A Renewed Church
Let me share a few thoughts on the impetus for this blog. Context is everything as those in the know affirm and in discussing the need for church renewal, several points, I think, need to be remembered.
One of my favorite Anglican writers Graham Pulkingham on this theme, realized fairly early on in his exploration of intentional church community at Post Green, that the need for renewal, is simply an emerging and ongoing pattern. He put it in this way, “The church in every age, when faithful to its calling to be God’s people, will live out the judgment of God’s word upon that age…for the church in every age must be a working model that operates in terms of that historic, concrete reference point… It is the Spirit of God who determines the shape of the church…” And most telling of all, he states “…we have lost the full force of the New testament meaning of ‘God’s people’, for as a church we no longer function as a family…Therefore, many scriptural injunctions are senseless and irrelevant to us.”
The present situation, in the view of another great Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner, is one of “transition from a church sustained by a homogeneously Christian society and almost identical with it”–to a church made up “of those who have struggled against their environment in order to reach a personally clearly and explicitly responsible decision of faith”. Christianity and the church today, and still more tomorrow, affirmed Rahner, will be living in a situation in which the general public consciousness, marked by the empirical sciences and their methods, although not really excluding faith and all reference to God, will be in a quite definite sense a-theistic. Critically dissociating themselves, in virtue of “a personal decision in every case”, from the prevalent opinions and feelings of their social environment, Christians must expect to be “a Little flock”, composed of those few who commit themselves with a living faith in Christ to the work of redeeming the world and rely solely on His grace to achieve this.
One of those statements bears a relationship to what the Christian must be today. “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or will not exist at all” says Rahner (Theol. Invent. XX, 149). By mysticism, Rahner explains, he does not mean some esoteric phenomenon but “a genuine experience of God emerging from the very heart of our existence.” He goes on to comment that the source of spiritual conviction comes not from theology but from the personal experience of God.
On this note the Evangelical Baptist writer Dr. Tony Campolo challenges the American churches to ‘wake up’ for the need of a more authentic spirituality. He states, sociologists use the term praxis to refer to the belief that people are changed by what they do. It’s not a reference to mere pure activism but to something far deeper. Praxis is the action in reflection and/or reflection in action. It is a special kind of thinking that takes place when people are actually doing things. It is one thing to read or discuss, and quite another to be involved in trying to change the world. The first kind of thinking creates opinions that can be changed. The second kind forms convictions that change those who think this way.
There is a false consciousness perpetrated by the consumer-oriented society that is being broken, and this second group starts to see the world in a new light. They are people coming alive, people with a new vision. They are people filled with new dreams. It is embryonic. It is small. It is like the mustard seed. And it is a church renewed with the poor on the margins. It is a church of justice and mercy challenging the world of affluence and emptiness today in solidarity with the two-thirds of the world today and all those broken by too much or too little.
Fr. Alvaro Barreiro speaks of basic ecclesial communities as an evangelization of the poor in Latin America, when he poses the question for so many around the world, “What became of the hope of the poor?” He writes that the central, dynamizing and constructive core of Jesus’ message is the announcement of the coming of the Kingdom where “Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the Gospel of God: ‘The time has come; the kingdom of God is upon you; repent, and believe the Gospel” (Mk 1:14-15). Jesus considered the most characteristic feature of his mission to be the proclamation and fulfillment, through words and signs, of the liberation of the poor.
So after twenty centuries, what has become of the liberation of the poverty in ourselves and those around us? This is a serious question, because it stems from what constitutes the very heart of the gospel of Jesus and what the church is called to be. If the mission of the church is to remain faithful to the mission entrusted to it, the church must preach by living the good news of liberation: as the focal point of Jesus message. This is the basis or fundamental building block of the church as community—a base community ecclesial or church.
Do we wonder whether Jesus had something like this in mind when he responded to Nicodemus’s question about what he needed to do to be saved (John 3:1-7). Jesus implied a much more fundamental and pervasive change, in suggesting ‘he must be born from above.” To church and world this translates : ‘You need to undergo a revolution of values. Who you are needs to change. On the way to doing this, it may be necessary to tear down existing structures that bar the way of justice and liberation. The hope is then in and through these church communities in the Spirit of the People of God, that steps will be taken to help ensure that out of the ashes will emerge a more humane society based on the principles of agape, love, justice, and dignity of all persons, regardless of gender, race, age, sexual orientation, ability, class, or health because we embody this in basic communities of Christ-like transformation living or seeking to live the gospel values.
In an unfinished paragraph written from prison not long before he was hanged for his involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote of the need “to see the events of history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled—in short, from the perspective of those who suffer.” It would seem to reason Jesus had such a view, for he intentionally sought to spend the majority of his time with those counted among the least.
Those of us who would be faithful followers of Jesus Christ, and who would do ministry pleasing to Him, must do the same. Those of us who do margin ministry would do well to remember the words of the great theologian Karl Barth:
For this reason, in relations and events in the life of His people, God always takes His stand unconditionally and passionately on this side and on this side alone: against the lofty and on behalf of the lowly; against those who already enjoy right and privilege and on behalf of those who are denied it and deprived of it.”
