Word to the Elders\/Leaders \u2013 chapter 5:1+<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nGrouped together, these obligations deal with Christian hospitality and living in community, spirituality, mission and testimony, relationship with the civil authorities, family relationships, and pastoral leadership.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
Spirituality<\/b><\/p>\n
Over a number of months, a small group of us clergy, have been studying a text \u201cImagining a Church in the Spirit: A Task for Mainline Congregations\u201d by Ben Campbell Johnson and Glenn McDonald.\u00a0 The authors argue that the church is facing a crisis, not the crisis of decreased membership or declining income, which have become our riding horse, but the loss of the vision of the presence of the living Christ among us, a perspective which I want to suggest is pointing to a loss of the sense of holiness of the Church.\u00a0 They express it this way:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe consequence of losing the sense of Christ\u2019s presence in and among us here and now has changed the vital fellowship of believers into an institution<\/b>; and the institution, rather than radiating the presence of the Spirit, often shields us from it.\u00a0 Forgetting the presence among us has produced lifeless gatherings of the baptized with neither vision nor passion for their mission.<\/b>\u201d<\/p>\n
One manifestation of this is the attitude of many of our members to the call to undertake responsibilities within the life of the congregation.\u00a0 The excuses are multitudinous and those who condescend indicate that they are willing to help but not be in charge of anything.\u00a0 Likewise, it is a feature of us Anglicans that, when tackled regarding the skills bank which we have in the diocese, and at the same time find it so hard to get persons to assist with activities within the life of the congregation or its mission, there is the frequent retort, \u201cbut nobody ever asked me\u201d.\u00a0 Any yet, we console ourselves with the argument that it is because the newer churches and those that are growing have lively music and don\u2019t use liturgy why they are growing.\u00a0 Perhaps it is that they are passionate about their call to a life of holiness, fully conscious of the living presence of Christ in their midst.<\/p>\n
Consequently, we go through the motions of being a church but without spiritually transformative power, passion and spiritual urgency; function to legitimate the social, economic, and political practices of the culture; and fulfill societal needs like caring for hurting members, marrying, burying, and baptizing.\u00a0 The bottom line, <\/b>according to McDonald and Johnson, is the ineffectiveness of our congregations to give a powerful, life-changing witness to the gospel, or our failure to make much of an impression on the emerging culture.<\/b><\/p>\n
One of the signs of this awareness of the presence of Christ is the practice of the discipline of prayer.\u00a0 And while our prayer life is centred around the liturgy in corporate expressions, the evidence of the practice of the discipline of prayer in private leaves a lot to be desired from the springling who participate in bible studies and prayer meetings, and the number of Anglicans whose worse public experience of embarrassment is to be asked to say a prayer in a corporate context.<\/b><\/p>\n
Johnson and McDonald make the point that Prayer is the life breath of the church; it is the natural posture of the people of God; it is the means of healing and the source of empowerment.\u00a0 <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Archbishop Enos Nuttall, the centenary of whose death we celebrate this year, in his 1912 Synod Charge had this to say:<\/p>\n
Our greatest need of all in the Jamaica Church \u2026 is spiritual power.\u00a0 We have a provincial, diocesan, parochial and congregational organization fitted to deal with varied conditions and requirements\u2026 We have abundant machinery some of which will no doubt require to be adapted from time to time to changing circumstances: but we do not need more machinery.\u00a0 What we need is power\u2026 It is not surprising that many Christians\u2026 have a vague idea of what is meant by spiritual power.\u00a0 It is thought of as something intangible, fanciful or unreal \u2013 that is and at the most, a mode of expression with little reality behind it\u2026 We have the agencies \u2013 the means of contact with the Divine, and yet we fail to feel the motive force, the power, the current of Divine Life stirring our own life.\u00a0 The Holy Spirit is more than an influence: He is a Person.\u00a0 His Presence is a Personal Presence:\u00a0 He is Christ\u2019s Representative with us, as the ever available source of our spiritual strength and wisdom and influence and power.\u00a0 His contact with the human soul is close, personal, real.\u201d<\/p>\n
Community, Hospitality and Testimony<\/b><\/p>\n
A church or a Diocese of spiritual power as urged by the late Archbishop must also be a living community to which members can feel a sense of belonging and one which exercises hospitality to the stranger.<\/p>\n
We have noted that the church is called upon to be holy because it is of the very nature of God to be holy.\u00a0 In a similar fashion, Henry G. Brinton in his book the Welcoming Congregation<\/i>, makes the point that hospitality is clearly a quality of God and is meant to be a quality of God\u2019s people as well.\u00a0 Thus the covenant community of the Old Testament was constantly reminded how they were to treat the stranger and the alien in their midst as they too were aliens in the land of Egypt.<\/p>\n
