This week I have glanced at some stuff on natural church growth. It all sounds very fine and lovely but it doens't quite connect for me.
The true fruit of apple trees, it says, is not apples, it's more apple trees: the raison d'etre of apple trees is to make more apple trees. Hence, it claims, by analogy, churches exist to make more churches. Well, hmm.
In the wild, apple trees don't produce all that much fruit, enough presumably to ensure that there will be more apple trees, though most of the 'offspring' clearly won't survive, otherwise the planet would be overrun by apple trees. Further, the point of reproduction is that apple trees don't live forever - they die, so if they don't pass on their genes there will be no more apple trees.
Also, apple trees, as we tend to think of them, are grown and tended for the specific purpose of producing apples. They are pruned and grafted to generate the desired product. And this has biblical precedent in the analogy of John 15 - I AM the vine. These aren't 'natural' vines, they are subject to vineculture. Vines and apple trees have a productive life after which, unless they are wild, they are cut down and mulched or burned; even in the wild they will sooner or later die of old age. Maybe the natural church growth models recognise this life-cycle issue, that churches have a finite span, but I didn't spot it (they talk of leaves forming compost but not dead trees). Maybe because churches are often seen as more like oak trees or redwoods which live for centuries we just never quite face this reality.
I think churches do eventually die, not because they have failed to reproduce (though they may have done) but because they are old, sick or tired. One of our difficulties is our reluctance to accept this - we inject the latest bought-in package for evangelism, discipleship or outreach, we pour in money or personnel in a desperate attempt to keep to keep an old, frail body alive when what it really needs is to rest in peace. Sometimes it is possible to resuscitate or even resurrect a church, but sometimes it isn't. If we claim to be 'natural' in our approach, might there be a time to quietly annotate the metaphorical medical file of a church with the letters DNR (Do Not Resuscitate)?
None of us want to be esslesiastical undertakers or palliative care nurses, but it is a valid ministry. Just as the hospice movement recognises that success is a good death rather than prolonging life, so we in church life need to learn when to intervene, when to stand back and how to make endings as healthy and hopeful as we can.
PS As I typed this I recalled ths story of the fig tree that Jesus 'zapped' at the start of holy week. Sometimes this leads us to make an unhealthy association of death with punishment for unfruitfulness (in the case of this poor tree when it wasn't even fruit season). Lack of doing/being what churches are meant to do/be will have its consequences, but that isn't the same as dying 'old and full of years.'
Comments
Ecclesiastical undertakers? Crucial roll. Palliative care? Absolutely. Pastoral euthanasia? Sometimes.
One unlovely by-product of the much welcome new enthusiasm for all things missional are those church leaders who sneer at their congregations for being slow to get it. Pastors who neglect mission are tragic. Missional leaders who fail to be pastoral should be shaken hard (but lovingly, of course).
Healthy Church Growth - definite step up on what happened to the old church growth paradigm. Concentrating on being healthy with growth (perhaps, hopefully, in most cases) following rather than mainlining on evangelistic/managerial steroids as a way to growth for growth's sake, has to be good.
But you're right, churches don't exist to make more churches. Neither do they exist to get big. They exist first and foremost for the glory of God and then, and inserparably from their primary purpose, for the reign of God. More Healthy, growing churches, other things being equall, will serve this end. But they are not and should not become ends in themselves.
In entire sympathy with your post Catriona. And with much of Glen's comment. For myself, I've had a long term suspicion of absolutising "mission", and uncritically affirming the adjective "missional" as the defining qualifier of the word church.
My current area of reflection is about the way missional activism has moved to the centre in evangelical ecclesiology. In the NT as I read it that defining centre is held by Christ. If "the church is about mission", and we want "missional pastors" leading "missional congregations", then I'm afraid I am left with the uncomfortable feeling that something essentially secondary has become pre-eminent. I like the old AV rendering of the Collossian Christology that "in everything Christ has the pre-eminence". When ecclesiology is defined by mission instead of Christology, I worry.
And one of the things I worry about is the theological consequence of such a move. That which supremely characterises the church is not what it does but what it is; and it is the Body of Christ. A Christologically centred ecclesiology in turn defines mission, its nature, practice and outcome. And it is a church's faithfulness in following after Christ, in being the Body of Christ, rather than its effectiveness in whatever "missional strategy", that is the essential criterion of life and its raison d'etre. Small churches struggling to survive may well be signs of the Kingdom, the foolish that confounds the wise, the mustard seed that grows into shelter for others, the embodiment of the one who came not to be served but to serve.
Sorry about the long comment - Ahhh - I feel better now! :-)
Thanks both, very helpful perspectives and connect with at least two, possibly three, avenues of thought running in my mind at the moment. We'll see how tomorrow's sermon on foolish wisdom pans out.
On the relationship between Christology, Ecclesiology and Mission see the discussion here:
http://churchplantingnovice.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/which-comes-first-ecclesiology-or-missiology/
and again here:
http://churchplantingnovice.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/revisiting-hirsch-vs-stetzer-missional-ecclesiology/
Jim be reassured, the debate is happening.
Thanks Glen, I have my own take on the interplay of these three... but am trying to 'keep my powder dry' for a week or so yet!
I suspect one factor in this debate is the increasingly common use of the phrase "missionary God" as distinct from the Mission of God. No doubt to some it seems to be splitting hairs but if God is a missionary God then this suggests, beyond it being an attribute of God, that there is something basic about mission that is of the essence of Godself; to the extent even that God needs to be missionary in order to be Godself.
By contrast, the mission of God suggests that mission is something that God engages in; an outworking of who God is, the result of God's loving desire to reach out to creation and see it reconcilled.
I worry that language about missionary God is twisting our understanding of who God is. And the result is not simply a distorted view of God but of mission and of the church.
Thanks for the links Glen. My admittedly quick reading of the Hirsch- Stetzer debate suggests that Hirsch's starting point is nearer a position more congruent with the Baptist Declaration of Principle - and in my view with Baptist ecclesiolology. And actually with Scripture as well, which makes Christ the ultimate reference point for interpreting all else, Scripture, Church and mission.
Neil, I agree with your important questioning of the way we shove a word before "God" which seeks to define God in a way congenial to already held positions. Indeed the word "missionary" is itself a word with an ambivalent history which I'm not sure God would fully want to own.
When Paul dared to argue that "in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell" he was saying something that qualifies all other theological claims. Or as J V Taylor (who had considerable missionary credentials) once wrote, "God is Christlike and in him is no unchristlikeness at all...."
The ongoing debate is important - and needs to be held wider than blogland.
Thanks again everyone for a really interesting and thought provoking 'conversation.'
One of my wonderings is how much we confuse the 'ologies' with their referents - that we inadvertently restrict Christ to/by our Christology, mission to/by our missiology and as for ecclesiology - well that's anyone's guess! Or maybe it's just me who has been guilty of this?