Churches in a time of Change

The last edition of The Flame quoted Alan J. Roxburgh on the cries being faced by churches. This issue proceeds with Roxburgh’s insights

“Questions of marginality are… for those who have assumed that their Christian existence is the cultural norm.. A helpful framework for interpreting this experience is Victor Turner’s notion of liminality.. A way of understanding the church’s current experience of marninalisation. Liminality is a term that describes the transition process accompanying a change of state or social position. A group moves through what is described as a “tunnel” experience when it is shifted into a marginal situation within the culture. Liminality offers a rich resource of experiential maps that can suggest a way ahead for churches in framing a response to their changed social location….

The once visible Christian symbols of Christmas have been rendered invisible. Naturally, Christians in this context feel themselves marginalized. This represents a genuine betwixt-and-between stage for Christians in our culture. At the same time, there appears to be little conversation among leaders of the churches about the kinds of transformation required for an engagement with the culture. In current discussions of the church and its relationship to our culture, the description and diagnosis of this new marginal experience is usually well developed. What is largely absent, however, is an extended discussion of constructive directions for the church. This should come as no surprise. Turner consistently points out that when a group moves into a liminal state, there is an initial period of confusion, a groping about in order to understand the new location.

Furthermore, in this early stage, when the group recognizes that it has been separated from its former embeddedness in social roles, this creates a sense of ‘outsiderhood’. The basic drive of a group in this initial period is to find a way of returning to its former state. The need to put things back together is strong. Again, this describes well the current responses of the churches. There has been an awakening to the disturbing new experience of the liminal...

It is as if the once central place of the church has suddenly been removed, and Christians find themselves in a dark tunnel that offers little direction toward the future. All of this is bound to create a desire for returning and recapturing the secure places of the past. What can be observed are strong impulses to strip off this new dress and return to the comfort of the former uniform. But it is in the nature of liminality that no such return to the previous social location is possible….

Clearly, there will need to be some form of re-engagement, but this will not be to the same place nor to any centre. On the contrary, if the current liminal experience of the church is properly understood, it will be seen as an opportunity to move away from an accommodation with modernity that has been detrimental to the church and its mission. The present liminality is one that offers the potential for a fresh missionary engagement in a radically changing social context.”

From Alan J. Roxburgh, The Missionary Congregation, Leadership, & Liminality, Trinity Press, Harrisburg, Penn (1997), pp 23-27

Moving to effective identity and mission

Roxburgh writes, “The third, and final, phase in the rite of passage is reintegration into the social group as new person with a fresh identity… God promises Israel that through the process of wilderness cleansing, she will become a new people. This kind of reintegration is possible only after the liminal has been accepted as a marginal experience that leads to a new, transformative relationship…” (pp 28-29)

The Bible helps us in changing times

God called Abram to leave his comfortable life-style for an unmapped destination. He “looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” (Hebrews 11: 10).

Joseph was called by God and given visions that related to his later ministry. First he was sold into slavery. He had to learn patience over many years, “until what he had said came to pass the word of the Lord tested him” (Psalm 105: 19).

The Israelites had a four hundred year sojourn in Egypt before they were liberated to go to the Promised land. They then had a generation of wandering in the wilderness.

At a much later time they were exiled to Babylon on account of their stubborn adherence to sin. The Lord returned them.

At the end of the Old Testament period there was a long hiatus, a sense of unfulfilment. This created a vacuum into which the Son of God could be incarnated, to establish a new exodus from the bondage of sin, and to establish a new people of God (Jew and Gentile).

Many times his people have had to negotiate massive change in society and circumstances, Many of the great new mission advances have occurred as recently as the last 200 years. Now is the time to ask, seek and knock to find the new mission gateways for our time.

So “let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross…and is seated..at the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12: 1-2)

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