What church are we missing - during Covid lockdown

Challenge

I remember when I first heard the quote from Archbishop William Temple (1942): “The church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.” I was enthused, exited and motivated! It was time to get out there and change the world, resolve the injustices faced by our society and fulfil the church’s purpose. But is church more than that?

Origins

Whilst Temple is widely credited with the famous quote, I recently discovered that he had actually “borrowed” it from Walter Rauschenbusch (1861- 1918) who led the Social Gospel movement in the US in the early 20^th Century.

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Rauschenbusch: “As an evangelist sought to win men to a “new birth” in Christ. At the same time, he believed that the Kingdom of God required social as well as individual salvation, and he demanded “a new order that would rest on the Christian principles of equal rights and democratic distribution of economic power.”

But lest the church take itself too seriously, he also noted: “The Kingdom of God is not confined within the limits of the Church and its activities. It embraces the whole of human life. It is the Christian transfiguration of the social order. The Church is one social institution alongside of the family, the industrial organization of society, and the State.”

In other words, the purpose of the church—like all other social institutions—is to make the world a better place. Or to put it another way, the church exists for the sake of the world.

Now, whilst William Temple was a great social reformer, and prominent supporter of William Beveridge as he worked to found the Welfare State in the UK at the end of WW2, it would be wrong to think that he fully embraced all of Rauschenbusch’s thinking. However, The Amateur Christian believes that he was the origin of Temple’s famous quote: “The church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.”

Missional church

By the 1950s missionaries returning to the UK started to develop a theology of mission in which God’s Mission, the Missio Dei, was based upon the idea that the Father sends the Son who sends the Holy Spirit (and from 1952) the Spirit sends the church, loosely based on John 20:21.

Therefore, the church exists missionally, sent by the triune God to carry out the mission of making disciples of all nations. Wherever the church exists, it exists for the sake of the world, as a sign and proclamation of the kingdom of God.

In a phrase often quoted by “Missionals” - "It's not that the church has a mission, but rather that the mission has a church.” God invites the church to join him in his mission.

So, for Ed Stetzer, a prominent missional leader, “to be missional means that a church realises it exists to join Jesus in God's mission in the power of the Spirit.”

This thinking, whilst it arose from a less than evangelical source, has been widely embraced by protestant and catholic churches of all flavours in recent years. So why do I feel a little uncomfortable?

The Problem

When Archbishop Welby standing in front of his kitchen table brought his Easter message, while the churches were all locked and bolted over Easter for, possibly the first time ever. He reminded us that “the church is not the buildings it’s the people.” This familiar comment caused me to think again and consider further whether church is more than mission.

Looking at things from the point of view of a non-attender I can see that church might well be seen in terms of what it does. People might see the food banks, coffee shops, toddler groups and debt counselling facilities and see it as the “worthwhile” face of church. Of course, this ignores a lot of other stuff, the place of worship and sacrament, of teaching and discipling. Of prayer, counsel, comfort and correction, offered in love.

But still I remain uncomfortable. Surely all of these things relate to activities, practices and services of the church not its identity. Maybe church is more than what it does in much the same way as I’m a father, not because of what I do, but because of who I am.

We miss?

It might be obvious to say that we miss meeting our friends and fellow church members during this lockdown. We miss the friendship, touching, trivial chat and sometimes meaningful support and prayer.

Recently I heard someone say that they thought that we would learn that we could do church just as well online as when together, and at that point I started to realise both what I missed, and perhaps he had not appreciated. I was thinking about Bible pictures we have of church, as well as my personal experience.

God with us

I love Peter’s description of a dwelling place for God. A picture of God taking rough and ready chunks of rock, shaping them and building them together to make a place where God dwells. It comforts me during times of trouble that God is shaping us, collectively, not just on our own, to be a building, the size and shape he designs. When it is completed it will be set apart as a dwelling place for him.

When I meet with my Church, I sense that God is in the business of building us together. It is very much his work, but as he works the stones change shape as they are moulded by him. I don’t fully experience this at home, even if I know that God is at work shaping the stones at the quarry. I miss the building site. I miss the presence of the builder, seeing him at work shaping and building. I miss watching and wondering what this dwelling place for God will look like.

God in us

I also think about the Body of Christ described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12.

I know that whilst we are scattered, we continue to function as servants of the Lord, however when we gather together, we may experience something mysterious and amazing. Disparate people find themselves functioning together just as a body does with all the various parts working in an amazing synchronisation, unexplainable by mere human choreography.

Now I have to be honest and say it is not always like that. We have mix ups and disasters as does any church, however, from time to time God sends his Holy Spirit  to us and the result is beyond human explanation. And, as I read, I see that we are to be Christ’s body, not like a body.

When Jesus lived on earth, he had a body of flesh and blood in which God dwelt, and today to accomplish his work, he has a body of believers in which he dwells. When on earth Jesus was limited to working in one place at a time, and now, having been baptised by the Holy Spirit into his body we function together, led by that Holy Spirit. And all over this earth there are further bodies of believers, functioning in the Spirit, demonstrating Jesus to the world around. I miss that during our Covid lockdown.

 This lock-down will cease one day and normality will return. By then however, God will have moved in our lives, shaped some of us, more or less, and the building that comes together will be somewhat different to before lock-down. We can look forward with anticipation to functioning as his body, the Body of Christ, building itself up in love, and engaged with Father God in his mission, the Missio Dei.

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