Anglican Church Engagement
This essay is a response to the following question:
“In the light of the apparent disconnection between the UK Anglican church and contemporary culture, reflected in decreasing attendance, in what ways might the church seek to restore this connection? What practical and theological shifts might be necessary to facilitate postmodern society’s engagement with the Christian gospel?”
Potential Theological Shifts for Postmodern Engagement with the Christian Gospel
1 Introduction
Bosch says of the Victorian church: ‘evangelicals became a respected power in the state, and missionaries...promoters of western expansion’ (Bosch 1991:282) and ‘the new missionary force...imbued with the desire to save the world, as a matter of course took charge …show more content…
wherever it went’ (Bosch 1991:307). A different but equally focused and confident situation existed in the Apostolic age. Whether due to uncertainty, timidity or humility, the 21st century Anglican Church is quite different from either the Victorian or Apostolic church.
I will examine declining Anglican Church attendance, more complex than the question assumes. I will then consider Anglicanism’s place in and response to a postmodern UK. I will attempt to show that postmodernism has precipitated a crisis within church leadership, and propose a positive way forward for the church to re-engage with society as I reflect on the purpose and definition of the Gospel.
2 UK Anglican Church attendance
The 2010 Church of England statistics suggest a million churchgoers each Sunday (under 2% of the population), yet ‘[m]ore than 4 in 10 in England regard themselves as belonging to the Church of England’ (Church of England 2011). Neither is decline simple and linear. Statistician Peter Brierley says ‘more churches generally were growing in 2005 than in 1998, 34% to 21%’ attributing this to denominations asking their leaders to focus on mission and church growth, adding:
In 2005 the 160 or so largest Anglican churches (about 1% of the total) were responsible for 10% of total Anglican attendance; that could have doubled to 19% for the same 1% of churches in 2020 if present trends continue (Brierley 2010:15).
These figures suggest little practical response, especially if the conclusion is that the key to growth is to be large. This does not help the smaller 99%. Nonetheless, Brierley reveals some potentially more helpful statistics, affirming that the only other religious group, aside from Islam, showing worldwide growth are evangelical Christians (Brierley 2010:2). However, the overall picture is of decline (Brierley 2010).
No one can claim decline to be “success”, but many success indicators could be used: numbers; good deeds; the postmodern measure of whether the prevailing culture approves of the church; fidelity to Biblical revelation; or tithing levels. What if these provide contrary indicators of “success” –a church where the biblical Gospel is taught and the members show love for one another, yet numerically a church in decline? Or a church growing and tithing, but providing false teaching?
There seems little biblical imperative to measure the church statistically. The authors of the New Testament have much to say to the churches, but not about numerical growth or decline per se. We must consider whether falling Sunday attendance is the problem, or a symptom of an underlying sickness, which if cured will reverse decline.
3 Three issues affecting the Anglican Church in a postmodern context
I will now examine three issues which suggest mere numbers may not be the key factor: the marginalising of the church by postmodernity; confusion among church leaders about their role and priorities; and a postmodern phenomenon I term ‘disconnectedness '. I will then argue for a return to a clear, unanimous proclamation of the biblical Gospel as the theological and practical means to facilitate postmodern society’s engagement with the Christian gospel.
3.1 A marginalised Anglican church
Any institution, church included, seeking the central ground in thought and membership numbers in a postmodern culture is probably attempting the impossible. Examining folk culture liminality (the position on the margins of a community where an individual is placed before being reintroduced to the centre: e.g. child to warrior), Roxburgh employs the term ‘liminoid’, a place of exclusion with no obvious path to reintroduction (‘reaggregation’), to describe well the position of the church in postmodernity:
In the liminoid there is no returning to where the world was before, only movement into a future that continually undermines both the prevailing order and the nature of the sacred within the society. This double tension shapes the churches. On the one side remains the pull to return and overcome the loss of place; on the other, a culture where the center-periphery modalities are continually undermined by a constant flux of competing choices that configure and reconfigure in ever-differing forms (Roxburgh 1997:48)
There is no reason to see this liminoid position as a crisis in itself, unless the Anglican Church sees Christendom as the goal, and few Anglicans would. The church may actually be helped by its marginal position to define afresh its goals and leadership modalities. Roxburgh again:
If the current liminal experience of the church is properly understood, it will be seen as an opportunity ...that offers the potential for a fresh missionary engagement in a radically changing social context (Roxburgh 1997:27).
How should a church on the margins respond? Donovan, working with that least postmodern of societies, the Kenyan Maasai in the 1970s, provides some surprisingly helpful insights. So much of that Maasai culture was different from today’s UK: monocultural, taboos intact, gender specific roles, illiteracy (Donovan 1978:75). As Donovan brought the Gospel to the Maasai, his marginal position was obvious. He could not, as we might be tempted to, imagine himself having a historical claim to the community’s centre. He had to forget old assumptions, and begin afresh. He realised the necessity of stripping the story of Jesus down to its essentials, of finding certain tangential points of contact between the Jesus of the Gospels and Maasai culture (such as tribal lineage), but also tolerating their laughter and disbelief at the notion of a crucified God. He writes:
After having explained God and Jesus Christ to the people, I had come to the end of the good news ...the missionary’s job is complete. What else is there? The church? Church-planting and church-establishing have often been used as descriptions of a missionary’s task. But such descriptions can be misleading since they necessarily imply a kind of fixed and predetermined outcome to the preaching of the Gospel (Donovan 1978:81).
This is helpful because it reveals that UK Anglicanism’s problem may not be so much to do with meeting postmodernity head on, but simply knowing what to do when it finds itself in that liminoid margin.
