For me this is a really of the moment prospectus. Partly because for some time now I've been thinking that we should be discerning the way forward for churches by really listening to the vocations in formation of our members -a sort of corporate guidance exercise. And of course this means that we should be actually living our church lives, for want of a better way of describing it, contemplatively. Part of this is that I have been challenged in the past by the Quaker discernment process as a way of trying to take spiritual accompaniment to the next level which is corporate, congregational discernment. But I have also wanted to take seriously my Charismatic movement roots and the evangelical referencing to Scripture, not to mention taking seriously what we learn (positively and otherwise) from church history about how we do or don't discern good ways forward, or God's ways forward, in relation to our context and cultural milieu. So ... a few implicit expectations on this book; would it be as helpful, insightful and even exciting as I would hope? Was I going to find a book on my wavelength that pushed my thinking forward a bit or even a lot?
Well, yes to varying degrees. One of the unexpected things for me from this book was catching a glimpse of just how rapid and alarming is the decline of USAmerican institutional Christianity. However, this is good for reading in a British context as the stories of dealing with decline and institutional death are helpful. "At a time in Amerecan culture when more peolpe than ever are interested in spiritual practices and young people have a renewed interest in ussues of social justice, institutional religion is proving itself to be ill-equipped to respond." -quite so, it looks similar in Britain too.
In respect of decline and death, I found it particularly helpful to have a case-study of a church's good death and of the institutionally problematic but kingdom-serving resurrection. In relation to that case it was also helpful to have the author's (psychologically well -informed) psycho-spiritual reflection on the tasks ("stages") of grief and how these are important to be honoured in processes of reflection, church direction-setting and pastoral and missional work. It was good to see, too, the complexities of this named and recognised along with a basic strategy for approaching them. For example, "Some people are in denial, some are moving to acceptance; some are angry; others try to bargain for solutions. That is the state of the institutional church today." I particularly liked the way the tasks of grieving were seen also in Jesus' passion; "Even though he saw it coming, even though he spoke about it to his disciples, Jesus continued to wrestle with his fate and bargain for a different future in the garden of Gethsemane." I think that this is a very important permission-given thing to notice and draw into consideration. And a little further on, "Jesus himself worked through the denial, expressing anger at the religious authorities, bargaining in prayer for another way before accepting his fate." There is some useful reflection following that in how we do this corporately.
It was encouraging too to read of approaches to church life where a spiritual-accompaniment approach has been taken. Encouraging because this is what I think I'm finding myself increasingly drawn to. "Council meetings were transformed with the presence of a spiritual director whose function was to call the council together in prayer and reflect back on the process of the meeting from a spiritual perspective. Meetings became times of active discernment marked by the exploration of what it meant to live out the congregation's sense of mission."
And also to my liking, because it named where I've got to in my own reflections is this: "As Christians, it is the teachings of Jesus and the way of life he modeled for us that should be the center (sic) of our lives and not an institution. Churches are places where we gather, learn, share faith, and celebrate our way of life and beliefs. But the institution is not a substitute for the experience of leading a spiritual life which is primarily informed by the teachings of Jesus and the experience of God in our midst." And A few pages later we are helped o see the implications of this kind of approach for leadership: "In this model, the role of leadership is to equip people to respond in authentic ways to the stirrings of God's Spirit, to be always open to new possibilities and to use the resources of the church to translate the understanding of one's call into something tangible. To that end, leadership must be committed to ongoing prayer and discernment."
I also found helpful the insight about how communities of faith might approach things in our new spiritual context. "...communities of faith which are primarily spiritual centers don't limit spirituality to a program. Instead, spirituality, the experience of the Divine, the animation of the human spirit by the Divine Spirit, becomes the foundation upon with the church gathers ... the lesson of the sermon is put into practice more directly..." The kind of approach recommended is much like the principle that 'Sanctuary' in Bradford was constructed in the years of the early 2000s. Here there was a clear drive to build collective worship around responses in real time to the issues raised and discussed: acts of forgiveness, signing petitions, planning for actions. The founding insight in that case was seeing liturgy as repentance: a turning of ourselves to follow Christ -which meant embodying as best we could at that moment what it was we were sensing a call to. In both cases this involved "not viewing themselves as the hub or center of life in the community, members of post-modern congregations live out their faith and spiritual practice with others as equal partners to bring positive change in the world." In reading that I caught a resonance of the thinking in Raymond Fung's 'The Isaiah Vision' and Ann Morissey's 'Beyond the Good Samaritan'.
One of the other things I found myself reflecting on in reading this book is how useful the role if interim ministers can be. I think that this book could also be usefully added to interim ministers' reading lists.
Link-Love:
Rev. Louis F. Kavar Ph.D. Website
Contemporary Churches on Amazon
Rev. Louis F. Kavar Ph.D. on Facebook
Rev. Louis F. Kavar Ph.D. Website
Contemporary Churches on Amazon
Rev. Louis F. Kavar Ph.D. on Facebook
Please tag #ContemporaryChurchesSpeakeasy
Disclaimer: yes I got my e-copy of this book as a freebie in return for a promise to write a review of it. But that's as far as the deal went: I am not obliged to post a favourable review or to pull any punches. But I tend to be a generous sort and my way of appreciating a book is usually to find things that I have enjoyed thinking about or at least that have provoked my thinking further. Only after some thinking do I tend to get negatively critical.
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