some food for thought on local mission...

One of my favourite reads is the Weary Pilgrim.  Ron often has very interesting things to say.  I was reminded of a recent post of his this afternoon, after a local get together of some Anglicans who are interested in mission. Just a bit of a discussion starter, that's all:

Get rid of your building...move back into your neighborhoods where you live, meet in peoples houses (and no I'm not talking house church ). Meet around a meal, invite the neighbors. Talk about issues in the neighborhood/ community. Talk about life, community, work...weave common threads into the conversation. Talk about the Kingdom, Jesus his redemptive imagination of a new creation. Invite, eat and talk...something very mysterious and communal happens in the midst of food and conversation.

Now if you've spread your church out into the surrounding community and neighborhood like salt and yeast, you're wondering how to keep it all together. Years ago that might have been an issue, but in the world of high speed technology it's not. Find someone who has some techno savvy, a people person, a connector, who can be your community network person. (this might be your only paid staff person, it would be money well spent ).

Maybe once a month, rent a hall, get together as a larger community...share stories about what the smaller groups are doing. Have an agape meal, a huge potluck.

Get rid of your paid pastor... (There, that should be good for allot of hate mail), but honestly in this day and age do we need to pay someone to teach. I've been in the church for almost 30 years, and really I've heard nothing new...it's mostly recycled, and like doing another lap on the track. There is great teaching that can be accessed on the Internet, allot of colleges and seminaries have downloads, pod casts. Again this is something your network guy could set up. And hey, lets release people to use there spiritual gifts. Release people to teach, do pastoral visits, healing ministries...

Make Mission your Mission...Now that you have eliminated most of your expenses build the Kingdom. Make mission a core value, make it apart of the DNA of your community. Mission should not be a ministry, it needs to be relocated into the heart of the community. Think local and global. Make it the responsibility of the smaller groups in the neighborhood/ community to react to any needs they see in there locality. Look at global projects the larger community can invest in.

Comments

[scott p.]

In this day and age, do we need to pay someone to teach? Probably not.
Will we need someone to discern which of the freely available pre-packaged teaching material is worthwhile and which is heretical, irrelevant or light-weight? Hmmm... That sounds like a full time job, and I'm not sure I'd trust it to the network guy. ;-)

In olden times, there was nothing new under the sun either... but yet they still found some room for full time teachers and preachers.

[quinn]

I've been in the church for almost 30 years, and really I've heard nothing new...

I have two thoughts on this:
a) if after 30 years all that's been heard is 'mostly recycled, and like doing another lap on the track,' maybe it's time to look for a new church...
b) I can't help but be reminded of this Sunday's reading from Acts 17:21. 'All the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but hearing and telling something new.' A danger to be on the watch for is making an idol out of 'something new.' The gospel, of course, needs to always be communicated in fresh and relevant ways, but ultimately my straying heart needs to hear the same good news again and again and again.

[joseph]

All true, but what do you make of his three main items: churches (especially missional ones) don't need to own buildings; mission work does not need to be done by paid professionals (perhaps a stab at the culture of clericalism - it's the priest's job...) and the real extent of our engagement with our context?

If we were to plant a church, what might it look like?

[Malcolm+]

"Will we need someone to discern which of the freely available pre-packaged teaching material is worthwhile and which is heretical, irrelevant or light-weight? Hmmm... That sounds like a full time job, and I'm not sure I'd trust it to the network guy. ;-)"

And some of us are even less sure about trusting it to the network guy if the network guy is a Network guy. ;-)

Seriously though, I like the way he's going, but I'm not sure he's got it quite right.

Certainly the buildings can be a drain - but they are also a presence. The problem is they often aren't a very effective presence these days if they are simply big buildings that sit more or less empty through most of the week.

Likewise, the cost of a priest is not insignificant. (For fun, I was looking at the Episcopal Church Deployment Office info. Lot's of small churches with clergy compensation of $35-60K per annum - presumably including housing. But I was gobsmacked by the one with a range of $120-160K - and that's just a rector on an enormous staff.)

One problem I've seen is that ridding themselves of the cost of the priest does nothing if church is now supply clergy on Sunday.

In this diocese, I've seen parishes get rid of their building and / or their fulltime clergy. The result has been accelerated decline.

I suspect that some of it has to do with the "why."

Did we get rid of the building to unload a costly set of line items? Or did we do it to redirect resources to mission?

Did we decide not to replace the rector because we can still get Sunday services at a cost of $300 per month instead of $4000 per month? Or did we do it with the intention that we would all seek to fulfill the ministry of the whole people of God?

Were we managing decline? Or were we building mission?

Much of the Church has been managing decline for more than a generation now. Some of the tactics we've used (locally ordained priests, yolking congregations into ever larger multi-point parishes) were not necessarily bad ideas. But they were done for the wrong reason.

We didn't yolk two viable four point parishes to create an eight point parish with two priests and a mission focus. We yolked two nonviable four point parish to create a barely viable eight point parish - which continued to decline.

We didn't ordain local clergy as a means of responding to a vocation to create a missioned focussed community with a variety of ministries. We did it as a way to provide sacramental leadership on the cheap.

I'm not arguing against either multi-point parishes or locally ordained clergy. But if we do these things, we should do these things for the right reason.