Donovan’s work with the Maasai shows church is not something developed by scheme or course, by event or management technique: a church, as the Apostles realised long ago, is simply something you end up with when you speak about the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
Rediscovering the certain confidence that God Himself will build the church by the preaching of the authentic Gospel will revitalise and grow the church in the 21st century UK. I will return to “the Gospel” later, but here I simply wanted to demonstrate that it may not simply be the fact of postmodernity that is the problem, rather how the church responds to its liminoid position.
3.2 Confusion among church leadership
Brierley (2010) identifies something of the crisis in leadership confidence which I will now address. He shows that whilst almost all of the UK’s 11 main professions have seen significant growth since the 1990s (e.g. 256% for pharmacists, 38% for doctors), the number of professional church ministers has fallen by 3%, and he expects the Anglican figure to continue to dip by 2020 to around 70% of its current level (Brierley 2010:55-56). He adds, ‘there is also the problem of resignations, retirements and people leaving the ministry which exceeds the number entering’ (Brierley 2010:58).
Together, these statistics portray a church where the calling to leadership is in a serious predicament. Ordained ministry is a leadership role, yet failing to attract in sufficient numbers those to undertake it. Interestingly, and contrary to my own personal experience in discussions with Anglican clergy over the last decade, many surveys show clergy have high job satisfaction relative to other professions. Francis et al had reported (2004) that ‘self-reported work satisfaction is high’ (Francis et al 2008). However, their deeper analysis (2008) looking at satisfaction in specific aspects of ministry revealed a more complex picture: for example, ‘clergy with an evangelical disposition gain positive satisfaction from religious instruction but that their satisfactions with the remaining roles are negative’ (Francis et al 2008). This matches my observations and conversations with clergy colleagues in a number of Anglican dioceses, especially in smaller churches. I will suggest below that this is due to the clergy leadership role becoming confused in its encounter with Western postmodernity.
Roxburgh adds helpfully to a description of the state of missiological confusion in a highly institutionalised and structured church (such as the Anglican Church), in that he also cites the postmodern phenomenon of ordained leaders operating in roles which do not necessarily match their calling or gifts. He identifies a number of these roles: pedagogue, professional, therapist and counsellor (Roxburgh 1997:16). Interestingly he says that these roles are often adopted by church leadership themselves, as well as being thrust upon them, in an attempt to fit in with whatever, in the moment, postmodern society might expect them to be: ‘The underlying belief is that the once-held cultural center can be regained by adopting its modalities’ (Roxburgh 1997:19). This useful insight reveals the key weakness of the Anglican Church: the confused ordained leader, in heart rejecting yet in reality becoming, the very embodiment of postmodernism.
Throughout a working week the ordained minister may adopt a vast range of modes: musician, counsellor, school governor, Bible teacher, comfort-giver, puppeteer, visionary, oracle, technician, event planner, line manager, village elder, planter, evangelist, worship leader, minister to the sick and elderly, discipler, or social entrepreneur. This leads to an uncertainty of position and purpose for the church leader, far removed from the simple standard for the Anglican priest given by Michael Ramsey first in 1972, to be a ‘man of theology...minister of reconciliation...man of prayer...of the eucharist’ (Ramsey 1985:7-9). Yet by 1985, the now former Archbishop, writing his epistle to ordinands, pinpointed the crisis of confusion that postmodernism was ushering in:
You are facing a malaise of doubt and questioning about priesthood within the Christian community itself ...There are Christians who crave for a Christianity without institutional forms; but more significantly in this connection, there are also Christians who want the church to be a more lively society, with far more spontaneous initiatives in leadership and service, and they see the existence of a professional ministry as a hindrance to the mature self-realisation of the Church’s members in creative responsibility (Ramsey 1985:6).
Ramsey was right. The 21st century Anglican Church has leaders with roles poorly defined, difficult to dovetail into the ministries of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher (Ephesians 4:11).
Then there is the gap between the institution and the mission context: the Anglican Church (surprisingly for detractors) in its ecclesiology, canon law and governance, parallels much of modernity. It bears modernity’s hallmarks, identified by Summers as he contrasts modernity with postmodernity, of being ‘fundamentally concerned with order: advocating rationality and rationalization, creating structure and eliminating chaos’ (Summers 2009:39). As Summers continues, ‘The alternatives offered by postmodernity are challenging in an altogether different manner’ (Summers 2009:40), with its suspicion of the old metanarratives. The place the Anglican Church finds itself in postmodernity is very different from the place in modernity where it was forged.
The vows and affirmations made in the highly ritualised services of ordination and institution within Anglicanism may not reflect life as a church leader in a postmodern context. This leads to church leaders coming under stress, where there is often a mismatch between aspiration, expectation, context and results: numerical growth is celebrated, but the harsh reality is that caring for the dying may not be commensurate with growth. The Church of England is starting to address this by introducing, as of 2011, formal “Role Descriptions” for clergy, but we must wait, possibly some years to see the extent to which this addresses the issue, or simply adds another layer of potential contrast between expectation and reality. It at least illustrates the prevailing tension between what a priest is and what a priest does.
Further, church leaders are offered innumerable means of church growth: Cluster church (Hopkins and Breen 2007); Alpha courses; Incarnational ecclesiology (Frost and Hirsch 2003); Fresh expressions like Messy Church, or even the ‘50 ways to help grow your church’ suggested by David Beer (2000). So many strategies and methods are as likely to add to a leader’s confused sense of purpose as grow the church. What if one method fails to do what the book claimed? Does the leader limp disheartened to the next ‘how to...’ volume on the shelf of the local Christian bookshop? And what about the pastoral issues to be cleared up by the last approach to growth? I will return to David Beer’s work shortly in a positive assessment.
The Anglican minister faces the challenges of confused purpose and lack of confidence, and working for a modern institution ministering to a postmodern world.
