The Human Face of Church

Sara Savage, Eolene Boyd-Macmillan

Description

Until now, Fresh Expressions has been about starting and sustaining mission initiatives among people with little or no church contact. As these projects mature, pastoral problems easily arise - how do you integrate the old with the new? How do you get an established congregation to change it views and practices? How do you cope with conflict? What if newcomers challenge set patterns of church behaviour rather than conform with them?
The publication is structured for use for training in local churches, theological colleges and as a research tool in postgraduate study.

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 30 octobre 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781786223791
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Human Face of Church

A Social Psychology and Pastoral Theology Resource for Pioneer and Traditional Ministry

Sara Savage and Eolene Boyd-MacMillan

© Sara Savage and Eolene Boyd-MacMillan 2007 First published in 2007 by the Canterbury Press Norwich (a publishing imprint of Hymns Ancient & Modern Limited, a registered charity) 13–17 Long Lane, London EC1A 9PN www.scm-canterburypress.co.uk All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, Canterbury Press. The Authors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Authors of this Work Unless otherwise stated, all Bible references are from The Revised English Bible © Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press 1961, 1970, 1989. British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978–1–85311–812–8 Typeset by Regent Typesetting, London Printed and bound by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk

Acknowledgements About the Authors Foreword Introduction

Part 1 Group

Contents

1. The Human Side of Church: Group Processes in Congregations 2. Words, Words, Words: Religious Discourse 3. No Conflict Here – We’re All Christians! 4. Empowering Leadership and the Spirit of the Group 5. Team-work

Part 2 Relationship

6. Oh, Those Difficult People 7. Healthy Relationships – in the Church? 8. Growing Faith 9. Wholeness and Holiness

Part 3 Resources

10. Church Consultancy: Tools for Facilitating Authentic Growth

Appendices

Appendix 1 Longer Learning Exercises For Chapter 1 The Human Side of Church: Group Processes in Congregations For Chapter 2 Words, Words, Words: Religious Discourse Appendix 2 Questionnaires For Chapter 3 For Chapter 4 For Chapter 5 For Chapter 7 Bibliography Sources and Acknowledgements

For Fraser Watts, Director of the Psychology and Religion Research Group

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for wise and helpful feedback from our readers: Peter Hampson, John Loose, Mark Savage, Ron Boyd-MacMillan, Steve Croft, Duncan MacLaren, Eddie Gibbs, Eleanor Williams, and Christine Smith of SCM-Canterbury Press. We also wish to thank the Cambridge Theological Federation for creating a hospitable teaching environment over the past nine years in which to ‘hot-house’ the principles and resources discussed in this book. Thanks also to our students for their wholehearted engagement. Many of the insights in the following chapters have been refined through their thoughtful reflection and practical experiences. Similarly, thanks to colleagues and students at TCA-Singapore for test-driving the text. We are grateful to our colleagues in the Psychology and Religion Research Group who have helped in so many ways: Nick Gibson and Liz Gulliford for their help with church consultancies, Fraser Watts for making this book possible, Jose Liht, Gary Davies and other colleagues for their administrative and moral support. Not least, sincere thanks are owed to the Mulberry Trust.

About the Authors

Dr Sara SavageAssociate with the Psychology and Religion Research Group at theis Senior Research University of Cambridge, UK, and lecturer at the Cambridge Theological Federation. Sara is co-author of Psychology for Christian MinistryNye and Savage); (Watts, The Beta Course, a multimedia pastoral care course (Savage et al);Making Sense of Generation Y: The World-view of 15–25-year-olds(Savage et al). Formerly a dancer and choreographer, Sara has abundant experience in fresh expressions through the arts. Decades of active Christian ministry in many places around the world have sharpened her research interests in the social psychology of church and religious organizations. Her current work focuses on young people vulnerable to recruitment for religiously motivated violence.

Dr Eolene Boyd-MacMillanis a Research Associate with the Psychology and Religion Research Group at the University of Cambridge, UK, and lectures at the Cambridge Theological Federation. She also serves as a counsellor with the Crossreach Counselling Service, Edinburgh. Eolene is author of Transformation: James Loder, Mystical Spirituality, and James Hillmanhas contributed to the and Ignatian spirituality journal,The Way. She has taught at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Hong Kong, served as a hospital chaplain at the UCLA medical centre, and facilitated ‘alternative’ gatherings in the USA, Hong Kong and UK. Formerly, she worked in the US Government, in both the US Department of the Treasury and the White House. Her current research focuses on conflict among church leaders with different theological stances.

