mDNA - What is a congregation?
Another installment of the mDNA reflection:
What is a congregation?
In the development of our multi-congregational approach, we needed to answer a number of fundamental questions. One of the first tasks was to identify how we defined a congregation. In order to become the body of Christ, as the apostle Peter challenges us to be, we need to deconstruct our church experiences and ask what the purpose of our gathering is. Gathering times of worship are not the only activity of the Church. Yet, it is too easy to identify the ecclesia as primarily a mechanism for the nurture and encouragement of the saints. Too often a high proportion of the church’s time, energy and focus goes into the worship event. As a result, like a person coming home after work we simply do not have time for missional engagement and we slump on the couch of worship. At my former church I often wondered what the impact on the community could be if we could have released the resources that larger churches devote the worship event.
At nccc we considered that the people who were developing community, deepening spirituality and demonstrating compassion were ‘being church’ and therefore are designated as congregations of the church. This has enabled us to release some of our
time and energy into missional engagement, particularly as we create congregations which do not require substantial resources to create a worship experience. Missional impulse is injected into the DNA of each congregation. It is no coincidence that the
existing Sunday morning congregation has given us the most challenge and struggle in this regard. The argument that Christology should inform missiology which in turn should inform ecclesiology is a model which has resonated a great deal with the experience of nccc. We have spent a great deal of time considering our ecclesiology with missional engagement as our focus.
In order to achieve missional engagement through congregational worship, we have moved into cafés and attempted to create proximity and engagement space for the postmodern generation X’s. We have developed a congregation that attempts to engage with those who want to worship through meditation, silence and reflection. Our approach to connecting with young people has been reconsidered. Rather than a traditional youth group we have attempted to create a youth congregation that allows young people to create experiences of church now through what would traditionally be seen as a youth group and youth small group. Instead of running a lunch time program for the underprivileged and lonely in our community, we created a congregation that is based upon sharing a meal and engaging with a speaker. Most of our congregations to this point have been sub-culture focused. Last year we started a congregation in a retirement village and this year we have started a missional team in a new housing estate that will evolve into a congregation. In all our congregational planting we have attempted to build in the missional DNA from the beginning.
In focusing the church away from attracting people to the Sunday morning event or even the building, we have experienced some challenges and frustrations. The entertainment mentality of church is deeply ingrained. The symbols of success of large Sunday
attendances, sporting groups and youth clubs needed to be challenged and this is very painful. Often the very language of post-Christendom structures is totally foreign to people who have been around church for a long time. Nothing frustrates me more in ministry than those in the church who want to see the church as a club that serves them. Yet, for many this is the paradigm they have lived in for a long time. They have experienced a model of Church that has a Sunday event as the core – all the church programs were geared towards getting them to the Sunday morning service
July 21st, 2005 at 9:26 am
Hey Phil. I spent three hours at a church meeting last night discussing some issues which could really do with some post-Christendom insight. It’s nice to be reminded that things are happening, moving and changing. Coffee sometime soon hey?
p.s. your sidebar seems to hang over your post..at least on my computer.
July 21st, 2005 at 9:27 am
pps looks like it could be this post: ..archives/2005/07/20/i-killed-a-church/#comment-44947 where lance left a long url.
July 21st, 2005 at 10:16 am
Coffee sounds good luke.
Sidebar should be fixed now, as I have edited the comment that Lance had the long URL in.
July 22nd, 2005 at 4:54 pm
“The argument that Christology should inform missiology which in turn should inform ecclesiology…” No argument that Christology should be the centre BUT I wonder whether we are better served by not creating a hierarchy from that point (Christology…missiology…ecclesiology…etc) but rather varigated colours of many hues that radiate from the centre - Christ.
July 22nd, 2005 at 5:23 pm
I think the point is that we are at a point in our history that many Christians believe (perhaps without articulation) that their ecclisiology is set in stone - biblical if you like or just that way it has always been. In my experience, many church members react to change to the eclessia structure on the basis that they “feel” that what we have now is the true biblical way. This is often expressed by “that’s not church” comments or belief that the Sun morn way of sitting pews, listening to a sermon and singing songs is the true and ultimate expresson of Church.
I think the challenge that we need to adapt our ecclisiology to our missional enviroment is one that it needed.
July 24th, 2005 at 5:26 pm
I agree that there appears to be a pervading - unarticulated - belief that ecclesiology is set in stone. I also don’t really have a problem with focusing on Christ. I guess that DANK’s position that the (Christology…missiology…ecclesiology…etc)track is arguably an unnecessarily hierarchical progression should not be ignored simply on the basis that we “have to do something” to challenge that deep-seated concept of church.
This discussion reminds me of something I read by Catholic theologian, Boff (Holy Trinity, Perfect Community, 2000):
“The monarchical conception of power has been the one that has most deeply marked the church and how it arranges the distribution of power among its members. Pre-trinitarian or non-trinitarian monotheism has weighed more heavily here than trinitarian thinking. Even today it is said that just as there is one God, just as there is one Christ, so there ought to exist on earth one sole official representative of Christ - the pope for the whole church, the bishop for the diocese, the pastor for the parish, and the coordinator for the base community. A great deal of power is thereby being concentrated in a single figure. In relating to others such persons inevitably assume a paternalistic attitude and a handout mindset…This monarchical practice is likely to give rise to authoritarianism matched by subservience. There is a shift from church-as-communion-of-believers, all equal and sharing responsibility, to a church-as-society, with unequal distribution of functions and tasks.
If, however, we take as our starting point that the Blessed Trinity is the perfect community, and that the communion of the divine Three makes them one God, then we will see another type of church emerge. It is fundamentally community…In the Trinity what unites the divine Three is the communion among them and the complete self-giving of the one Person to the others…”
I wonder whether there should be a greater emphasis on a Trinitarian framework to inform our missiology and ecclesiology?
I wonder to what extent this is also relevant in terms of Dan’s et al. musings on the “blokiness” of the emerging church??
July 25th, 2005 at 9:39 am
any where where 2 0r 3 christians are meeting is an assembly.
July 25th, 2005 at 2:55 pm
Missional DNA… Describing Foundational Missional Concepts
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