The challenges which postmodernity has brought to the Anglican Church are so great that it will take a major shift by the leadership, local and national, to address them and re-engage with society. Until the Anglican Church becomes open about and addresses the major challenges brought upon its leadership by postmodernity, and in no small measure created by itself though its fragmented responses to postmodernity, it will not be equipped for 21st century growth.
3.2.1 The Moon Landings as a Contrasting Case Study
The Moon landings were technologically incredible, yet, at the visionary level simple because the goal was easy to express: to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth. Nobody in or outside of the Apollo programme in the 1960s could fail to know what they were there to make happen. The simplicity of the goal inevitably attracted committed, gifted, focussed leaders. As Levine (1982) concludes, ‘NASA’s remarkable success in managing its programs depended on the ability of the agency 's top officials to enunciate goals’, and he emphasises the importance of its leaders being confident to express their goals in a metanarrative: ‘NASA managers saw their responsibilities in political terms and took it upon themselves to justify NASA where it mattered most: to the President ...and to Congress, which had the power to modify that request’. In contrast today, the Anglican Church leadership find themselves with a bewildering array of roles, goals and priorities, and less confident to express their role within the metanarrative of the meaning of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
3.3 Postmodern ‘disconnectedness’
Another factor adding to the tension of church leadership and the notion of statistical success is what I term disconnectedness. I propose this as a key postmodern phenomenon which if not recognised, leads to confusion and disillusionment. Disconnectedness is a worldview in which life is seen as a succession of discreet, disconnected experiences, which have no obvious connection one to the other. Disconnectedness is a form of consumption, in which the moral value of a thing is not seen in the thing itself but in having consumed the thing. In some ways it parallels Baudrillard’s contention that ‘we find ourselves in an era ...with a hedonistic morality of pure satisfaction’ (Baudrillard 2001:16). Disconnectedness is evidenced by the experience of the Anglican Church in its occasional offices of baptisms, weddings and funerals, as well as many other major church events and festivals. There is an expectation among Anglican clergy that putting on a large event (a church musical, a well-attended baptism, a carol service, etc) will in itself result in increased Sunday by Sunday attendance. Many leave these services and events, encouraging clergy and organisers by saying what a wonderful time they have had, how much they valued the talk, the effort put in and warm welcome they received. Yet the following week and onwards, none are to be seen again. Excited by the success of the big event, with high expectations, the church leadership is brought down to earth on Sunday with the lack of fruit. This scenario is enacted all over the churches week by week. But what is going on? Disconnectedness: it was never the visitors’ expectation that what happened at the carol service would connect to anything else, any more than their equally exciting trip to Legoland Windsor would result in a return visit the following week, never mind joining the Lego company staff or subscribing to Lego Weekly. Good experiences are seen as valuable, but it is not assumed they will connect one to the other, merely be consumed. In postmodernity the passing and temporary, the disconnected, is the norm, especially when it comes to experiences. The disconnected ‘big event’ experience also has similarities to Summers’ description of postmodern art ‘that does not necessarily have meaning, that which does not necessarily point to or signify something else, but that has value in its own existence’ (2009:41). McGrath reminds us, ‘postmodernism represents a situation in which the signifier has replaced the signified as the focus of orientation and value’ (1992:223). It may be that in postmodern Britain, the big event (the ‘mission rally’) is not the best forum for gospel proclamation, as those attending are expecting to merely consume the experience and so their ears are deaf even to the gospel in that context: the message is drowned, not enhanced by, the cacophony of consumed experience.
A practical shift to facilitate postmodern society’s engagement with the Christian gospel may be for church leaders to recognise the phenomenon of disconnectedness and ask whether the considerable efforts put in to these large events produce the growth desired, and for leadership teams to take some time out to see if energies might be put into developing other means of deepening connections with the local community and visitors. A benefit of this may be reducing the guilt and disillusionment which often follow the big church event.
4 Summary
Four issues have been addressed: the mixed picture of church decline and growth; the liminoid place of the church in the postmodern UK; role and identity confusion among Anglican leadership, and disconnectedness. I now wish to look at the last, but most significant area, the Gospel itself, and propose simple, faithful retelling of the Good News about Jesus as the practical and theological starting point for Anglican Church’s engagement with postmodern Britain.
5 Why Mission? Which Gospel?
Before we can speak of “restoring connections” and “postmodern society’s engagement with the Christian gospel”, we need –especially in a postmodern context, where meanings are less easy to assume and often individually defined– to ask “why do mission at all?” and “what is The Gospel?”. These questions are made more significant because of the leadership crisis identified above.
5.1 Why Mission?
Many reasons may be given for engaging in 'mission ': sustaining church income, buildings, hierarchy and influence; helping the poor; offering spiritual fulfilment to a secular nation; or providing the Good News that Jesus provides the unique means of salvation from judgement to eternal life together with innumerable other benefits of divine grace to the believer. Only if we know which “gospel” we are proclaiming can the church answer the question, “why do mission?”.
5.2 Which Gospel?
In postmodernism, where signifier and signified may be indistinct, distinguishing the “gospel” from the mission act is challenging: e.g., the gospel may be seen to be helping the poor.
In the Anglican Church, characterized by and positively valuing theological diversity, “the Christian gospel” cannot be assumed. Does the gospel the Anglican Church proclaims deserve its definite article? With which “gospel” is it expecting postmodern society to engage? Can the Gospel be redefined and reshaped endlessly to please every view in a postmodern era? The New Testament authors faced similar issues: ‘the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires’ (2 Timothy 4:3). They were confident of a clear distinction between “the” Gospel and other false gospels. Whether the 21st century Anglican Church has many Gospels or not and despite its orthodox creeds and formularies, it is definitely less eager in practice, it seems, to emphasise the particularity of Christ and singular authentic gospel than were the Apostles. Examining the work of Stephen Sykes (1978), Bryant in his essay, ‘Multiform Christianity and the Theological Vocation Today’ says of modern Anglicanism that it, ‘has responded to the advent of theological liberalism ...with a view of comprehensiveness that has allowed an unbounded theological variety to emerge within the Anglican communion’ (Bryant 1984:151). Simply …show more content…
imitating postmodernity is not the answer: it only leads to confused leaders.