Foreword

BY STEVE CROFT

Christian ministry is demanding in every generation. The Scriptures and the writings of Christians down the ages bear witness to this. For both lay and ordained ministers, working in partnership with the Spirit of God to begin and sustain Christian communities is a high calling, and often a difficult one. The difficulty increases in times of rapid cultural change. We seem to be living through a time in the West when the way we have been church for many years is no longer working for – or connecting with – a growing proportion of our society. Traditional churches and their ministries remain extremely important as a means of God’s grace to those who are part of them and those who have some kind of Christian background. However, as society changes, churches are rediscovering the call to go and make disciples, and to re-imagine the church for a changing world. In turn, this is leading to a new movement of contextual mission and the forming of new Christian communities. These communities are shaped on the one hand by the gospel and the historic markers of the church; and on the other hand by their mission context and the uniqueness of the community they serve. Different terms are used to describe these new communities. In this book they are called emerging churches or fresh expressions of church (the term developed by the Church of England in the ground-breaking report,Mission Shaped Church). The challenge facing the Christian community in our changing context is increasingly seen as threefold:

1. How do we sustain existing Christian communities in worship and mission? 2. How do we begin, and grow, new Christian communities for a changing context? 3. And how do we help both parts of this new ‘mixed economy’ live and flourish together?

These questions will affect every Christian minister in the next generation, whether serving as a cathedral canon, a youth pastor, a circuit steward, a vicar of five rural parishes or an inner-city evangelist. The Human Face of Churchone of the first textbooks on Christian ministry to be written for this is mixed economy of church life. The authors draw creatively on the great well of Scripture and Christian tradition. They also draw on the many insights of the human sciences, particularly psychology. The book has been shaped, like a fresh expression of church, by a twofold dialogue – a double listening – to both scripture and the world around us. Like all good textbooks it has emerged as the fruit of many years’ experience, as the authors taught and trialled the material with ministers-in-training. I commend this important resource to you most warmly. Whether you use it as a handbook for a course on Christian ministry, or as a guide to use on your own to enrich and re-imagine your own practice, you will find this book a rich source of wisdom and insight to apply to your own situation.

The Revd Dr Steven Croft Archbishops’ Missioner and Team Leader of Fresh Expressions www.freshexpressions.org.uk

Who is this book for?

Introduction

This book is for everyone interested in the unfolding drama of the Christian church during a time of rapid change. Whether your faith community is thriving or just surviving, we hope these chapters will enable you to embrace and understand its human face. We have developed this social psychology and pastoral theology resource to support a ‘mixed economy of church’ comprising pioneer, traditional, lay and ordained ministries.

Psychology serving the church – Christ, church and culture Some readers may have qualms about applying modern psychology to Christian ministry. If so, this section of the Introduction is for you. Are we allowing contemporary culture to influence the agenda for the church? Yes, and it won’t be for the first time. In writing the fourth Gospel, John drew on the resources of his culture to communicate startling news. He used the Greek termlogosand invested it with new meaning to communicate his message about Jesus Christ. Jesus himself drew upon the familiar images of his culture: farming, party-throwing, sheep-tending, house cleaning. The gospel set the agenda, and the New Testament writers then worked out what the gospel meant in their own cultures, and which cultural resources to use to convey it. Human understanding is always embodied in the living culture of each generation. Having a culture is inevitably part of what it means to be human – and Christian. The only real choice we have concerns which cultural resources to appropriate, and how. With varying degrees of controversy, the church has always drawn upon the resources of its surrounding culture in order to communicate the gospel. We follow the lead of Jesus who entered completely into the culture of first-century Palestine in order to announce the Kingdom of God. Today, vast cultural shifts, church decline and pluralism make culture studies an essential part of good mission practice. But do we want to appropriateeverything? How do we discern what is useful in our culture, what to reject, or what to transform? H. Richard Niebuhr suggests five ways in which Christ and culture can relate. Niebuhr’s classic text,Christ and Culture, suggests a typology that continues to be used and debated today. 1 The first two types are polar opposites: Christ against culture. This type understands that loyalty to Christ, to the new order, entails rejection of the world, the old order. The way oflifecontrasts totally with the way ofdeath; and Christians must chooselife. The power and oppression of the state is viewed as incompatible with the Christian faith. Christian discipleship requires rejection of, and withdrawal from, social and cultural institutions. (Examplars of this position are Tertullian and Tolstoy.)

Christ of culture. Faith in God and Christ, and the demands of such faith, are consonant with what is best in each culture. Faith is a philosophic belief about reality and involves ethics about the improvement of life. Jesus Christ is the great enlightener who stands for a peaceful, co-operative society achieved by moral enlightenment and training. Christians can be admired for the way they embody a culture’s highest ideals. Jesus is not only the Saviour of a select band of saints, but of the whole world. (Exemplars of this position are Abelard and A. Ritschl.)

