Church growth and decline in the UK 2: Is church decline due to ‘progressive ideology’?
John Hayward’s second claim is that the patterns of growth and decline he maps can be explained by the extent to which the various denominations have embraced/capitulated to something he calls ‘progressive ideology’. He unfortunately offers no evidence (beyond a claim that it is obvious to all) for the existence or nature of this ideology…
Read MoreChurch growth and decline in the UK 1: Are UK denominations headed for extinction?
John Hayward has recently attracted a lot of attention with a couple of blog posts claiming extinction for many UK denominations, and that church decline followed an embrace of progressive ideology. This post addresses the extinction point.
Read MoreCommunion cups and individualism
Picking up from one or two comments in different places on my previous post: does the use of individual communion cups imply, or support, or strengthen, individualism? My short answer would be: not in British Baptist practice; I simply do not know elsewhere. This answer is based on a couple of convictions. One is that practices are not meaningfully narratable without properly thick description; the other is that I want to interrogate hard what ‘individualism’ means. I will deal with the first here; I might return to the second at some point. On the first: ‘thick description’ (for those who do not know) is a term coined by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz. He argued (roughly) that symbols are only intelligible specifically. That is, to take the case in point, the use of individual communion cups means nothing until you have (ideally exhaustively) described in detail how they are used in a particular community. I suppose I might have received communion in a hundred or so different British Baptist congregations; I have celebrated it in approaching fifty, each time interrogating the church about their own practices so that I could both conform to what they expected, and celebrate appropriately reverently by my own lights. On this basis, I think I can speak about the general practices of this tradition–and on this same basis, I make no claim about any other tradition. As I mentioned before, my own congregation presently uses (or pre-Covid used) several communal cups and intinction in our morning Eucharists; we use individual cups when we celebrate in the evening. This is however very unusual. I struggle to remember any other British Baptist celebration I have been a part of that used shared cups. British Baptist celebrations of the Eucharist, however, are (in my experience) focused determinedly on the shared life of the gathered, covenanted, church. In some Scottish churches in which I have celebrated this is first emphasised by a separation of the communion service from the main service. The sermon is preached, a hymn is sung, a benediction is offered, and some people leave: those who wish to affirm their belonging to each other remain, to receive the Eucharist (albeit from individual cups). This tradition, once common, is passing—to my mind with good reason—but the symbolism is surely clear: all may come to hear the Word preached, but only saints covenanted together may received the bread and wine. Outsiders are excluded to emphasise the belonging of insiders. The large majority of churches I have celebrated or received communion in will follow the reception of the Eucharist with a pastoral prayer; a significant minority will take up an offering around the table specifically for pastoral needs within the fellowship. Both practices insist that here, around the table, more than anywhere else, we are one body, in community, joined to each other, and so here we pray for the needs of the fellowship, not just those of the world; here we give to support our own sisters and brothers, not just charitable causes generally. Every Baptist church I know will receive new members, and appoint new officers (elders/deacons), at the communion table. This practice insists that here, around the table, is where we are family together, and so this is where we do our family business. Against all these practices, even if the use of the individual cup might in abstract be perceived as promoting individualism, it is hard to see it as anything other than bound into a profoundly communal set of ritual practices in concrete. The rite it is a part of is a communal rite that emphasises community at every moment; the mere adoption of individual cups cannot effectively challenge that, even if the practice were to be assumed to be inherently individualistic (& of course no liturgical practice is inherently anything; context and narration defines all meaning). To emphasise this I, and I know that I am not alone, use the individuality of the cups to emphasise the community of the church when celebrating the Eucharist. I instruct congregants to keep hold of the cup having been served it, and then, when everyone has been served, state that we will all drink together ‘as a sign of our unity in the Lord’. The shared act of drinking together reinforces all the other signs given to emphasise the community-based, and community-forming, act of sharing the Eucharist. I am not claiming any combination of these practices as perfect: I said in the previous post that I would rather we shared one cup, because that is what Jesus did in the upper room. That preference, however, is based on a Baptist commitment to...