This is the origin of renewal in the church and it is truly an ongoing and difficult process.
One of my favorite Anglican writers Graham Pulkingham on this theme, realized fairly early on in his exploration of intentional church community at Post Green, that the need for renewal, is simply an emerging and ongoing pattern. He put it in this way, “The church in every age, when faithful to its calling to be God’s people, will live out the judgment of God’s word upon that age…for the church in every age must be a working model that operates in terms of that historic, concrete reference point… It is the Spirit of God who determines the shape of the church…” And most telling of all, he states “…we have lost the full force of the New testament meaning of ‘God’s people’, for as a church we no longer function as a family…Therefore, many scriptural injunctions are senseless and irrelevant to us.”
The present situation, in the view of another great Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner, is one of “transition from a church sustained by a homogeneously Christian society and almost identical with it”–to a church made up “of those who have struggled against their environment in order to reach a personally clearly and explicitly responsible decision of faith”. Christianity and the church today, and still more tomorrow, affirmed Rahner, will be living in a situation in which the general public consciousness, marked by the empirical sciences and their methods, although not really excluding faith and all reference to God, will be in a quite definite sense a-theistic. Critically dissociating themselves, in virtue of “a personal decision in every case”, from the prevalent opinions and feelings of their social environment, Christians must expect to be “a Little flock”, composed of those few who commit themselves with a living faith in Christ to the work of redeeming the world and rely solely on His grace to achieve this.
One of those statements bears a relationship to what the Christian must be today. “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or will not exist at all” says Rahner (Theol. Invent. XX, 149). By mysticism, Rahner explains, he does not mean some esoteric phenomenon but “a genuine experience of God emerging from the very heart of our existence.” He goes on to comment that the source of spiritual conviction comes not from theology but from the personal experience of God.
On this note the Evangelical Baptist writer Dr. Tony Campolo challenges the American churches to ‘wake up’ for the need of a more authentic spirituality. He states, sociologists use the term praxis to refer to the belief that people are changed by what they do. It’s not a reference to mere pure activism but to something far deeper. Praxis is the action in reflection and/or reflection in action. It is a special kind of thinking that takes place when people are actually doing things. It is one thing to read or discuss, and quite another to be involved in trying to change the world. The first kind of thinking creates opinions that can be changed. The second kind forms convictions that change those who think this way.
There is a false consciousness perpetrated by the consumer-oriented society that is being broken, and this second group starts to see the world in a new light. They are people coming alive, people with a new vision. They are people filled with new dreams. It is embryonic. It is small. It is like the mustard seed. And it is a church renewed with the poor on the margins. It is a church of justice and mercy challenging the world of affluence and emptiness today in solidarity with the two-thirds of the world today and all those broken by too much or too little.
Fr. Alvaro Barreiro speaks of basic ecclesial communities as an evangelization of the poor in Latin America, when he poses the question for so many around the world, “What became of the hope of the poor?” He writes that the central, dynamizing and constructive core of Jesus’ message is the announcement of the coming of the Kingdom where “Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the Gospel of God: ‘The time has come; the kingdom of God is upon you; repent, and believe the Gospel” (Mk 1:14-15). Jesus considered the most characteristic feature of his mission to be the proclamation and fulfillment, through words and signs, of the liberation of the poor.
So after twenty centuries, what has become of the liberation of the poverty in ourselves and those around us? This is a serious question, because it stems from what constitutes the very heart of the gospel of Jesus and what the church is called to be. If the mission of the church is to remain faithful to the mission entrusted to it, the church must preach by living the good news of liberation: as the focal point of Jesus message. This is the basis or fundamental building block of the church as community—a base community ecclesial or church.
Do we wonder whether Jesus had something like this in mind when he responded to Nicodemus’s question about what he needed to do to be saved (John 3:1-7). Jesus implied a much more fundamental and pervasive change, in suggesting ‘he must be born from above.” To church and world this translates : ‘You need to undergo a revolution of values. Who you are needs to change. On the way to doing this, it may be necessary to tear down existing structures that bar the way of justice and liberation. The hope is then in and through these church communities in the Spirit of the People of God, that steps will be taken to help ensure that out of the ashes will emerge a more humane society based on the principles of agape, love, justice, and dignity of all persons, regardless of gender, race, age, sexual orientation, ability, class, or health because we embody this in basic communities of Christ-like transformation living or seeking to live the gospel values.
In an unfinished paragraph written from prison not long before he was hanged for his involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote of the need “to see the events of history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled—in short, from the perspective of those who suffer.” It would seem to reason Jesus had such a view, for he intentionally sought to spend the majority of his time with those counted among the least.
Those of us who would be faithful followers of Jesus Christ, and who would do ministry pleasing to Him, must do the same. Those of us who do margin ministry would do well to remember the words of the great theologian Karl Barth:
For this reason, in relations and events in the life of His people, God always takes His stand unconditionally and passionately on this side and on this side alone: against the lofty and on behalf of the lowly; against those who already enjoy right and privilege and on behalf of those who are denied it and deprived of it.”
This is the origin of renewal in the church and it is truly an ongoing and difficult process.