William Willimon, that outstanding Methodist Bishop and pastoral theologian in the Foreword<\/i> to the Welcoming Church begins with the same point made by Johnson and McDonald, namely, that most mainline churches are in decline, but not all.\u00a0 What is it that makes the difference?\u00a0 He makes two comments which are deserving of our attention.\u00a0 The first is that he has learnt that hospitality may be the key factor in a faithfully growing church. \u00a0The second is that he has learnt that the main difference between a congregation in decline and one with a future is the difference between practicing the faith for the exclusive benefit of \u201cinsiders\u201d (the members of that congregation) or passionate concern for the \u201coutsiders\u201d (those who have yet to hear and to respond to the gospel).<\/p>\n
In developing his ideas which are consistent with this position by Willimon, and in proposing a new paradigm, Brinton makes the following comment about church members:<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, we often go to church with the attitude of a guest, not a host- we are concerned more about ourselves than about those who visit with us.\u00a0 Consider this mind-set: as guest, we are focused primarily on having a good time.\u00a0 We enter the church, and look for our friends.\u00a0 We pass personal judgment on the furniture, d\u00e9cor, and feel of the place.\u00a0 We sit where we want to sit, with little regard to making room for others.\u00a0 We listen to the church\u2019s music, and decide whether we enjoy it or not.\u00a0 As guests, we are basically consumers, concerned about our personal comfort.\u00a0 The experience is all about us.<\/p>\n
According to Johnson and McDonald, the vision of the Church as a community inhabited by the Spirit of the risen Lord has been lost in the building of institutions.\u00a0 The church as an organization has often become one more social institution alongside others.\u00a0 It is true that Christ dwells in each of us, but not all of Christ lives in any one of us.\u00a0 Because of this, the fullness of Christ can only be known in community.<\/p>\n
In addition to having a sacramental life \u2013 Baptism and the Holy Eucharist, in a context of worship and fellowship, to be a living community, the church must be a place where members share in the life stories and sufferings of each other, along with the demonstration of affirmation, caring, and ministry, which cements together members of the congregation.<\/p>\n
Archbishop Rowan Williams puts it this way:<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026 the gathering of baptized people is therefore not a convocation of those who are privileged, elite and separate, but of those who have accepted what it means to be in the heart of a needy, contaminated, messy world.<\/p>\n
To be with Jesus is to be where human suffering and pain are found, and it is also to be with other human beings who are invited to be with Jesus. And that, says the New Testament, is a gift as well as sometimes a struggle and an embarrassment. It is a gift because in this community of baptized people we receive life from others\u2019 prayer and love, and we give the prayer and love that others need.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many of our disaffected and marginal members who stay away from participation in the life of the congregation, as well as many who leave to join other religious assemblies, do so, not because of any theological or biblical disgruntlement with us, but because of the lack of a sense of caring, fellowship, and community.\u00a0 I found it interesting that in the St. George\u2019s congregation in Grand Cayman, they are developing a mentoring system among members.\u00a0 Recognizing that members tend to sit in the same place Sunday after Sunday, they are developing a system by which members are to become mentors to those who sit in the same pew and to be in touch in such a way that when one is absent from church to make that telephone call to check up on the welfare of the person so that they may not just fall through the cracks as happens to so many Anglicans.<\/p>\n
Additionally and most importantly, for mission to be effective, according to Johnson and McDonald, it must be grounded in a living community; otherwise it becomes good works without Christ, humanitarianism without spiritual grounding.<\/b><\/p>\n
The living community of Christ embraces all kinds of persons and opens itself to change as they enter it.\u00a0 In this regard it is distressing to hear how several congregations respond to the youth who seek involvement in the life of the church as well as visitors who do not fit some people\u2019s definition of the ones suitable for membership. A major challenge facing us as a diocese is how to get members of established congregations around which new housing developments are taking place to reach out in mission to welcome new members to their community and church.\u00a0 A hospitable Christian community has as its primary interest the reception of person, and goes way beyond a hand-clap during the notices and an invitation to sign a visitors\u2019 book at the west door, a book into which no one ever looks, and a west door that means nothing to a visitor who has no sense of the application of such labels to the church building.<\/p>\n
Mission<\/b><\/p>\n