Likewise, a 50 step plan is too unwieldy a means to church growth, especially for the smaller churches, yet David Beer’s work is helpful in getting to the root of this issue. He recognises the sine qua non: properly equipped leaders –equipped to preach the Gospel:
Preach a positive message...Prepare people for effective ministry ...After 30 years in ministry, I have discovered that what makes the difference between a growing church and a non-growing church is whether or not ...these principles are incorporated into its life (Beer 2000:38-39).
The church has survived through worse than postmodernism and seen growth –even under persecution. What then if postmodernism outside the church is not the problem at all? What if the church has in its possession something which cuts through the veneer of any culture? This was the leadership confidence of the writers of the New Testament: they believed that in the telling of the account and meaning of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, they had nothing less than the power of God at work in those whom they were addressing, not insensitive to, but irrespective of the culture in which they proclaimed it. In Romans, Paul writes: ‘I am not ashamed of the Gospel; it is the power of God to everyone who has faith’ (Romans 1:16). The author of the letter to the Hebrews says, ‘the word of God is ...sharper than any two-edged sword’ (Hebrews 4:12). And Peter affirms, ‘You have been born anew ...through the living and enduring word of God ...That word is the good news that was announced to you.” (1 Peter 1:23-25). The New Testament testifies to an extraordinary confidence among these early church leaders that in the proclamation of the Gospel, divine power was at work. As George W. Forell in his study on Christianity and pluralism observes of the early church,
it was Christian particularity, the claims made for the person and work of Christ even in the simplest liturgical service, which implicitly denied and subverted the many gods worshipped in the empire. Rejecting their social and political importance the Christians offended and threatened practically everybody (Forell 1973:132).
The necessary theological shift is for the Anglican Church to rediscover its purpose: the telling of the Gospel which gave birth to the church, and has done so repeatedly throughout the ages –in whatever culture, Ancient Roman, modern, postmodern or Maasai.
This will cause offence both within and without Anglicanism –but as we have seen, this is nothing new. The aim of Christian ‘gentleness and reverence’ (1 Peter 3:15) is to have the Gospel heard, not merely for the Christian to be liked. If the Gospel is particular, it cannot in a postmodern culture be popular. As early as 1973, Forell says of pluralism in postmodernity that it
is the ideologically most threatening aspect of the modern world ...because it undermines the notion of “one truth” and thus jeopardises the claims of atheists and theists, nationalists and internationalists, totalitarians and democrats (Forell 1973:2).
It may be that the rise of militant humanism in modern Britain probably has as much to do with atheist rationalist frustration at the necessary corollary of credibility afforded Christianity by pluralism, as it does the zeal of evangelical
Christians.
6 Conclusion
This essay has examined the numerical decline of the Anglican Church in its postmodern situation, where old certainties of government, morals and taboos no longer hold sway, and where disconnectedness militates against old mission methodologies. In this context, an uncertain institution with a mixed message is doomed –if indeed there was ever a time when such a body could flourish. In postmodern culture, organisations and ways of living with simple messages, clear structures and well understood taboos may prove attractive, as with Islam, sports, or right-wing political organisations. The simplicity of materialistic consumption, in which fulfilment is seen to be but one more shopping trip away, may also draw adherents. I have therefore stressed the need for the church to regain its clarity and conviction, by a return to a clear Gospel, being a biblical telling of the meaning of the life of Christ as the apostles expressed it. This represents a tectonic theological shift, since postmodernism with the Anglican Church currently tolerates many gospels or forms of the gospel.
I have attempted to demonstrate that in the liminoid margin, the Anglican Church must have the courage to hold firmly to biblical truth and preach the Gospel the apostles knew, without indulging itself in the luxury of endless accommodation with postmodernity. This is not just a theological necessity, but a practical need. Unless it addressed, the Anglican Church will become increasingly less relevant, its leaders’ passion sapped and society’s engagement with the church will continue its decline as the Anglican Church is perceived as a diverse thinktank rather than possessing a clear goal and message.
To counter declining numbers The Anglican Church must equip and encourage its leaders to bring proclamation of the Gospel to the fore, with that certain confidence which comes not from belief in a historical claim to the cultural centre, but from the same missionary zeal which fired the apostles on the margins of the first century world.
Rev Steve Stewart
September 2011 southwood@parishofcove.org.uk Bibliography:
Baudrillard, J. (2001) Selected Writings, Stanford University: Stanford University Press
Beer, D. (2000) 50 Ways to Help Your Church Grow, England: Kingsway Publications.
Bosch, D. J. (1991) Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (American Society of Missiology Series), New York: Orbis Books.
Brierley, P. (2010) Major UK Religious Trends 2010 to 2020, Tonbridge: Brierley Consultancy
Bryant, D., Ed. (1984) Future of Anglican Theology (Toronto Studies in Theology), New York; Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press.
Church of England, (2011) Facts and Stats, retrieved on 30 August 2011 from http://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/facts-stats.aspx
Donovan, V. J. (1978) Christianity Rediscovered (An Epistle from the Maasai), New York: Orbis Books.
Forell, G. W. (1973) The Proclamation of the Gospel in a Pluralistic World (Essays on Christianity and Culture), Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
Francis, L. J., Hills, P. R. and Rutledge, C. J. F (2008). Clergy work-related satisfactions in parochial ministry: The influence of personality and churchmanship, Mental Health, Religion and Culture, vol. 11, pp. 327-339 at http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/2865/ accessed 2 September 2011
Frost, M. and Hirsch, A. (2003) The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.
