One of the strongest memories I have of India is of a visit to a village church in Andhra Pradesh in 2012. Roughly 100 gathered for worship. Roughly 50% of the village are Christian. The church, the one church, was established by missionaries in the 19th Century. We met two of the evangelists who continue the work today.w
The work of God in the village, the power of the gospel, the discovery of the mission-impact of being one church: these had and have a powerful impact. No wonder. Newbigin frequently refers to his experience in the village. It was clearly an inspiration and helped form him and his immense legacy.
However, I am wondering whether he missed something.
Over 20 years ago, when I was beginning my first pastorate, I read His 'On Being the Church for the World’. I was thinking about the shape my call should take in parish ministry - in part of the urban overflow of London. Newbigin has the wonderful image of the church as a sign:
'The point of a sign is that it points to something that is not yet visible. If you want to go to Winston Green you don't put up a sign in Winson Green: you have a sign in Handworth or Edgbaston...' In concluding, he speaks about how he carries out his ministry in Winson Green. He begins by telling how he and the local ministers (Pentecostal, URC, Church of the Firstborn) meet and pray and plan together. 'We try to ask what, in spite of our divisions, our unity in Christ has to mean for the life of this community in Winson Green'.
'And then?' I want to ask. But then... he stops. There is no 'secondly'. It seems to peter out. I came away disappointed. What does it mean for the church to be a sign? This seems to be unaddressed yet the sin of ecumenical naval gazing seems to wait at the door. This seems so untypical; and so I have been puzzling.
From his context it is clearly not naval gazing. Previously in the article he speaks of the church as
a foretaste of something different from the world, 'a communion in the Holy Spirit in the life of the triune God', 'an instrument through which God's will for justice and peace and freedom is done in the world.'
But in addition, Newbigin himself points the way to further work to be done.
“I do not think we shall recover the true form of the parish until we recover a truly missionary approach to our culture. I do not think we shall achieve a truly missionary encounter with our culture without recovering the true form of the parish. These two tasks are reciprocally related to each other, and we have to work together on them both.’
More recently, I was encouraged to find that Mark Laing shares my hesitation. In his From Crisis to Creation, p239), he writes:
‘Earlier [Newbigin] had realised that the parochial model emphasised “coming” to the neglect of “going” and was thus “not true to the biblical picture of the church as a missionary community. In re-endorsing the parochial model, Newbigin is disappointing in not providing clues for restructuring of the church which would enable it to be a community of God and the mission of God. Instead, Newbigin attempted to combine the inherent tension between the “coming” and the “going” of the congregation, by reiterating the Indian village church as his defining paradigm.
In fact, for me the emphasis upon the village paradigm communicated naval gazing not mission. I have come to suspect that this is due to an inherent weakness in the paradigm, which has to do with context. It is powerful and relevant in rural situations. However, translated to my more urban situation it perhaps has a weakness which I instinctively sensed. It may be one that is relevant to you as well as me, as you evangelise both in the village and in the city.
The weakness is that a village has a givenness as a community. Where we visited in Andhra Pradesh there were 200 living there. 100 were Christian, 100 Hindu. In that church a community exists.
In many situations of church growth there is community, or something else that binds that group together.
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However, in settled urban situations, anonymity readily undermines community, as does the heresy of the individualism. Laing notes this when he says (From Crisis to Creation, 225) ‘In the rural situation the parochial model was still tenable where the concepts of “locality” and “neighbour” retained their meaning. But in the urban setting “[l]ocality had been abolished. Neighbourhood is no longer a word that refers to a place. Man in no longer a neighbour; he is at best the point of intersection of two or three unrelated worlds.”’ But Newbigin does not seem to have spotted that his powerful paradigm misrepresents so much of modern life.
Was this due to his always holding the vision of the ideal before us? Is the village simply a vision that is a little remote for us? No, I think the issue is deeper, namely that our model of mission must be one that results in the creation of community in general, not just the conversion of an existing community. True community is part of the gift of the gospel in Christ, not just the opportunity for it.
Can we then find a more complete way ‘to combine the inherent tension between the “coming” and the “going” of the congregation’?
