Endings and Beginnings.

What kind of book reader are you? Do you start at page one and read to the end or are you tempted to skip to the last page to see ‘who done it’?!

I would argue that if you are the latter then you are a good christian; let me explain further.

I start with another question – What is Christian about the church?

The reason I ask this is that faced with the malaise that afflicts many of our congregations and churches, we have turned uncritically to secular business and leadership literature desperately searching for quick fixes and a one-size-fits-all technique. As a result, we have found ourselves swirling in intra-Christian polemics: some leaders loudly commending the latest books on effective leadership, with others equally loudly claiming that Christians are called to be faithful and prophetic rather than selling out to popular notions of success.

The polemics are tearing us apart rather than building up the Body. Adopting an either-or position will not equip our churches to act as incubators of transformative life and cultivators of thriving communities. 

So is there something distinctively Christian about the Church?

Yes: The end.

Don’t stop reading!, this isn’t the conclusion of my reflection. Rather, it is ‘the end’, the goal, the purpose, the telos that shapes the church and makes it most distinctively Christian. Our end is to cultivate thriving communities that bear witness to the inbreaking reign of God that Jesus announces and embodies in all that we do and are. This should shape the way we think about our lives, and our churches.

In one sense, it is so obvious that it scarcely needs mentioning. The answer brings to mind the old story of a preacher inquiring during a children’s address, “What is grey, has a bushy tail and gathers acorns every autumn?” The children are silent for a few moments, then one child responds, “I’m sure the right answer is Jesus, but it sounds like a squirrel to me.”

Of course the right answer to the question, “What’s Christian about the church?”, is Jesus. Centring our lives in Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, enables us to locate our lives and our church in this comprehensive story of God.

For a long time I took for granted the “why” questions about purpose: Why does the church exist, or need to exist? I was given a jolt in an ecumenical meeting when someone said “The church is here to convert Muslims”! It was a bad diagnosis of our culture, I thought. But even worse, we cannot advance the church’s mission in the world by identifying our purpose by what we are not. 

Too often as a church, we can name our activities, but we struggle tell our own story of shaping communities of faithful (if flawed) discipleship. We struggle to speak of a community engaging in the great stream of God’s story in time and space. (God’s story beyond time and space it not ours to tell.)

Many churches have learned from secular business culture to “take the long view”, but we Christians are called to develop an even longer view, a view that must incorporate the best thinking in business, psychology, history and other fields but situate it in our story as followers of Christ. The end in Christian perspective is not simply the termination of things, but rather the fulfilment of all for which we have hoped, yearned, prayed and worked.

The end is what orients our thinking about how we can honour the past as we search for the most faithful and imaginative way forward: to be a people who bear witness to the Holy Spirit who, by conforming us to Christ, is “making all things new.” The end helps us discern and clarify what needs to be preserved and what needs to be jettisoned for us to be faithful. The end enables us to be a people of traditioned innovation, envisioning the future by honouring the church’s past rather than merely ceaseless change.

Claiming the end as the heart of our story is critical for the church. For it returns us to basic questions all organizations, for-profit or otherwise, must ask. Why must we exist? What do we do that no one else can do as well? What would be lost if we disappeared?

In a time of economic tumult and unceasing reports on the decline of the mainline churches, we are prone to constrain our perspective by focusing on short-term questions of survival, that is understandable. However, especially in times of tumult, that we most need is to return to our fundamental commitments and focus on the end, a fulfilment of all that is and has been. After all, it might give us a new beginning.

Grace and peace, Alan.