Hopkins, B. and Breen M. (2008) Clusters: Creative Mid-sized Missional Communities, UK: 3DM/ACPI.
Levine, A. S. (1982) Managing NASA in the Apollo Era (Chapter 10, Summary Conclusions), Washington, D.C.: Scientific and Technical Information Branch, National Aeronautics And Space Administration, retrieved on 6 September 2011 from http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4102/ch10.htm
McGrath, A. (1992) Bridge Building (Communicating Christianity Effectively), England: Inter-Varsity Press.
Ramsey, M. (1985) The Christian Priest Today (2nd Edition), London: SPCK.
Roxburgh, A. J. (1997) Missionary Congregation, Leadership, and Liminality (Christian Mission and Modern Culture), Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International.
Schaffer, F. A., (1990) Trilogy (The 3 Essential Books in One Volume), Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press
Summers, S. (2009) Friendship: Exploring its Implications for the Church in Postmodernity, London: T&T Clark
Sykes, S. (1995) Unashamed Anglicanism, London: Darton, Longman and Todd.
All Scripture quotes are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA and are used by permission. All rights reserved.
“In the light of the apparent disconnection between the UK Anglican church and contemporary culture, reflected in decreasing attendance, in what ways might the church seek to restore this connection? What practical and theological shifts might be necessary to facilitate postmodern society’s engagement with the Christian gospel?”
Potential Theological Shifts for Postmodern Engagement with the Christian Gospel
1 Introduction
Bosch says of the Victorian church: ‘evangelicals became a respected power in the state, and missionaries...promoters of western expansion’ (Bosch 1991:282) and ‘the new missionary force...imbued with the desire to save the world, as a matter of course took charge …show more content…
wherever it went’ (Bosch 1991:307). A different but equally focused and confident situation existed in the Apostolic age. Whether due to uncertainty, timidity or humility, the 21st century Anglican Church is quite different from either the Victorian or Apostolic church.
I will examine declining Anglican Church attendance, more complex than the question assumes. I will then consider Anglicanism’s place in and response to a postmodern UK. I will attempt to show that postmodernism has precipitated a crisis within church leadership, and propose a positive way forward for the church to re-engage with society as I reflect on the purpose and definition of the Gospel.
2 UK Anglican Church attendance
The 2010 Church of England statistics suggest a million churchgoers each Sunday (under 2% of the population), yet ‘[m]ore than 4 in 10 in England regard themselves as belonging to the Church of England’ (Church of England 2011). Neither is decline simple and linear. Statistician Peter Brierley says ‘more churches generally were growing in 2005 than in 1998, 34% to 21%’ attributing this to denominations asking their leaders to focus on mission and church growth, adding:
In 2005 the 160 or so largest Anglican churches (about 1% of the total) were responsible for 10% of total Anglican attendance; that could have doubled to 19% for the same 1% of churches in 2020 if present trends continue (Brierley 2010:15).
These figures suggest little practical response, especially if the conclusion is that the key to growth is to be large. This does not help the smaller 99%. Nonetheless, Brierley reveals some potentially more helpful statistics, affirming that the only other religious group, aside from Islam, showing worldwide growth are evangelical Christians (Brierley 2010:2). However, the overall picture is of decline (Brierley 2010).
No one can claim decline to be “success”, but many success indicators could be used: numbers; good deeds; the postmodern measure of whether the prevailing culture approves of the church; fidelity to Biblical revelation; or tithing levels. What if these provide contrary indicators of “success” –a church where the biblical Gospel is taught and the members show love for one another, yet numerically a church in decline? Or a church growing and tithing, but providing false teaching?
There seems little biblical imperative to measure the church statistically. The authors of the New Testament have much to say to the churches, but not about numerical growth or decline per se. We must consider whether falling Sunday attendance is the problem, or a symptom of an underlying sickness, which if cured will reverse decline.
3 Three issues affecting the Anglican Church in a postmodern context
I will now examine three issues which suggest mere numbers may not be the key factor: the marginalising of the church by postmodernity; confusion among church leaders about their role and priorities; and a postmodern phenomenon I term ‘disconnectedness '. I will then argue for a return to a clear, unanimous proclamation of the biblical Gospel as the theological and practical means to facilitate postmodern society’s engagement with the Christian gospel.
3.1 A marginalised Anglican church
Any institution, church included, seeking the central ground in thought and membership numbers in a postmodern culture is probably attempting the impossible. Examining folk culture liminality (the position on the margins of a community where an individual is placed before being reintroduced to the centre: e.g. child to warrior), Roxburgh employs the term ‘liminoid’, a place of exclusion with no obvious path to reintroduction (‘reaggregation’), to describe well the position of the church in postmodernity:
In the liminoid there is no returning to where the world was before, only movement into a future that continually undermines both the prevailing order and the nature of the sacred within the society. This double tension shapes the churches. On the one side remains the pull to return and overcome the loss of place; on the other, a culture where the center-periphery modalities are continually undermined by a constant flux of competing choices that configure and reconfigure in ever-differing forms (Roxburgh 1997:48)
There is no reason to see this liminoid position as a crisis in itself, unless the Anglican Church sees Christendom as the goal, and few Anglicans would. The church may actually be helped by its marginal position to define afresh its goals and leadership modalities. Roxburgh again:
If the current liminal experience of the church is properly understood, it will be seen as an opportunity ...that offers the potential for a fresh missionary engagement in a radically changing social context (Roxburgh 1997:27).