The last three types agree that human beings require a cultural context, but that this context needs to be aligned with an understanding of reality as created, redeemed and sustained by the Triune God. The following three models, in different ways, take seriously both the consonance and the gap between Christ and culture. Christ above culture. Christ is far above culture. Yet Christians must be involved in social and cultural institutions in order to shape them to reflect divine reality. Human beings need the laws of culture, but such laws should reflect the true nature of things. The institutions of church and state in the best of worlds can serve one another, yet each should retain some independence. (Exemplars of this position are Clement of Alexandra, Thomas Aquinas and Bishop Joseph Butler.) Christ and culture in paradox. This type emphasizes the extent and thoroughness of human

fallenness. 2 Culture represents human fallenness, but God sustains human beings in, and even through, culture. Moreover, God uses culture to turn people away from themselves and towards himself. (Exemplars of this position are St Paul and Martin Luther.)

Christ the transformer of culture. This type is more positive and hopeful concerning human culture than the ‘paradox’ type, yet is not quite as positive as the ‘Christ above culture’ model. Here, the problem of culture is seen in its need for conversion, not its need for replacement. The conversion of culture involves a radical rebirth, not simply guidance. The problem of culture is that it is vulnerable to perversion, in its religion, just as much as in any other expression. That vulnerability opens culture to conversion through Christ. (Exemplars of this position are Augustine, Wesley and F. D. Maurice.)

Niebuhr emphasizes that no one person or movement fits precisely within any one pure type; real life usually involves a messy mixture of attitudes towards Christ and culture. You may have found yourself resonating with aspects of some models, and not others. Living the Niebuhrian types creates distinctive Christian cultures. The church itself can become a sub-culture, such as that described by Dave Tomlinson inThe Post-Evangelical. 3 Even those who espouse ‘Christ against culture’ end up with a culture, such as the horse-drawn buggies and farming culture of the Pennsylvanian Amish. We cannot escape having an enculturated faith. InEmerging ChurchesGibbs and Bolger understand the emerging church in all its variety as inviting the whole church into cross-cultural engagement. Being cross-cultural assumes that there are aspects of the church that are counter-cultural, and that a ‘crossing’ needs to be made, back and forth, between Christ and culture. Niebuhr’s discussion of his typology helps us to think about this ‘crossing’, along with each type’s historical signposts. 4 We writeThe Human Face of Churchcrossing back and forth between Niebuhr’s types. As Christian authors, our over-riding aim is to apply psychology (in this text, empirically based social, developmental and cognitive psychologies, along with clinical, counselling and theoretically based depth psychologies) to serve the Christian faith. This implies that the Christian faith is super-ordinate in terms of our aims, analytic lens and ideals:Christ above culture. We also take a dialogic approach, zig-zagging between Christian and psychological perspectives, allowing the conversation to deepen in a transformative direction:Christ transforming culture. We find a good deal of consonance between psychology and the gospel. Many of psychology’s founding fathers (for example, Freud, Jung, Allport, Frankl, Fromm, to name a few) were raised in deeply religious environments, and wrestled with human problems at a profoundly existential level. Those who desire to see humanity made whole and transformed share common ground:Christ of culture. At times, we are critical of a superficial use of psychology in promoting a culture of consumerism and self-preoccupation:Christ against culture. When theology and psychology are brought into close dialogue, as in James Loder’s ‘logic of transformation’ (see Chapters 3 and 8), we see aparadoxicalandtransformativerelationship at work. That is how we have done it. We hope that this brief x-ray of our internal workings will equip readers to make their own judgement concerning how to apply psychology to the human dimension – the human face – of church.

How to use this book

New terms to describe new ways of being church are flying about. We use the term ‘emerging church’ to refer generically to what is called in the Anglican and Methodist denominations ‘fresh expressions’ of church. We also use ‘fresh expressions of church’ interchangeably with ‘emerging church’. This free- wheeling use of terms will remind you that nothing is yet pinned down: the church is truly emerging in new ways. In the Catholic Church, base communities represent one form of emerging church. The Church of Scotland (Presbyterian in the US) refers to these initiatives as ‘churches without walls’. ‘Nonconformist’, ‘independent’ or ‘seeker sensitive mega-’ churches may represent an earlier form of emerging church; some will continue to be in the forefront of experimenting with church forms and others may be very similar to the mainline denominational churches. Whatever your form of church, emerging or traditional or any mixture, this book is for you. The human face of church is part of every faith community, and whether you are a pioneer minister just starting out or a seasoned minister with 30 years under your belt, the topics of this text are relevant.