A couple of weeks ago I was privileged to be able to go back to Geraldton to conduct a wedding. It was a small private affair but I was struck again by those beautiful words in the traditional vows, “from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us do part.” It’s about commitment to a relationship. It’s about today and every day from now on being different to yesterday. It is about covenant.
I was talking to someone soon after that about where I thought the church was headed. I said that wherever we were headed, we needed to have “a different future” and that it needed to be “from this day forward”. There is little doubt in anyone’s mind that as church we are no longer what we used to be. We are unsure about the focus of our calling, we are uncertain about where we are going and we are doing the things that every troubled relationship ends up doing. We are going through the motions of love, longing for a recovery of the romance of yesteryear and counting the pennies to make sure we have enough to last out our days. “For better” is gone, “in health” is out of the question and in the “richer or poorer” bit we just want the books to balance.
Initially the Church was founded as a company of people who walked with Jesus. It moved forward as inter-connected groups who broke bread together, praising God and enjoying the favour of the people. They were one in heart and mind as they shared their possessions, and there was not a needy person among them as they testified to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. But then they became organised. They created management structures and dressed their leaders in different clothing. The leaders took over doing the stuff and controlling the way things are done.
The people initially were happy. But times changed, the people realised that they could do things by themselves in all kinds of areas of their work. They could take the initiative and they could make new discoveries (This goes all the way back to Galileo!). Initially they were happy to be led in their spiritual lives but then found that it was boring and unfulfilling and they began to leave the church and subsequent generations grew up without knowledge of the faith.
I have four pictures on the wall in my office – they are the four congregations in which I have served, two in South Africa and two in Western Australia. They remind me that the church is about the people who gather together week after week to worship God, to bear witness to their faith and to serve the world in His name. It is easy to forget this: we can become caught up in bureaucracy, in the system and in our all-so-important committees. And the Church has done exactly that, in most denominations and in virtually every place!
Our different future is not to become congregation-based, but to recognise that the heart of the church is the people who meet in congregations to worship God. Everything else about the church exists to serve them and to help them be more effective and influential where they are. We need to be committed to this with all our resources. We will, I believe need significantly stronger lay leadership as well as ministers who are trained to resource several lay-led communities out of regional centres. We must create a renewed enthusiasm for the gospel in all its meanings as good news for this world and the next. We have an attractive gospel but we have allowed it to become dusty.
On Sunday, in one of our smallest congregations, I heard a message about God’s vision: that it is big and full of adventure. Sometimes, the preacher said, we think we know what that mission is and we want to keep on going to Bithynia (Acts 16:7) but God wants us in Macedonia. The question that struck me was this, “Who is the Macedonian that is calling out to you?” Paul and his party changed plans and they headed into another direction and from that day forward, the church had a completely different future.
Over the next while, I plan to share with you about plans I believe we should think about changing and about new directions we should be taking. Watch this space.
Rev David de kock
General Secretary, Uniting Church WA