The mission of the church is to re-present Jesus Christ to the world in an incarnate, communal form. This involves addressing the question of what is Jesus Christ calling a particular congregation to be and do, in this place, at this time?\u00a0 This is precisely what our strategic visioning and planning exercise is intended to do for the congregations across the diocese.\u00a0 There are some who would like to see a strategic plan prepared and sent out from Church House and which is to be implemented at the local level.\u00a0 The truth is that the exercise of mission across the Diocese requires taking seriously the social, political, and geographic situation in which a particular congregation finds itself, and utilization of the gifts and resources of the people of God<\/i>.\u00a0 It is an imperative which calls for the involvement of all members of the community of faith.<\/p>\n
Archbishop Nuttall also had some words for this diocese on the matter of the mission of the church:<\/p>\n
\u201cNo real steady permanent and rapid advance of the work of Christ upon earth can take place till the primary, essential fact is and must always be acted upon that every Christian is and must be always and everywhere a Missionary.\u00a0 Every day is a wasted day for a Christian in which something is not said or done or some influence exercised which makes others feel how really we love Christ, how deeply we value the Christian Society, how entirely the Spirit of Christ and the influences acting upon us through the Christian religion permeate our conduct and mould our character.\u201d\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
Leadership in the Church<\/b><\/p>\n
In a world in which matters of religion are treated as personal concerns, we need to remind ourselves that the church of God which is called to holiness is one which is guided by leadership which is called of God.\u00a0 Leadership, lay or ordained, is the action of authorized persons to equip, nurture, and guide a particular people of God in their mission to represent Jesus Christ to the world, and who must be in a constantly growing relation to Christ himself.\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
We have only recently elected new church committees across the Diocese, and the question which we should have asked then, and must ask even now, is on what basis have we made those selections, and what do they bring to the leadership of the Church?\u00a0 Are they the ones who contribute the most to the financial life of the congregation or the ones whose family have been running things for ages?\u00a0 The spiritual leader must have the capacity to evoke and nurture community. <\/i><\/b>\u00a0Community refers to participation in a vision that transcends the individual in the church, but it also denotes the interpersonal relations within the church.\u00a0 According to Johnson and McDonald, a minimum requirement for leaders is that they know and be able to articulate the vision of the particular church and have the relational skills to create and maintain relationships with members of the church.\u00a0 Because of the critical nature of community for the mission of the church, leaders must have both visionary and relational skills in order to be generative leaders.<\/p>\n
At this point in the life of the Diocese when we are talking about visioning and planning, the matter of leadership is of vital importance. Vision relates the church to the future; it visualizes how things might be. Visionary leaders have the power to arouse the enthusiasm and stir the excitement that energizes a congregation. The inescapable truth is, however, that pastoral leadership is essential for the building up of the kind of vibrant congregational life which is here envisaged. The administrators of one of the Dioceses in the United States of America sent me some information concerning their implementation of a system of strategic planning for the Diocese and appraisal for their clergy and found that in just about every situation effective pastoral leadership made the difference in the performance of the local congregations.<\/p>\n
Johnson and McDonald offer a disturbing assessment of ineffective pastoral leadership:<\/p>\n
If the pastor does not have a vision or embrace and proclaim the vision shared by others, the church cannot be driven by a vision.\u00a0 Most likely this church will fix its attention on the past, defend the status quo, become blind to changes in its context and back its way into the future.\u00a0 Reality for this visionless church lies in the past, and it will soon die because it has no idea where it is going.<\/p>\n
Family Relationships<\/b><\/p>\n
All of us are the product of some kind of family, belong to some kind of family, and live out our lives daily within the context of some expression of family, and yet, one of the most challenging tasks is that of asking the Jamaican, or better yet the Church to define what is a family. The Resolution on the Family which was adopted by the Provincial Synod in Guyana in 2009, acknowledges from the very outset the fact that there is no single form or pattern which family takes in the Caribbean, and for our purpose, Jamaica in particular.<\/p>\n
It has become fashionable these days to blame every ill in society on the breakdown of family life, with a naivety which suggests that we once had a thing called \u201cgood family life\u201d which every home experienced, and it is only this generation of parents, and young people in particular, who have come and destroyed the good thing which this country had going for it. Perhaps we need as church to begin to approach the issue of family with a new level of honesty and with a measure of confession for our contribution to the state of the family in today\u2019s Jamaica.<\/p>\n