How should a church on the margins respond? Donovan, working with that least postmodern of societies, the Kenyan Maasai in the 1970s, provides some surprisingly helpful insights. So much of that Maasai culture was different from today’s UK: monocultural, taboos intact, gender specific roles, illiteracy (Donovan 1978:75). As Donovan brought the Gospel to the Maasai, his marginal position was obvious. He could not, as we might be tempted to, imagine himself having a historical claim to the community’s centre. He had to forget old assumptions, and begin afresh. He realised the necessity of stripping the story of Jesus down to its essentials, of finding certain tangential points of contact between the Jesus of the Gospels and Maasai culture (such as tribal lineage), but also tolerating their laughter and disbelief at the notion of a crucified God. He writes:
After having explained God and Jesus Christ to the people, I had come to the end of the good news ...the missionary’s job is complete. What else is there? The church? Church-planting and church-establishing have often been used as descriptions of a missionary’s task. But such descriptions can be misleading since they necessarily imply a kind of fixed and predetermined outcome to the preaching of the Gospel (Donovan 1978:81).
This is helpful because it reveals that UK Anglicanism’s problem may not be so much to do with meeting postmodernity head on, but simply knowing what to do when it finds itself in that liminoid margin.
Donovan’s work with the Maasai shows church is not something developed by scheme or course, by event or management technique: a church, as the Apostles realised long ago, is simply something you end up with when you speak about the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
Rediscovering the certain confidence that God Himself will build the church by the preaching of the authentic Gospel will revitalise and grow the church in the 21st century UK. I will return to “the Gospel” later, but here I simply wanted to demonstrate that it may not simply be the fact of postmodernity that is the problem, rather how the church responds to its liminoid position.
3.2 Confusion among church leadership
Brierley (2010) identifies something of the crisis in leadership confidence which I will now address. He shows that whilst almost all of the UK’s 11 main professions have seen significant growth since the 1990s (e.g. 256% for pharmacists, 38% for doctors), the number of professional church ministers has fallen by 3%, and he expects the Anglican figure to continue to dip by 2020 to around 70% of its current level (Brierley 2010:55-56). He adds, ‘there is also the problem of resignations, retirements and people leaving the ministry which exceeds the number entering’ (Brierley 2010:58).
Together, these statistics portray a church where the calling to leadership is in a serious predicament. Ordained ministry is a leadership role, yet failing to attract in sufficient numbers those to undertake it. Interestingly, and contrary to my own personal experience in discussions with Anglican clergy over the last decade, many surveys show clergy have high job satisfaction relative to other professions. Francis et al had reported (2004) that ‘self-reported work satisfaction is high’ (Francis et al 2008). However, their deeper analysis (2008) looking at satisfaction in specific aspects of ministry revealed a more complex picture: for example, ‘clergy with an evangelical disposition gain positive satisfaction from religious instruction but that their satisfactions with the remaining roles are negative’ (Francis et al 2008). This matches my observations and conversations with clergy colleagues in a number of Anglican dioceses, especially in smaller churches. I will suggest below that this is due to the clergy leadership role becoming confused in its encounter with Western postmodernity.
Roxburgh adds helpfully to a description of the state of missiological confusion in a highly institutionalised and structured church (such as the Anglican Church), in that he also cites the postmodern phenomenon of ordained leaders operating in roles which do not necessarily match their calling or gifts. He identifies a number of these roles: pedagogue, professional, therapist and counsellor (Roxburgh 1997:16). Interestingly he says that these roles are often adopted by church leadership themselves, as well as being thrust upon them, in an attempt to fit in with whatever, in the moment, postmodern society might expect them to be: ‘The underlying belief is that the once-held cultural center can be regained by adopting its modalities’ (Roxburgh 1997:19). This useful insight reveals the key weakness of the Anglican Church: the confused ordained leader, in heart rejecting yet in reality becoming, the very embodiment of postmodernism.
Throughout a working week the ordained minister may adopt a vast range of modes: musician, counsellor, school governor, Bible teacher, comfort-giver, puppeteer, visionary, oracle, technician, event planner, line manager, village elder, planter, evangelist, worship leader, minister to the sick and elderly, discipler, or social entrepreneur. This leads to an uncertainty of position and purpose for the church leader, far removed from the simple standard for the Anglican priest given by Michael Ramsey first in 1972, to be a ‘man of theology...minister of reconciliation...man of prayer...of the eucharist’ (Ramsey 1985:7-9). Yet by 1985, the now former Archbishop, writing his epistle to ordinands, pinpointed the crisis of confusion that postmodernism was ushering in:
You are facing a malaise of doubt and questioning about priesthood within the Christian community itself ...There are Christians who crave for a Christianity without institutional forms; but more significantly in this connection, there are also Christians who want the church to be a more lively society, with far more spontaneous initiatives in leadership and service, and they see the existence of a professional ministry as a hindrance to the mature self-realisation of the Church’s members in creative responsibility (Ramsey 1985:6).
Ramsey was right. The 21st century Anglican Church has leaders with roles poorly defined, difficult to dovetail into the ministries of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher (Ephesians 4:11).
Then there is the gap between the institution and the mission context: the Anglican Church (surprisingly for detractors) in its ecclesiology, canon law and governance, parallels much of modernity. It bears modernity’s hallmarks, identified by Summers as he contrasts modernity with postmodernity, of being ‘fundamentally concerned with order: advocating rationality and rationalization, creating structure and eliminating chaos’ (Summers 2009:39). As Summers continues, ‘The alternatives offered by postmodernity are challenging in an altogether different manner’ (Summers 2009:40), with its suspicion of the old metanarratives. The place the Anglican Church finds itself in postmodernity is very different from the place in modernity where it was forged.
The vows and affirmations made in the highly ritualised services of ordination and institution within Anglicanism may not reflect life as a church leader in a postmodern context. This leads to church leaders coming under stress, where there is often a mismatch between aspiration, expectation, context and results: numerical growth is celebrated, but the harsh reality is that caring for the dying may not be commensurate with growth. The Church of England is starting to address this by introducing, as of 2011, formal “Role Descriptions” for clergy, but we must wait, possibly some years to see the extent to which this addresses the issue, or simply adds another layer of potential contrast between expectation and reality. It at least illustrates the prevailing tension between what a priest is and what a priest does.
