Identity, Purpose and Belonging

 In mid-2005 then Mission and Ministry Executive Director John Gilmore and I travelled to the US. Our plan was to observe how several different Christian ‘tribes’ were engaging a transition towards being mission-shaped. We met with two Presbyterian Synods and two Mennonite Conferences, as well as a number of church leaders from a Capella Churches of Christ that coalesce around Abilene Christian University. It was a formative time in the reimagination of Churches of Christ in Vic/Tas as a tribe aligned around mission. That process was ignited by a range of voices, including FORGE, the International Missional Team, and an ongoing conversation with Alan Roxburgh.

One of the key things we noticed in the US was each group’s willingness to seek clarity around identity and purpose.

In 2006 Dean Phelan as Conference President took up this conversation. He wrote often on themes of identity and purpose. In late 2006 the Conference Council, in its first year of operation, had a Dreaming Day from which emerged 4 Challenges for Churches of Christ in Vic/Tas. The 4 Challenges are: Leadership, Growth and Health, Spirituality, and Identity and Purpose. The Growth and Health Challenge included the notion of “strengthening the connectedness between Partner Departments, churches and communities”.  The Identity and Purpose Challenge included issues related to “who we are and what we’re doing here”.

These 4 Challenges have set the agenda for Council and the Departments since then, with a particular focus in this period on identity, purpose and belonging.

In October 2007 the first Vic/Tas Dreaming Day was held, facilitated by Dean. Background papers engaging the challenges were released. Churches were invited to dwell on the themes of the Challenges around biblical texts and contemporary writings. Ideas shared and questions raised were opened up for further dialogue via an ongoing blog.

At the AGMs of 2008 and 2009 four Affiliation discussion papers were released and responses sought and received. The two 2009 papers included extensive background to the notions of a covenant for affiliated churches (including a list of benefits and responsibilities) and a percentage basis for Affiliation Fees. In late 2009 Regional Conversations were held in city and country, and feedback was collected. A second Dreaming Day was held in October 2010, followed by further Regional Conversations in early 2011. All this was supported by other papers and an ongoing blog conversation.

Throughout this period there have been many conversations, formal and informal, planned and unplanned. We are committed to listening each other into free speech. Whatever some may say, you can never have enough conversations! Of course as ever, it is impossible to get everybody in the room (or on the same theme) all at once. We accept that not everybody has been present in the conversation. We have therefore always worked on the principle of “the people there are those who want to be there, those who need to be there, and we will work with whoever is there”. Every conversation, including the tense ones that looked to some people a bit like disunity, added (and still adds) something helpful and unique to the process. 

Notwithstanding all this, we understand that some churches and church leaders require more time to better (or further) consider who we are, what we’re here for, and what it means to belong to Churches of Christ in Vic/Tas. That’s why we are seeking ‘in principle’ support for the Affirmation document as the basis for an agreement at the AGM on May 14, and why we are proposing to hold a Special General Meeting on a suitable date in October to decide its final shape.

Thanks for being part of the conversation.

Paul Cameron—Executive Officer

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And have you seen the items in our last blog post?

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Affirmation

A snippet from the FAQ’s regarding the Affirmation of Affiliation:

“The recent Regional Conversations gave those who participated an opportunity to be in meaningful conversations with each other about who we are, what we’re here for, and what it means to belong to Churches of Christ in Vic/Tas. People had the space to ask questions and express opinions. We hope that all churches, whether they attended the Conversations or not, will have accepted the invitation to engage the material. Offers are open for Churches of Christ leaders to meet with church leaders and/or ministers to take the conversations further.

Dialogue about ‘belonging’ and our ‘identity and purpose’ has been underway over the past four years, at Annual General meetings, Dreaming Days (2007 and 2010), as well as a round of regional conversations in 2009.

This dialogue, as well as other conversations, formal and informal, planned and unplanned, have informed the thinking of Council and helped shape the Affirmation document that will be presented at the AGM [available below]. Many changes to wording or concepts emerged; significant changes were made and they are generally outlined in this FAQs paper; some, while important, are too minor to note here.

To give all churches an opportunity to better (or further) engage the issues raised in the Affirmation document, Council is proposing ‘in principle’ support of it as the basis for an agreement at the AGM in May, and that a Special General Meeting be called for a suitable date in October to decide its final shape. Suggestions for initiating local conversations about the Affirmation will also be available.”

See the Affirmation here.

See the FAQ’s regarding the Affirmation here.