Read MoreOn opening church buildings for private prayer
We should open our buildings for private prayer as soon as we can. Not for the members, but as a mission opportunity. This week it seems likely that the First Minister will announce that Scotland is moving to Phase 2 of our lifting of lockdown, which includes the opening of places of worship for private prayer—a move made this past weekend in the rather less orderly English system. I suspect that for most Baptists, the instinctive response will be to shrug; our spirituality does not have that sense of sacred space, or at least not of ecclesially-authorised sacred space. We might have our own ‘thin places’, where for us ‘prayer has been valid’, but they are probably not significantly connected to local church buildings. I think this response would be a mistake. There are a few Baptist churches around the UK that, before lockdown, were in the habit of keeping their buildings open for private prayer—I think of Bloomsbury Central B.C. in London as the example I perhaps know best; the doors are generally open, and a small room to the right of the front of the sanctuary—presumably once a vestry—is set aside as a space to pray. I’ve known the ministers of Bloomsbury over the past 20 years or so—Brian Haymes; Ruth Gouldbourne; Simon Woodman—and although I’ve never particularly discussed this aspect of their ministry with any of them, every passing reference they made suggested that it was not a facility offered for, or used by, the church members, but rather for passers by, seeking a quiet reflective space in the energy and noise of central London. Our buildings should be open, if they can be, not for members, but for non-members. I think of a friend, around my age, who recently rediscovered a faith she had walked away from as a child. She started to come to our church, but, having outgrown our building, we meet in a local school hall. Her searching spirit wanted a space that looked, felt sacred—the P.E. charts that we cheerfully ignore (and long to cheerfully ignore again…) were an impediment, a stumbling block, to her. Another church, lacking a building of their own, was borrowing our church building of a Sunday morning; she joined there. I think now if they moved out she would be happy enough; she has been well discipled into a broadly evangelical spirituality that emphasises the holiness of the community that meets, rather than that of the room it meets in. If someone wanted to narrate her recent story in Pauline terms of valuing the indifferent things that seem important to those of weak/immature faith, I suspect she would not be offended. Paul’s point in Rom. 14 is that we should in fact value these things, because nurturing nascent faith matters. Equally, although slightly differently, it matters that we provide seekers with comfortable ways to discover the truth of the gospel and the glory of our King Jesus. I suspect her spiritual sensibilities are not unusual: there are a significant number of people in the UK who, if moved to search for a genuine encounter with God, would look to a church building as the right place to begin that search. Some may have cultural memories of what church ‘should’ be; some may be coming from other religious traditions, and bringing those traditions’ assumptions about sacred space with them; some may just need to do something kinaesthetic to demonstrate to themselves that they are serious. Of course, as they find the truth, and as we have the privilege of discipling them into maturity, we will want to insist that being close to Jesus is what matters, and that being close to Jesus comes from being in covenant community, not from being in ecclesiastical buildings. But if stepping into the building is going to be the first step on that journey to Life for some, perhaps for many, we ought to do what we can to have the door of the building open, particularly if, as is being regularly suggested at the moment, there are significant signs of spiritual awakening across the U.K. just now. For some of us it will of course be impossible to open the building. Perhaps other urgent mission opportunities—running the local foodbank, e.g.—are taking all our efforts; perhaps we cannot, with the resources we have, open the building safely; perhaps, like the apostles, we have no building to open. But if we can open the building, I suggest that we should—for missional, not pastoral,...
Read MoreProsopal presence: our current conundrum
When we meet online, are we meeting ‘face to face’? My colleague Elizabeth Shively gave us an excellent sermon this morning in our series on 1Thess.; I won’t repeat what she said (its on our church FB page, and well worth the watch), but before she began my attention was caught by a word in the reading. Throughout the letter Paul expresses his regrets that he is absent from the Thessalonian believers, his longing to see them, and his eagerness for news of them. In 3:10 he prays ‘Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face’ (NRSV) ‘May see you face to face’ translates τὸ ἰδεῖν ὑμῶν τὸ πρόσωπον; it was the word πρόσωπον that caught my eye (I was following the reading in the original, as I usually do); it’s a word I’ve thought about a lot. Paul made a similar point , using the same word, twice, in 2:17: ἀπορφανισθέντες ἀφ᾿ ὑμῶν … προσώπῳ οὐ καρδίᾳ, περισσοτέρως ἐσπουδάσαμεν τὸ πρόσωπον ὑμῶν ἰδεῖν… (‘…separated from you—in person, not in heart—we longed … to see you face to face.’ NRSV) Here, there is a contrast between being with them ‘in person’ (πρόσωπον) and ‘in heart’ (καρδίᾳ), reminiscent of 1Cor. 5:3 ἀπὼν τῷ σώματι, παρὼν δὲ τῷ πνεύματι (‘absent in body [σώμα], present in spirit [πνεύμα]’), as well as the same expression of desire to see facially [τὸ πρόσωπον]. How does Paul’s urgent longing to be re-united with the Thessalonian sisters and brothers relate to our enforced absence from each other today? The Corinthian text is easy: we are apart bodily without question, and together in spirit, without question. The Thessalonian ones are more difficult. πρόσωπον is more difficult, as already the translations from the NRSV above indicate: does it mean ‘face’ or ‘person’? Well, yes; the semantic range stretches at least that wide—see the historical note at the end of this post. But in this linguistic imprecision our current experience of church fellowship sits: many of us, at least, are seeing the faces of our sisters and brothers through video conferencing; we are talking, interacting, so there is some real togetherness, some experience of coming together for worship and fellowship. We are not bodily present, however, and so we are not fully personally present to each other. We are living in a grey area in the middle of the semantic range of the word πρόσωπον. Paul longed to be with the Thessalonians prosopally; did that mean just seeing their faces, or bodily presence, or what? Of course, these are not distinctions he could have made; lacking videoconferencing solutions, bodily presence was necessary to seeing faces. Almost everything he talks about longing for in the letter is achievable in online meeting: he wants to pastor them, to observe and interrogate their growth in faith, to be able to correct error, to offer exhortation and encouragement. All of this is possible online. In the end, however, is the instruction to ‘greet all the brothers and sisters with a holy kiss’ (5:26); there comes a point where bodies matter. If Paul could have met with the Thessalonians over Teams or Zoom, he would have jumped at the chance, I am sure; he could have heard of the answers to his constant prayers, and offered the encouragement and advice he longed to give—but he would still have wanted to kiss them. I don’t think many of us need to be told that our online gatherings are sub-optimal; kissing may not be quite our culture, but hugging might be, and singing without question is; we want to be together bodily. But Paul in Thessalonians certainly reminds us that what we have is not nothing; we can meet face to face, after a fashion, we can hear of each other’s faith, and offer encouragement and counsel. We are not simply apart, though we are scattered. If we are to be church well through this time, I suspect it will be in part by reflecting seriously on the limits, but also the possibilities of this grey prosopal space we are now meeting in; perhaps thinking about Greek semantic fields can help us with that? Historical note: [This is all from memory, as I am separated from my library…] πρόσωπον is a very difficult word to translate, and visibly changes meaning over time. In earliest extant usage (Homer), it referred fairly simply to the face; from there, it came to be the term for the mask an actor in a Greek drama would wear, from which sense another meaning of ‘character’ (in a play), and so ‘actor in a narrative’; from this the sense of...
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