Newbigin is very helpful in identifying why this is so important. "The life of the Church is radically corrupted if it is separated from the missionary task” (Newbigin, Relation of Older and Younger Churches in India: Uncensored Remarks", quoted in Laing and Weston, Theology in Missionary Perspective, The Indian Church by Mark Laing. In From Crisis to Creation, 17f. This reaches back into the very nature of the church as Newbigin sees it (The Reunion of the Church): "The experience of the Indian Christian is that the Church is constituted by the act of redemption, which leads to a concern for evangelism at a deeper level than that of mere intellectual agreement." "It is a defective view of the Incarnation which began concludes that institutional continuity is of the essence of the Church." "...the Church lives, not by what it possesses, but in the dynamic relationship of penitence and faith, and of this, unity and continuity are the fruits." (A Marcus Ward, review The South India Churchman July 1948.)
Laing summarises what happens when mission is separated from the church, namely the development of a type of self-sufficient, introverted congregation, lacking all sense of the Church catholic:
A failure to develop adequate ministry;
Missionaries seeing themselves as accountable to the mission agency, not the Indian church;
Unwillingness to devolve by the overseeing body.
However, the need for mission cannot be argued from a pragmatic necessity for survival (and Newbigin does not take this approach). It has to flow from theology, the nature of the gospel, the character of God.
Can we argue this for the church not just pragmatically but also theologically? I think we can. A renewed emphasis on the eschatological (for which Newbigin calls) comes to our aid. The future of the church is as a foretaste of God’s kingdom. ‘The church faces the world… as arrabon of that salvation, as sign, first-fruit, token, witness of that salvation which God purposes for the whole.’ (Newbigin’s The Basis, Purpose and Manner of Inter-Faith Dialogue).
Perhaps a useful analogy is that of a growing child: the child is important in terms of the future but also in themselves as they are (the coming together of a congregation as a ‘body’). Thus the church is growing in numbers and maturity into what it shall be, while at the same time important as a community in whom she is at the moment.
In suggesting this, we link the the cosmic language of Ephesians and Colossians with Body of Christ imagery of Paul in Corinthians
We can thus affirm Laing when he offers us the vision of a minister who leads the congregation into the world “enabling” “sustaining” “nourishing” rather than simply teaching (From Crisis to Creation, 240) And unpacking what this means is part of Newbigin’s agenda.
How can this be expressed ‘on the ground’ in terms of the structures of the local church? If the church is being pulled by the secular forces undermining community, then there needs to be that within the church which acts as community-builder.
In traditional English parish Anglican ministry this has been the Vicar, or priest - one per parish. In Indian villages the catechist perhaps provides this ministry, amongst much else. In towns I sense that there is more of a team working with the ordained pastor. The Church of England has generally been moving towards developing ministry teams. But progress has been painfully slow. I suggest that this element of community creation needs to be key constituent of church leadership. Moving ordained ministry to a more apostolic role will fail unless there is provision dr this as well.
The ‘scandal’ of the denomination system can overflow into a top-down authority structure which disempowers the congregation and the local development of leadership. Where the local church has a healthy sense of community (such as in the Andhra Pradesh village), But where these factors are not present - and is often the case in settled suburban life - the denominational system can result in an unhealthy dependency culture.
St Paul was always careful to maintain a distance between himself and the local church community, the existing power structures can be reflected in the ministry of the vicar/ priest - often in an unconscious way. This is the same battle that Roland Allen was fighting when resisting the control of missionary societies over local churches. Henry Venn of the CMS was arguing similarly 80 years before Roland Allen.
What is needed I suggest is that the lay team ministry (eldership) of the local church is strongly affirmed, with the ordained minister taking a more episcopal role. This would achieve:
a more genuinely local church with local ministry;
a local and consistent leadership affirming the identity of the local congregation;
a church able to embody local expressions of mission more readily, and thus
a church where there is a sense of local responsibility and a resulting dependence on God not Diocese or other mission agency.
How this is developed is open for discussion (the New Testament offers a range of ministry options.) Some church take an eldership line. Other possibilities include Lay Presidency and Local Ordination. I personally favour the latter but perhaps this is again part of what needs too be decided locally.
Here is CSI you in 1947 wonderfully put aside so much denominational clutter as you forged unity. We can learn from you and from your experience. Perhaps the question is not so much 'How can forge unity with other denominations?' (which affirms the principle of denomination) but ' How can we better affirm and value the mission and ministry of our sister local churches?' so that increasingly free of denominations we may be one Church with local leadership, proclaiming Christ in our role and for our time.
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