While marriage in its legal definition has been the ideal to which the church has given its blessing, the reality is that it has never been normative for our society and indeed the members of the church.\u00a0 The Registrar General Department can provide the statistics for marriages for the Jamaica society which indicate that these have not changed for more than a century.\u00a0 The only change has been with the tourists who come here for the marriage packages which the hospitality industry has to offer.\u00a0 If we would get beyond our state of denial, we can ask ourselves, how many anniversaries of marriage are celebrated in the congregations of our Diocese on a given Sunday, among the membership present?<\/p>\n
We have pursued a strategy over many years of exclusion by which we have relegated to the margins young women who become pregnant, excluded the majority of mothers of our congregations who have to raise a family either as a single mother or while living in a stable relationship with a partner who has no commitment to legal marriage.\u00a0 We have absolved the males of their involvement in the family by our non-engagement of them, and have been satisfied with excluding the women from access to the grace of God through the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, up to their death, if their partner does not accede to be legally married.\u00a0 All of this while the children in our congregations are being nurtured by these mothers, who themselves sit in the pews and can only come up for a blessing, for as many decades as their situation remains the same.\u00a0 And then we wonder what is happening to family life in this nation.<\/p>\n
In the Epistle of Peter, his injunction to the family is to exercise mutuality in relationships and to set examples so that the unbelieving spouse may be brought to faith.\u00a0 If we are to be faithful to this mandate, we must first claim our historical identity and how that has shaped family in the life of our nation.\u00a0 Secondly, we must apologise to those many families, especially mothers whom we have marginalized but who have, through the quality of their family life and parenting, produced leaders of state, church and nation, and continue to provide the bulk of the membership of our congregations and Sunday Schools.\u00a0 Thirdly, we must position ourselves to be involved in the life of families, without the distinctions we have perpetuated, and help our people to affirm themselves, because, people who cannot affirm and love themselves, cannot do the same for spouse and children.\u00a0 We must get involved in helping men and women to understand their individual and joint roles in providing the environment for socialization, nurture, and stability necessary for raising rounded children.\u00a0 In this regard we acknowledge the initiative of the Mothers Union in its parenting program, even as we note that we again relegate this responsibility to the women, including many of whom were themselves marginalized along the way.\u00a0 We must help our children to understand the nature of positive and wholesome relationships, so that they can recognize abusive relationships and grow to enter into positive relationships that will later make for positive family life. We must also remove those barriers which restrict the sacramental grace to only parties to one family form. \u00a0By a strange twist of irony, if not scandal, across the Communion and the world, we are now talking about the grace of God that is unquestionably mediated to two persons of the same sex who seek to marry each other, while denying that it is possible for a man and a woman who have raised their family in a stable relationship into adulthood but without being legally married to be eligible recipients of God\u2019s sacramental grace.<\/p>\n
Relationship to Civil Authorities<\/b><\/p>\n
Recalling the fact that Peter urges his audience to accept the authority of human institutions and to respect civil authority, we must ask what does that have to say to us the holy people of God in our time?\u00a0 We have recently gone through the General Elections and have been reminded, not only of the deep divide among the population in terms of political loyalties but, we have also been made vividly aware of those who\u00a0 have excluded themselves from involvement in the political process which they consider corrupt and impotent to make the changes necessary for the progress of the nation, as well as those who, for religious reasons, see participation in the political life of the nation as participation in a system that is inherently evil.<\/p>\n
Any serious examination of the biblical tradition will reveal that God not only is represented as creating human beings to live in community, but that he directed the process of nation-building for Israel as it moved from being a mere collection of clans to become a nation with the evolution of a system of leadership and governance.\u00a0 Leaders were appointed and challenged not to copy the pattern of kingship present among their neighbours which was oppressive, exploitative and unjust.\u00a0 Instead their pattern of leadership\/kingship was to be God himself.\u00a0 So those who aspired to, or were chosen to represent the interest of the people in the life of Israel, were to demonstrate justice, righteousness, truth, and love in their dealings with their people.\u00a0 The New Testament makes a similar affirmation about political leadership in the divine purpose for the ordering of the life of society.<\/p>\n
St. Paul speaks to the place of leaders in the social and political realms.\u00a0 In Romans 13:1 we read:<\/p>\n
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.<\/p>\n