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Unity and Diversity: Debate is not Disunity

From Paul Cameron, EO:

I was strangely attracted by a recent article in The Weekend Australian by Labor Party elder and luminary, John Faulkner. Putting politics aside (and I hope all readers have the capacity to do so, and to engage the principles espoused that resonate with us), the article contained reflections that connect with our deeper story as a renewal movement and could therefore be read this way:
“in a healthy political party (or church or network of churches), all voices are heard”. Churches of Christ “has long known that unity is strength. But debate is not disunity. Debate is diversity. And if unity is a (Churches of Christ) strength, diversity is (our) wealth”…

Or, to put it another way, and to quote from Jürgen Moltman, “the church is on the move in free solidarity and critical fellowship”, (The Church and the Power of the Spirit, 2^nd. Ed., SCM, 1992).

What I wrote last year in the Annual Report, as background to the 2010 visual theme, also deserves another run:

‘Unity in diversity’ is one of the old slogans of our movement. There’s no doubt we have the diversity. Most Sundays I find myself in a different church affiliated with Churches of Christ in Vic/Tas. And every one is different! That’s all part of the richness of the Churches of Christ story. It’s like a phrase I read this year in a book by John Franke, ‘interdependent particularity’. To me that well describes our family of churches. Autonomous and individual, but not isolated and independent; a better word is interdependent. Individual and particular, because each church is located in its own particular context, with its own history, and its own opportunities, aspirations and challenges; but at the same time connected to the other, giving strength to each other and receiving strength from each other as we carry out God’s mission together.

Hence this year’s visual theme of a strong rope. It contains many strands. Each is unique, and each is valuable in their own way, but particularly in what they are together. Without one strand, or if one strand is stressed in some way or the other, the rope is not able to fulfil the purpose for which it was designed. Over time, as other strands are woven into the rope, it is further strengthened and further enriched.

For biblical reflections on these themes, see 1 Corinthians 12:12-26 and Ecclesiastes 4:9-12.

At times I wonder if rather than living out the Way of Jesus with a healthy and rigorous “interdependent particularity”, we instead fall for the spirit of this consumerist, militaristic, self-focussed age, and seek to live with an “independent pecularity”.

The latter may be a sin we need to repent of, on our way towards fulfilling our Common Mission: To be a movement of the people of God gathering around the central figure of Jesus Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit, living out his Way in our local contexts and inviting others to do the same.

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How does debate feel to you in your church?  Like diversity?  Or like disunity?

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The wheel turns…

From Martin Boutros, Mission & Ministry Executive Director:

Many years ago, a small group of believers challenged the reactionary autocracy that the mainline Church had become. The church had imposed a creedal legalism on the people that effectively separated the ordinary man and woman from the simple but life-changing message of New Testament faith in Christ.

This new radical movement wanted to by-pass the religious and clerical constructs of the day and call believers to a simple Spirit-directed, bible based faith. They studied the Scriptures together; they relished their common unity around the bread and the wine, and they proclaimed Christ – not the rituals and intrigues of established religion. The ‘brothers’, as they were known, coined the phrase: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things love.”

The fearless preaching of their leader disturbed the Church and the religious culture of his day so much that he was put to death by the religious establishment of his day. I speak, of course, of Jan Hus and the Moravian movement of the 1400s. Though their legacy was to pave the way for the first large-scale protestant mission movement and for the Reformation a century later, the entrenched church culture of the day pushed their little movement to the very margins.

The Scripture narrative by which we live is about the conflict between two Kingdoms and their respective cultures – The Kingdom of this world with its powers and principalities versus the Kingdom of God, so radically proclaimed by Jesus.

The story of redemption is about ‘culture change’ – it’s being birthed into God’s kingdom, a new heart and a new mind leading to new attitudes and new behaviours. Discipleship is about the lifelong, intentional reflecting on one’s attitudes and behaviours in the light of God’s calling. “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

The people of God are to be this peculiar ‘halfway’ people – journeying from Egypt to the Promised Land with God. Learning to put off the mental bondage of captivity and becoming the free covenant people of God – a Light to the nations. And yet the Bible is marked by struggle, failure, grace and redemption. The people of God are always struggling to leave behind the gods of Egypt and Canaan. Every Judge and every King of Israel struggles with entrenched culture. Which god are we serving? Which belief system? The tribes and clans of Canaan are married into and slowly their culture becomes endemic and Yahweh is marginalised. All through the stories of the Judges and Kings there is a downward spiral ending in exile to Babylon – and then grace, and God grows a new shoot from the dead stump.

