Keys to Success and Barriers to Growth (2 of 3)

In this series we are exploring some of the learnings for churches from the Imagine Pilot Project. In the first post we looked at a number of problems with perspective. Here we explore a second dimension:

Problems with Participation
Addressing the issue of participation we look at a set of issues encountered by churches around who should be involved in the process of becoming a whole-life disciplemaking community. Often this means changing a number of our preconceptions about who should be involved and how to go about it.

1) Thinking we know the solution
Old and established methods will not enable us to resolve the question of how to release people as whole-life disciples. Few leaders have received the appropriate training that leads to the effective release of people into their callings and we must recognise that much of what we have been taught emerges out of a church-centric rather than a mission-centric mindset. Further, we cannot depend upon a pastoral response to the issues people face on the Frontline, as Hendrik Kraemer put it:

…the laity should not be seen primarily as the needy, ignorant and helpless, but as that part of the Church that has to carry the brunt of the burden of encounter with the world in and around themselves, and to voice and incarnate the Church’s or better, Christ’s relevance to the whole range of human life.

So as leaders, we must begin by acknowledging that we don’t have all the answers. We have to begin by respecting the wisdom of the body and recognising that we are not the experts about problems faced on the Frontline. This leads to a redefinition of the role of the leader. As Mark Gibbs and Ralph Morton put it in their book God’s Frozen People:

The essential job of a minister is not to do something for me but to help me do something by myself: not to pray for me but to help me pray, not to worship in my name but to help me offer my worship with the worship of the Church. As a member of the Church I am not a patient or a client or one whose absence will help things most.

To fulfil this role of accompanier, we must learn to listen and listen well to the Frontline and the issues emerging from that context it is this that will allow new wisdom and ways forward to emerge.

2) Thinking it is solely a leadership issue
It is sometimes tempting for both the leaders and the wider community to treat the move to becoming a whole-life disciplemaking community as a leadership responsibility. Leaders perform a significant function in managing the transition and it is crucial to have the leadership team on board. However, the call is one that must be embraced by the whole community. It can not be accomplished by the leaders alone.

To this end we try to encourage leadership teams to share as much with their communities as possible. For example, when we encourage churches to survey their congregation about ‘How whole-life is your church?’ we try to emphasise that the responses be shared with and discussed by the community as a whole. Each member of the church needs to take a degree of responsibility for this call to the community and own it. In the words of Jürgen Moltmann:

This is a call for the church to stand up and say we are the church.

3) Thinking some Frontlines are more significant than others
It is easy for us to act in ways that reinforce the perception that some people are in more significant contexts than others. So, we might think that white-collar businessmen are in really significant contexts, or perhaps doctors are really significant. However, the call to whole-life discipleship, is also the call to a community to realise that no-one is out of action, all are made significant in the purposes of God whatever their standing in the community.

Indeed, some of the most creative and powerful work we have seen churches engage in has been in equipping schoolchildren and teenagers, at one end of the spectrum, and older and retired people, at the other, to embrace their call as whole-life disciples. Often it is these groups, often marginalised by society, who embrace the call to the Frontline with the greatest eagerness and energy.

4) Thinking there is no cost
At the heart of WLD is a hugely liberating message that where people are really matters, but it also entails a cost that both members and leaders must recognise and be willing to make.

The cost for members is to choose to engage. It is now not enough to leave the hard work up to the leaders. Church members are on the playing field not on the benches. Overcoming the sacred-secular divide means embracing the hard spaces of life as contexts of discipleship and mission and that is far from an easy calling.

However, as has been indicated above, there is also a cost for leaders. Exploring whole-life discipleship means a willingness to see your role redefined, but it also means giving up some of your space and visibility, as you give space and visibility to others in your congregation by giving them opportunities to speak or share. In this way authority is redistributed and redefined. As Davida Crabtree put it in her book The Empowering Church: How One Congregation Supports Lay People's Ministries in the World:

I use my authority as little as possible. I believe the Holy Spirit is calling every ordained minister beyond timidity and beyond control into a new life lived in rich relationship with those who are called the laity. I try to enable the group to claim its authority. It is a deeply spiritual process.