So then, civil authorities whether in politics or otherwise are not to be perceived with negativity and as if this automatically places one outside of the faith tradition.\u00a0 The only dishonourable thing about political involvement, for example, is when those who are elected forget that they are accountable agents, accountable to God and to the people they represent, and when they become intoxicated with power and become arrogant, corrupt, and pursue pathways to self-aggrandizement at public expense.<\/p>\n
Tom Wright, in his book, Creation, Power and Truth: The Gospel in a World of Cultural Confusion expresses it this way:<\/p>\n
\u2026 the church must affirm that the creator God intends the world to be ruled by properly constituted authorities, but insists that they be held to account, and that it is part of the task of the church to do this, to speak the truth to power, to affirm power in its proper use and to critique it in its regular abuse.<\/p>\n
The church must, in short, learn from Jesus before Pilate how to speak the truth to<\/i> power rather than for<\/i><\/b> power or merely against<\/i><\/b> power.<\/p>\n
To this one may add the qualifier, not to exercise this role only when it is a PNP or JLP government in power.<\/p>\n
Former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, speaks of our baptismal identity and outworking of the life of holiness in a way that is most relevant in this regard and which I have taken the liberty to paraphrase:<\/p>\n
For many centuries the Church has thought of Jesus as anointed by God to live out a threefold identity: that of prophet, priest and king. The baptized person identifies with Jesus in these three ways of being human which characterize and define his unique humanity. As we grow into his life and humanity these three ways come to characterize us as well. The life of the baptized is a life of prophecy, priesthood and royalty.<\/p>\n
The prophetic role exercised within the context of the church calls us to ask questions of each other.\u00a0 \u2018Have you forgotten what you\u2019re here for? \u2018Have you forgotten the gift God gave you?\u2019\u00a0 Accordingly, we have to be prophets to one another, even as it calls us to ask of the wider society, concerning inequality, injustice and corruption, and those other questions which make for our health and survival as a people.<\/p>\n
\u2026 as baptized people are drawn into the priestliness of Jesus, they are called upon to mend shattered relationships between God and the world, through the power of Christ and his Spirit. As baptized people, we are in the business of building bridges. We are in the business, once again, of seeing situations where there is breakage, damage and disorder, and bringing into those situations the power of God in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in order to rebuild something. \u2026we offer our own service and devotion as best we can in the bridge-building process.<\/p>\n
The \u2018royal\u2019 calling is about how we freely engage in shaping our lives and our human environment in the direction of God\u2019s justice, showing in our relationships and our engagement with the world something of God\u2019s own freedom, God\u2019s own liberty to heal and restore. So the baptized life is a life that gives us the resource and strength to ask awkward but necessary questions of one another and of our world. It is a life that looks towards reconciliation, building bridges, repairing shattered relationships. It is a life that looks towards justice and liberty, the liberty to work together to make human life in society some kind of reflection of the wisdom and order and justice of God.<\/p>\n
If the church is to function with integrity and be an effective agent for the Mission of God in the world, it must understand what is its very nature and calling, failing which it will find itself seeking to justify its existence and measure its effectiveness by the world\u2019s assessment of it.\u00a0 The call of the Church to be a holy people is not a call to the individualistic spirituality and pietism which has characterized so much of 21st<\/sup> century Christianity.\u00a0 Neither is it a call to the kind of spiritual apathy and laziness which characterize the life of so many within the church who profess Christ and who bear no witness to the world regarding their faith commitment.\u00a0 The Church is called to know to whom it belongs and whose character it must reflect in its personal and corporate life and in its witness to the world within which it is situated.\u00a0 Christian spirituality is, therefore, not about being individualistic and being involved in some kind of mirror gazing activity as we admire and live with ourselves, neither is it a call to sit in judgement on the rest of society, when its own life is lacking in integrity and holiness.\u00a0 It is a call to reflect in a positive way a life which reflects the very nature and character of the holy God who has called it into being in Jesus Christ.<\/p>\nAMEN.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Theme:\u00a0 The Church: Called to be a Holy People 1 Peter 1:15-16 Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” The Church came in for some public scrutiny at the beginning of 2016, in an editorial…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":5291,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sermon","ctfw-has-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/610"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5298"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5302,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5298\/revisions\/5302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicandioceseja.org\/copy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a>1 Peter 1:15-16<\/p>\n