In the New Testament most of the letters are written to deal with cultural issues – almost none of the Pauline epistles are about ‘vision’ or ‘governance’ or ‘programmes’ – it’s all about Jewish legalistic culture or Gentile permissiveness or Gnostic super spirituality or the spirit of Rome – humanity’s greatest attempt at heaven on earth contrasted to the Kingdom of God’s culture – and it’s very painful for Paul and the other leaders. Two steps forward, one step back!

The history of God’s church is the same – the slide into Christendom with Constantine through the valiant resistance of martyrs like Jan Hus, culminated in Martin Luther’s nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenberg cathedral door and unleashing a chaotic, powerful reaction to the decadent culture of the medieval church.

The evangelical movements or ‘Awakenings’ of the 18th and 19th century revolted against the immovably, traditional, nationalistic state churches of the era. You see it in the evolution of the various movements such as the Wesleyans, the Salvationists, the various Disciples, Adventists, Brethren, and Baptists. These various ‘waves’ – overseas missions, Pentecostalism, the para-church movements, church growth, and the emerging church all emerged in response to decadent and inflexible church culture and each birthed fresh, fluid expressions of faith.

Our own tribe tumbled out of such turbulence. How wonderful that the radical Moravian slogan of four hundred years before should also mark our movement of two hundred years hence! “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things love.” The rich chaos of the Spirit of that time spawned many related but divergent movements. Movements always diverge and differentiate into more sharply defined entities. Out of the happy chaos of the book of Judges, comes the sombre orderliness of Kings! Movements have always become ministries and then machines and then slowly un-noticed by their now conservative guardians, they freeze into stone monuments … But God in his grace sows seeds into the cracks of the weathering stone and new green shoots emerge.

And now the wheel has turned again and in the 2000’s the fresh new movements of 200 years ago are almost monuments themselves. Movements tend to be chaotic! Their members ‘live a conviction’ rather than ‘go to work’. They are highly relational, green-zone, fluid, self-managing, team focussed. The leaders proclaim the story rather than the policy. They are prophetic. They are imaginative culture-shapers – and their people interpret and build the new forms, experimentally, under-the-surface, in poverty, by faith, with passion. They expect resistance and difficulty, and learn to negotiate the possible. Sometimes they die prematurely. Often it’s the dominant system and culture that asphyxiate them.

We in Mission and Ministry are leaders in a small and relatively healthy network of churches, and we see that many inherited paradigms are failing. Australia is not a Christian nation. Australian church numbers are declining and aging, and, for most of the younger people in our society, churches are way out of touch. This is no longer about us helping service our ‘going concerns’ but with urgency praying for renewal and creatively going out on a limb. This is risky, but that’s the life of faith.

We don’t wish to imitate the good proprietors of Cobb and Co anxiously peering out at the noisy T-model Fords puttering along asphalt roads and then turning to design a better horse. Cobb and Co exists no more. In a few years Ford with its carbon unfriendly metal beasts will either be in terminal decline or will have re-invented itself for a new age. We pray for a cultural shift. Our churches are often either immersed in consumer modernity or fortressed off from the world in a 1950s bubble.

What we aspire for our churches is cultural shift: a missionary paradigm; a bible-narrative from which to live; a contextual mission mindset; a centripetal culture; a discipleship culture; an incarnational mindset; an empowering leadership; a ‘sent’ membership and so on. This is not about change of programs but change of paradigm.

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How is your church’s paradigm responding to the changing world around us?

The important next step…

We truly appreciate the response of so many churches and the opportunity for dialogue we have had in the months since last year’s Dreaming Day:2. We have received a lot of feedback via the Regional Conversations, on this Blog and many other formal and informal gatherings.

Thanks to all of this input we have been able to do some significant reshaping of the Motions and the consequential “Relationship Agreement” that will be released following the April 13 Council meeting. The draft Motions and the discussion paper were simply that, drafts and for discussion. The purpose of the Regional Conversations and others was to arrive at something that was closer to something we could more formally share.

It is very important to ensure that your church considers the final versions of these items and not the draft/discussion versions in your deliberations in the lead-up to the 2011 All Churches Summit on May 15.

Paul Cameron–Executive Officer, Robyn Millership–Conference President, Greg Warmbrunn–Council Chair, and other members of Council are happy to meet with your church’s leadership team, board or elders to discuss these things in coming weeks. If you would like to do this however, please keep in mind that there are only 6 weeks until the Summits and many things to be done between now and then so please request a meeting as soon as possible in order to assist with our forward planning.

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