Further, church leaders are offered innumerable means of church growth: Cluster church (Hopkins and Breen 2007); Alpha courses; Incarnational ecclesiology (Frost and Hirsch 2003); Fresh expressions like Messy Church, or even the ‘50 ways to help grow your church’ suggested by David Beer (2000). So many strategies and methods are as likely to add to a leader’s confused sense of purpose as grow the church. What if one method fails to do what the book claimed? Does the leader limp disheartened to the next ‘how to...’ volume on the shelf of the local Christian bookshop? And what about the pastoral issues to be cleared up by the last approach to growth? I will return to David Beer’s work shortly in a positive assessment.
The Anglican minister faces the challenges of confused purpose and lack of confidence, and working for a modern institution ministering to a postmodern world.
The challenges which postmodernity has brought to the Anglican Church are so great that it will take a major shift by the leadership, local and national, to address them and re-engage with society. Until the Anglican Church becomes open about and addresses the major challenges brought upon its leadership by postmodernity, and in no small measure created by itself though its fragmented responses to postmodernity, it will not be equipped for 21st century growth.
3.2.1 The Moon Landings as a Contrasting Case Study
The Moon landings were technologically incredible, yet, at the visionary level simple because the goal was easy to express: to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth. Nobody in or outside of the Apollo programme in the 1960s could fail to know what they were there to make happen. The simplicity of the goal inevitably attracted committed, gifted, focussed leaders. As Levine (1982) concludes, ‘NASA’s remarkable success in managing its programs depended on the ability of the agency 's top officials to enunciate goals’, and he emphasises the importance of its leaders being confident to express their goals in a metanarrative: ‘NASA managers saw their responsibilities in political terms and took it upon themselves to justify NASA where it mattered most: to the President ...and to Congress, which had the power to modify that request’. In contrast today, the Anglican Church leadership find themselves with a bewildering array of roles, goals and priorities, and less confident to express their role within the metanarrative of the meaning of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
3.3 Postmodern ‘disconnectedness’
Another factor adding to the tension of church leadership and the notion of statistical success is what I term disconnectedness. I propose this as a key postmodern phenomenon which if not recognised, leads to confusion and disillusionment. Disconnectedness is a worldview in which life is seen as a succession of discreet, disconnected experiences, which have no obvious connection one to the other. Disconnectedness is a form of consumption, in which the moral value of a thing is not seen in the thing itself but in having consumed the thing. In some ways it parallels Baudrillard’s contention that ‘we find ourselves in an era ...with a hedonistic morality of pure satisfaction’ (Baudrillard 2001:16). Disconnectedness is evidenced by the experience of the Anglican Church in its occasional offices of baptisms, weddings and funerals, as well as many other major church events and festivals. There is an expectation among Anglican clergy that putting on a large event (a church musical, a well-attended baptism, a carol service, etc) will in itself result in increased Sunday by Sunday attendance. Many leave these services and events, encouraging clergy and organisers by saying what a wonderful time they have had, how much they valued the talk, the effort put in and warm welcome they received. Yet the following week and onwards, none are to be seen again. Excited by the success of the big event, with high expectations, the church leadership is brought down to earth on Sunday with the lack of fruit. This scenario is enacted all over the churches week by week. But what is going on? Disconnectedness: it was never the visitors’ expectation that what happened at the carol service would connect to anything else, any more than their equally exciting trip to Legoland Windsor would result in a return visit the following week, never mind joining the Lego company staff or subscribing to Lego Weekly. Good experiences are seen as valuable, but it is not assumed they will connect one to the other, merely be consumed. In postmodernity the passing and temporary, the disconnected, is the norm, especially when it comes to experiences. The disconnected ‘big event’ experience also has similarities to Summers’ description of postmodern art ‘that does not necessarily have meaning, that which does not necessarily point to or signify something else, but that has value in its own existence’ (2009:41). McGrath reminds us, ‘postmodernism represents a situation in which the signifier has replaced the signified as the focus of orientation and value’ (1992:223). It may be that in postmodern Britain, the big event (the ‘mission rally’) is not the best forum for gospel proclamation, as those attending are expecting to merely consume the experience and so their ears are deaf even to the gospel in that context: the message is drowned, not enhanced by, the cacophony of consumed experience.
A practical shift to facilitate postmodern society’s engagement with the Christian gospel may be for church leaders to recognise the phenomenon of disconnectedness and ask whether the considerable efforts put in to these large events produce the growth desired, and for leadership teams to take some time out to see if energies might be put into developing other means of deepening connections with the local community and visitors. A benefit of this may be reducing the guilt and disillusionment which often follow the big church event.
4 Summary
Four issues have been addressed: the mixed picture of church decline and growth; the liminoid place of the church in the postmodern UK; role and identity confusion among Anglican leadership, and disconnectedness. I now wish to look at the last, but most significant area, the Gospel itself, and propose simple, faithful retelling of the Good News about Jesus as the practical and theological starting point for Anglican Church’s engagement with postmodern Britain.
5 Why Mission? Which Gospel?
Before we can speak of “restoring connections” and “postmodern society’s engagement with the Christian gospel”, we need –especially in a postmodern context, where meanings are less easy to assume and often individually defined– to ask “why do mission at all?” and “what is The Gospel?”. These questions are made more significant because of the leadership crisis identified above.
5.1 Why Mission?
Many reasons may be given for engaging in 'mission ': sustaining church income, buildings, hierarchy and influence; helping the poor; offering spiritual fulfilment to a secular nation; or providing the Good News that Jesus provides the unique means of salvation from judgement to eternal life together with innumerable other benefits of divine grace to the believer. Only if we know which “gospel” we are proclaiming can the church answer the question, “why do mission?”.
