. It becomes idolatrous, and in the end any idol takes from life rather than gives life. Research on church leavers indicates that has been the experience of many,[47] and those looking on from the outside say I don't want to have any part of that.
The gospel is not primarily about building churches, it is about living in the world with a spirituality shaped by gospel values. The local church exists in two modes: gathered and scattered. It is gathered when we meet together to worship corporately, to encourage and disciple each other so that when we are scattered in the world we can authentically live as Christians and so bear witness to the gospel. Jesus is primary, the church is secondary. The problem is we have made the church in its gathered form all pervasive and forgotten that it loses its rationale if it is not primarily resourcing its members for their life when it is scattered. When this happens people say, as they are in increasing numbers, it is simply irrelevant to my life. What is desperately needed is a whole change of perspective about "church" as an institution (in other words when it is gathered) that actually puts it in its right perspective. Rather than the church in this sense demanding that people serve it, it should be seeking to serve people by resourcing them so that they can live as authentic followers of Jesus in the world, at work, at home, in education or in leisure and so point others to him. Dietrich Bonhoeffer described Jesus as "the man for others," the one who was willing to give away his own life that others may live. The church that goes by his name is called to follow his pattern and give away its own life that others may live.
For the church to be the church in New Zealand and Australia in the twenty first century I believe these are three of the major issues with which we need to wrestle. What will the church be like when it manages to break free of the shadow it has inherited from its form in Christendom, when it is no longer dominated by the control of the clergy and when rather than demanding that its members serve it, it in fact seeks to serve them so can live their lives in the world as Christ intended. Peter Brierley, the key researcher on the church in Britain, and a deeply committed church person, said to me in an interview that "I believe we are entering a time of churchless Christianity." What he meant was not that Christianity will no longer exist in communal forms, it inevitably must if it is to survive let alone thrive, but that the forms of Christian community that it will take, the way belonging is expressed, will bear little resemblance to "church" as we have known it. I don't know what exactly it will look like, but I do believe it will be vastly different from the form of even the most innovative of those churches regarded as contemporary. Roof who we saw earlier claims that the absence of Boomers and Gen Xers from churches is less a protest of religion in the deepest sense than a response to institutional styles that are unfamiliar or at odds with their life experience, suggests that three key parameters will be that it "privileges open discussion, shared experiences and attention to spiritual development." [48] Those qualities will be a good place to begin because the way ahead will not be pointed to by some great guru pointing the way ahead from inside the institution, but rather a collective sharing of insights of all who claim to belong.
One final helpful sociological insight comes from looking at the nature of "sets." Sets refer to the way we group categories of people or things together. In examining this mathematicians speak about a variety of different types of sets, and one helpful distinction is that between 'bounded' or 'closed' sets on the one hand and 'fuzzy' or 'open' sets on the other. [49] A closed set has a clear boundary, and things either belong inside the set or are outside it. Open sets on the other hand have no sharp boundary and categories flow into one another. In western society after the Reformation the church has often functioned as a closed set. It was clear who was in and who was out, there were a variety of boundary markers, and for someone to come into the set they had to come through these, often defined in terms of belief and the various rites associated with it. The usual institutional factors of hierarchy, control and sanction came into play. This model is most marked in the conservative, evangelical and Pentecostal stream. In an open set the focus is not on the boundary: who is inside and who is outside. Rather the nature of the set is determined by a focus on the centre, which holds the set together. In the case of the church this is obviously Jesus Christ. Thus the concern is not on who is in and who is out (institutional concerns), but rather whether people are moving toward the centre, Christ (gospel concerns). If conversion is regarded as a process, and belonging needs to be experienced before believing happens (and hopefully eventually behaving results), then it is obvious this model of church needs to be that which is embraced. The church is then an open community of people who are seeking to help each other in their journey with Jesus. To do this they then need to 'privilege open discussion, shared experiences and attention to spiritual development.'
Rev Dr Kevin Ward
MA(Hons) (Canterbury); BD, DipEd, DipTchg, PhD (Otago); DipMin (NZBTC); MCAIRANZ
