The gentle art of being the church by Mary-Anne Rulfs
To be Christian is to belong to the body of Christ.
I love this metaphor which we’ve inherited from the letters of St Paul to various early Chistian communities. It carries the sense of embodied interdependence where each wildly diverse part contributes to the wellbeing of the whole. This is another way of describing life-giving community, which is the ideal environment for human flourishing.
Belonging to the community that is the body of Christ is to be the church. Embodied and interdependent, where every person has a vital part to play in expressing the community’s true identity – the risen Christ.
Do you see yourself as part of the body of Christ? How would you describe your contribution? (Please don’t underestimate!) You might be surprised at the ways you contribute to the wellbeing of others.
So to be the church has less to do with bricks and mortar, programmes or adhering to creeds and doctrines than it does with each of us simply showing up as who we are (followers of Jesus) with what we have (our unique self, inhabited by God’s Holy Spirit) and offering that for the benefit of the whole community.
I’d like to offer one small insight into this really big and important question:
At a time when the world’s needs are great, and the church’s influence appears to be diminishing, how can we be better at ‘being the church’, here and now?
This is not a question about self-preservation. It’s a question about living into our reason for being.
What I mean by ‘being the church’ is being the community of Christ that worships, serves, cares and matures in the company of other Christ-followers. While we benefit in countless ways from participating in healthy Christian community, ultimately God calls us to be the church for the benefit of the neighbours we are called to love. That is, everyone we encounter in our lives.
And let’s be clear. ‘Being the church’ is not the same as ‘going to church’. ‘Going to church’ is simply a function of our lives; something we do as part of our weekly, monthly or even yearly routine. Corporate worship is essential to being Christian community. Yet, to be honest, it is possible to ‘go to church’ all our lives without much changing in us, except that we are happier because we enjoy what we experience – perhaps the music, participating in the sacraments or finding a deepened sense of social cohesion. We may even think that by ‘going to church’ God will like us better!
What if ‘going to church’ was simply Step 1 on a long journey and not the final destination.
We go to church so that we can grow into maturity as Christians, allowing our lives to be shaped by the Holy Spirit and becoming more aware of the ways that we can serve God by serving others in the world.
That is, growing up, shaping up, and waking up.
‘Being church’ in ways that authentically and transparently express our calling as followers of Jesus will always be life-changing.
Archbishop Jeremy said in his recent address to Synod:
Plans are terrific, but often the best we can do is ‘get up and show up, as faithfully as possible, with as much love as possible and be open to that first next place to where the Spirit might be leading us.
My hope that … through the next few years that might be our work together: to get up and show up, as faithfully and as fully as we can, as we discern the first next place to where the Spirit is leading us…
It would be easy to turn our focus inward… We are called to participate in God’s mission in the world by turning our gaze outward to the needs of the world and the people amongst whom we live…This means sitting lightly with our internal problems, as we live by and share the good news of Jesus Christ, serve our communities and continue being God’s people in God’s world.
Growing up requires that we shed perspectives and practices that were important to us in our early days of living as a Christian but are no longer helping us to grow. A bit like a teenager bagging up the soft toys, childhood games and favourite outfits that are now too small, too childish and no longer helpful. These things can be passed on to a younger person who can still make use of and enjoy these things.
Shaping up requires that we become less complacent and comfortable about church life, and proactively discern where and how God is inviting us to participate in what God is already doing in the world – and go do it.
Waking up means looking up and paying greater attention to what’s happening outside our own bubble. It’s having a stretch, wiping our eyes and noticing ‘hey! The world’s even more amazing than I thought!’ When we wake up, the vision for our own lives becomes more connected with others and more purposeful. We have a greater sense of what it means to ‘be ourselves’, not in a self-focussed, self-absorbed way, but in a way that allows us to see that we have a place in God’s world that is only ours to fill.
Growing up, shaping up and waking up spiritually reflect the activity of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Last Sunday Rev’d Greg McGrory preached at Palm Beach. He asked us,
‘Do you have an open-door policy to the Holy Spirit?’
What a question! I’ve pondering that for my own life all week. The Holy Spirit invites us to take the risks needed to be vulnerable and open so that we can, more authentically, be the community of Christ that worships, serves, cares and matures together. That’s how we proclaim that the kingdom of heaven has come near to the people in our sphere of influence, here and now.
Although Matthew’s gospel is the only place where Jesus refers to ‘the church’ (in Mt 16:18 and 18:17), the Acts of the Apostles is about the life of the early church. The ekklesia in New Testament Greek. The ekklesia refers not to a building nor a liturgical practice, but a way of being Christian in community. A way of worshipping and serving and caring that others want to join in because of the radical transformation for good that takes place.
What ‘being the church’ looks like in the next few decades is not impossible to imagine. The church will continue to be an expression of the community of Christ, worshipping, loving and serving in Jesus’ name.
What must change is what ‘going to church’ looks like. Step 1 on the journey to ‘being the church’ for today needs to be anchored in the reality of our world. Otherwise, who will join us? What would be the point?
Our corporate worship – what we call ‘going to church’ – needs to be shaped in ways that draw people closer to God and each other through word and sacrament. Because we are all different and have different preferences, there is no ‘one size fits all’ formula for worship. However, our expression of Christian faith in the Anglican tradition can be shaped (a gentle way of saying changed) to meet the real needs of people in our contemporary world.
The reality is that this needs to be done with fewer resources than in years gone by, and in contexts other than Sunday and mid-week worship alone. The nature of work, recreation and family life has changed enormously over the last 50 years, and formal membership of church communities has diminished.
Shaped by these parameters, ‘going to church’ will inevitably look and feel different, as will our church structures and traditional ways of expressing Christian faith in the Anglican tradition. Read again our Archbishop’s comments at Synod!
Recent research in the UK has identified that the core values of millennials – people born between 1997-1995 – considered important for a happy life are authenticity, tolerance and collaborative participation. Therefore, even for those with religious affiliation, they will not remain loyal to an expression of church that is not consistent with these values.
While we grieve the ‘decline of the church’, we need to be clear about what we’ve lost. The church’s decline might in part reflect the fact that the church is no longer the place where people gather socially. What if we return to our reason for being and be very clear that as the body of Christ, we can be present in the world as trans formative communities of faith, hope and love in a world overwhelmed by fear, despair and loneliness?
Being the church – worshiping, serving, caring and maturing in the company of other Christ-followers for the benefit of the communities in which we live, work and play – is the most exciting way of life I can imagine. Nowhere do I see a way of life that can so completely engage every part of who I am in ways that make the world a better place. So together, let’s grow up, shape up and wake up to the opportunities we have to be the church for our time and place, making God possible for people living in a world where faith, hope and love seem to be in short supply.
With an open-door policy to the Holy Spirit, we can be this kind of church.
Grace and peace,
Mary-Anne