I think that moving beyond buildings has no small merit. But what about retaining the "presence" by opening a storefront ministry in a mall? St. Whatsits, West Edmonton perhaps? What about linking that with a few other congregations in more or less that part of the city? What about having the parish clergy visibly doing the Offices at hours suitable to the mall populace - ie, Matins 45 minutes before the mall opens and evensong 45 minutes after the mall closes?

An open door where people see it, and can walk through it.

A range of offerings - from bad coffee to good books (and Good Books as well, of course.)

Just some thoughts I've been thinking.

[Steve L]

I declined posting a response when I first saw the post. As one not yet ordained I am thankful that +Don won't give me a collar so I can wave my hands over the cookie and wine. To me, and I presume Don, the Sacrament is more meaningful than that. And that route has be suggested however cooler heads prevailed and I have to take the prescribed courses.

The mall ministry has been tried, I don't remember where, but it required a less denomination specific format. That said there are seven days a week when other denominations do a day or half day. In the view of overall declining attendance in the classical churches this might be worth revisiting. I have a RC friend who runs a mall store catering to religious oriented materials and we have a religious bookstore downtown. Perhaps the Mall Mission might be nothing more than a shoulder to cry on but that is still a mission. Those working would have to agree on introducing visitors and probably re-introducing some to Christ's Message. A mechanism to offer information on all the denominations would be necessary. How ever I KNOW there will be conflict in the message as we see amongst the churches. And I can see the ACoC bishop saying 'not if the ANiC Church is there'. Sigh, I broke it before we even opened the doors.

Perhaps because I am cradle Anglican I not keen on the idea of abandoning structures and paid clergy. In my case I will not be paid as the Government of Canada is footing the tab for the rest of my life as of July. The church building is a subliminal reminder of God's presence.

Home groups are a good adjunct to churches but IMHO not a replacement, if anything they are the cornerstones to plants.

We are not in decline, we started with nothing and here we are. We are one link in a growing chain of a new reformation. Sydney's AB put it in perspective. "We don't build fences to pen in sheep, we dig wells for them to come and drink from"

[Tim]

Personally I doubt if most established churches are going to get rid of their buildings and their paid clergy and make mission their major budget item. They have too much of a vested interest in the old Christendom models. Cradle Anglicanism developed entirely under Christendom, so it's not surprising that cradle Anglicans are resistant to Ron's ideas.

Where these ideas might be useful is in giving us more flexibility in the planting of new congregations. For a long time new congregations have struggled under the hegemony of the Traditional Anglican Model, which is cumbersome and expensive to start and maintain.

Funnily enough, the model Ron suggests bears an uncanny resemblance to the churches the apostles planted in the first century. They seemed to do quite well, too.

[alex]

What do churches normally spend on staff vs apportionment vs missions vs church costs? I know our budget was for about 50% staff, 15-20% apportionment, 15% missions and the balance to support the internal church workings (Sunday School, music teams, supplies, building, etc). The "missions" portion excludes fundraising for short-term mission trips like for the Youth, SOMA, etc.

Is that comparable to other churches? I'm curious because I don't have any comparison.

[scott p.]

These are all primarily logistical issues being discussed, and they depend heavily on the nature of the problem which the proposed solution (the Church) is to solve. As Malcolm+ touches upon, the right logistical approach depends most upon the, "why".

"Now that you have eliminated most of your expenses build the Kingdom."

This is unfortunate phrasing - it places logistics first. I suspect eliminating "most of our expenses" is an endless road to tread (whoever shall fund the budget-cutting committee?).

Logistics have to be secondary, sorted out by a constant questioning of "Does the Kingdom-building we are doing need it?"

1 - Integrating with the community and having a church building aren't mutually exclusive. I might suggest that integrating with the community could uncover larger needs or spawn larger initiatives which in turn would benefit from a dedicated building. The existence of a building certainly doesn't preclude me from having the neighbors over for dinner.

2 - I suspect that there's no hard requirement that teachers and pastors need to be paid and supported full time, but in the absence of paid clergy an alternate model of leadership needs to be supplied. Does it fall entirely on the network guy to co-ordinate the elders? How are questions of spiritual authority resolved? If Kingdom-building leads to a person being called to full time ministry requiring support from the church, is this acceptable? Even the early church had full-time apostles, and (funnily enough) they discovered a use for buildings, too.

3 - Mission is not a separate ministry, and it will be the source of expenses. But I maintain that you have to approach it from a perspective of "What do we need to do to support X" where X is something real and tangible.

[Steve L]

Of interest the Diocese of Brandon Cathedral has a quarter million dollar budget, more or less. One Dean, a clerk and a maintenance man, that's it. Plus a huge utility commitment. It doesn't help their deficit of $12,000 is ballooning at over $1000 a week. The cure is probably extreme, close the two smaller churches in the parish.

The Church of the Resurrection is in a facility where we are guests of the 7th Day folks, works very well, but I expect we will outgrow it eventually.

[Troy]

This is interesting.

I wonder, what is the difference, is there a difference between “neighbourly” and church planting/missions etc…?

At church, worship in a church building, I think some amount of evangelism has already taken place for those that are there… hopefully.

Is loving one’s neighbour evangelism? I don’t know, I also admit that I don’t know the names of my neighbours.