Generous Ecclesiology

Julie Gittoes

Description

Generous Ecclesiology seeks to present a positive theological response to the issues raised by Mission-Shaped Church and For the Parish. The former reminds us that the church is to engage in creative and imaginative ways with our missionary calling. The latter affirms the place of inherited patterns and structures which cannot simply be discarded.

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 28 juillet 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780334049944
• Langue: English

Extrait

Generous Ecclesiology
Church, World and the Kingdom of God
Edited by
Julie Gittoes, Brutus Green and James Heard






© The Editors and Contributors 2013
Published in 2013 by SCM Press
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
978-0-334-04662-2
Typeset by Regent Typesetting, London
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon



Contents
Contributors
Foreword by Jo Bailey Wells
Introduction – An Invitation to Conversation: Mission and the Church
1. Generous Episcopacy ( Stephen Conway )
2. Building Community: Anglo-Catholicism and Social Action ( Jeremy Morris )
3. Inculturation – Faithful to the Past: Open to the Future ( James Heard )
4. On Popular Culture: To its Religious Despisers ( Brutus Green )
5. Where is the Kingdom? ( Julie Gittoes )
6. A Strangely Warmed Heart in a Strange and Complex World: On Assurance and Generous Worldliness ( Tom Greggs )
7. The Church as Christ’s Holy/Sick Body: The Church as Necessary Irony ( Robert Thompson )
8. Inclusive Catholicity ( Jonathan Clark )
Afterword: The World and the Church ( Ian Mobsby )




Contributors
Jo Bailey Wells is currently Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Jonathan Clark is the Bishop of Croydon in the Diocese of Southwark.
Stephen Conway is the Bishop of Ely.
Julie Gittoes is Residentiary Canon for Education at Guildford Cathedral.
Tom Greggs is Professor of Historical and Doctrinal Theology at the University of Aberdeen and is a local preacher in the Methodist Church.
Brutus Green is Associate Vicar at St John’s, Hyde Park in the Diocese of London.
James Heard is Priest-in-Charge, United Benefice of St George Campden Hill and St John the Baptist, Holland Rd.
Ian Mobsby is Priest-in-Charge, Guild Church of St Mary Aldermary, and Missioner to the Moot Community in the Diocese of London.
Jeremy Morris is the Dean Fellow, and Director of Studies in Theology at King’s College, Cambridge.
Robert Thompson is Lead Chaplain for the Royal Brompton Hospital and Co-ordinating Healthcare Chaplain in the Diocese of London.




Foreword
JO BAILEY WELLS
God’s grace is not in short supply. Its sheer abundance sums up both the reason for this book and the need for it.
There is no doubt that Christians have always struggled to respond to God’s grace with the same levels of generosity – most especially to one another. Certainly this is very evident within the Church of England. A culture of scarcity too often predominates – of money, energy, trust or truth – whereby we consider ourselves justified in cutting corners in our vision or strategy (though we likely present it as ‘refocusing’).
Advocacy groups abound calling for the way in which the Church’s vision or strategy might be revised or refocused, often fired by a particular concern. But ‘generous ecclesiology’ is no such pressure group. Quite the opposite. If there is any sustained campaign behind these chapters it is about overriding all ‘issues’ for the sake of ensuring that mission serves the Church and the Church serves God. Put in more technical terms, it is about keeping missiology ecclesiological and ecclesiology missiological – the two do not compete or function apart – and maintaining a theological focus to both. In the end, they are only and all about God and God’s generous grace – not matters of human pragmatics. The single cause is God, and the single virtue, generosity.
The Church ever stands in need of this reminder. In my own ministry I have long been challenged by a question posed by the eighteenth-century French mystic Charles Péguy: ‘When we get to heaven, God will ask: where are all the others?’ This is the question that checks my particular passions. It reminds me that the game has little to do with my own passions and convictions. It is not about me. It is about the body – corporate functioning-together – founded on Christ.
If – as in John Milbank’s formulation – ‘Christianity is the coding of transcendental difference as peace’, then it is time to learn how to function together with our differences. Indeed, it is time to learn to enjoy difference, in anticipation of that day of peace when unity will not look like uniformity. We will not sing with the same tune or tongue: instead our voices will form a harmony.
That harmony is the gift of the gospel and the work of the gospel. Paul chooses to describe it with a political term: reconciliation. Seeking harmony or reconciliation does not mean becoming oblivious to difference, ignoring it or overcoming it as if there are no lines to be drawn. It is more like the opposite: it demands that we develop a conflict-resilience that permits us to engage difference in the face of commitment. Sometimes this involves pain; always it will demand patience, persistence and personal relinquishment. Discipleship necessarily involves denying the self, taking up the cross and following Christ.
This book is offered in the hope of shaping church leaders who are theologically focused, mission-minded, ecclesially engaged and conflict-resilient – above all, human beings who are as generous as the God who creates, redeems and calls. That sounds catholic, evangelical and liberal to me.



Introduction: An Invitation to Conversation: Mission and the Church
Over the last decade, mission has claimed the top spot on the agenda of the Anglican Church at a national and local level. In order to respond to the missionary opportunities within contemporary culture, a mixed economy of network churches emerged alongside parishes. However, while the vision for renewal was for the whole Church, not just one wing of it, a dichotomy has emerged. The upsurge in energy and enthusiasm for Fresh Expressions of church has led, in some instances, to feelings of isolation, bewilderment and even hostility for some in traditional parish contexts. It is timely, therefore, to re-engage with a deeper vision of Church and mission, rooted in worship and responsive to the world. Such a vision flows from an understanding of God’s generosity. While the mutual suspicion of different parties in the Church can lead to defensive and dismissive withdrawal, it is our belief that the differences that have emerged in relation to mission and ecclesiology demand a generous response.
Mission-Shaped Church (referred to hereafter as MSC ), published in 2004, is one of the most widely read reports produced by the Church of England. 1 It reflected upon some of the Fresh Expressions of church emerging in response to cultural changes within society and sets out methodologies and frameworks for enabling the Church to proclaim the gospel afresh in this generation. It also sought to set out a theology for a missionary Church – and has generated a plethora of ‘mission-shaped’ publications, a DVD of inspiring and challenging stories entitled Expressions: Making a Difference , and a series of ‘Share’ booklets to enable parishes to start ‘new’ churches.
The role of the parish church in Anglican mission, however, was not discussed in detail in the 2004 report. Where it is mentioned, the parish is often seen in negative terms – as being out of date and restrictive, unable to respond to a ‘network’ society. It has received limited attention in some of the work responding to the report – for example, in Mission-Shaped Parish and The Future of the Parish System . 2 Yet none of these publications was devoted to a thoroughgoing theological critique of the consequences of Fresh Expressions for our ecclesiology. The collection of essays called Praying for England , edited by Sarah Coakley and Sam Wells, affirmed the power of priestly, prayerful presence in the local parish context. 3 However, a sustained conversation is needed if we are to avoid the fragmentation of parish and new churches, and a divided understanding of what it means to be church.
For the Parish (hereafter FTP ) presented a sharply critical response to MSC , and sought to defend the parish church as a locus for mission. 4 In so doing, it acted as a rallying cry and garnered significant support among parish clergy, particularly in the catholic tradition. Its authors remind us that the inherited Church, with its traditions and practices, is not a husk to be discarded in order to retrieve the kernel of the gospel message. They also raise important questions about the relationship between the form of the Church and the faith, and the deep-rooted commitment to people and place versus the nature of networks and choice-based communities. Early on, the concept of a ‘mixed economy church’ is rejected wholesa