5.2 Which Gospel?
In postmodernism, where signifier and signified may be indistinct, distinguishing the “gospel” from the mission act is challenging: e.g., the gospel may be seen to be helping the poor.
In the Anglican Church, characterized by and positively valuing theological diversity, “the Christian gospel” cannot be assumed. Does the gospel the Anglican Church proclaims deserve its definite article? With which “gospel” is it expecting postmodern society to engage? Can the Gospel be redefined and reshaped endlessly to please every view in a postmodern era? The New Testament authors faced similar issues: ‘the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires’ (2 Timothy 4:3). They were confident of a clear distinction between “the” Gospel and other false gospels. Whether the 21st century Anglican Church has many Gospels or not and despite its orthodox creeds and formularies, it is definitely less eager in practice, it seems, to emphasise the particularity of Christ and singular authentic gospel than were the Apostles. Examining the work of Stephen Sykes (1978), Bryant in his essay, ‘Multiform Christianity and the Theological Vocation Today’ says of modern Anglicanism that it, ‘has responded to the advent of theological liberalism ...with a view of comprehensiveness that has allowed an unbounded theological variety to emerge within the Anglican communion’ (Bryant 1984:151). Simply …show more content…
imitating postmodernity is not the answer: it only leads to confused leaders.
Likewise, a 50 step plan is too unwieldy a means to church growth, especially for the smaller churches, yet David Beer’s work is helpful in getting to the root of this issue. He recognises the sine qua non: properly equipped leaders –equipped to preach the Gospel:
Preach a positive message...Prepare people for effective ministry ...After 30 years in ministry, I have discovered that what makes the difference between a growing church and a non-growing church is whether or not ...these principles are incorporated into its life (Beer 2000:38-39).
The church has survived through worse than postmodernism and seen growth –even under persecution. What then if postmodernism outside the church is not the problem at all? What if the church has in its possession something which cuts through the veneer of any culture? This was the leadership confidence of the writers of the New Testament: they believed that in the telling of the account and meaning of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, they had nothing less than the power of God at work in those whom they were addressing, not insensitive to, but irrespective of the culture in which they proclaimed it. In Romans, Paul writes: ‘I am not ashamed of the Gospel; it is the power of God to everyone who has faith’ (Romans 1:16). The author of the letter to the Hebrews says, ‘the word of God is ...sharper than any two-edged sword’ (Hebrews 4:12). And Peter affirms, ‘You have been born anew ...through the living and enduring word of God ...That word is the good news that was announced to you.” (1 Peter 1:23-25). The New Testament testifies to an extraordinary confidence among these early church leaders that in the proclamation of the Gospel, divine power was at work. As George W. Forell in his study on Christianity and pluralism observes of the early church,
it was Christian particularity, the claims made for the person and work of Christ even in the simplest liturgical service, which implicitly denied and subverted the many gods worshipped in the empire. Rejecting their social and political importance the Christians offended and threatened practically everybody (Forell 1973:132).
The necessary theological shift is for the Anglican Church to rediscover its purpose: the telling of the Gospel which gave birth to the church, and has done so repeatedly throughout the ages –in whatever culture, Ancient Roman, modern, postmodern or Maasai.
This will cause offence both within and without Anglicanism –but as we have seen, this is nothing new. The aim of Christian ‘gentleness and reverence’ (1 Peter 3:15) is to have the Gospel heard, not merely for the Christian to be liked. If the Gospel is particular, it cannot in a postmodern culture be popular. As early as 1973, Forell says of pluralism in postmodernity that it
is the ideologically most threatening aspect of the modern world ...because it undermines the notion of “one truth” and thus jeopardises the claims of atheists and theists, nationalists and internationalists, totalitarians and democrats (Forell 1973:2).
It may be that the rise of militant humanism in modern Britain probably has as much to do with atheist rationalist frustration at the necessary corollary of credibility afforded Christianity by pluralism, as it does the zeal of evangelical
Christians.
6 Conclusion
This essay has examined the numerical decline of the Anglican Church in its postmodern situation, where old certainties of government, morals and taboos no longer hold sway, and where disconnectedness militates against old mission methodologies. In this context, an uncertain institution with a mixed message is doomed –if indeed there was ever a time when such a body could flourish. In postmodern culture, organisations and ways of living with simple messages, clear structures and well understood taboos may prove attractive, as with Islam, sports, or right-wing political organisations. The simplicity of materialistic consumption, in which fulfilment is seen to be but one more shopping trip away, may also draw adherents. I have therefore stressed the need for the church to regain its clarity and conviction, by a return to a clear Gospel, being a biblical telling of the meaning of the life of Christ as the apostles expressed it. This represents a tectonic theological shift, since postmodernism with the Anglican Church currently tolerates many gospels or forms of the gospel.
I have attempted to demonstrate that in the liminoid margin, the Anglican Church must have the courage to hold firmly to biblical truth and preach the Gospel the apostles knew, without indulging itself in the luxury of endless accommodation with postmodernity. This is not just a theological necessity, but a practical need. Unless it addressed, the Anglican Church will become increasingly less relevant, its leaders’ passion sapped and society’s engagement with the church will continue its decline as the Anglican Church is perceived as a diverse thinktank rather than possessing a clear goal and message.
To counter declining numbers The Anglican Church must equip and encourage its leaders to bring proclamation of the Gospel to the fore, with that certain confidence which comes not from belief in a historical claim to the cultural centre, but from the same missionary zeal which fired the apostles on the margins of the first century world.
Rev Steve Stewart
September 2011 southwood@parishofcove.org.uk Bibliography:
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All Scripture quotes are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA and are used by permission. All rights reserved.