The times they are a-changing – and so is the Church?

Paul Bradbury considers recent responses to religion and church among younger adults and how our ecclesiology and mission might need to be in order respond well.

A colleague of mine is fond of saying that there are two problems with the church, firstly the people and secondly the Holy Spirit. Recently it feels to me like it is the second of those ‘problems’ that has been brought most closely to our attention. The Quiet Revival report seemed to surprise everyone in its declaration of significant signs of renewal in the church, particular amongst young adults. Whilst many have expressed a resonance in the report’s findings, with anecdotal evidence of a greater openness toward and engagement with the church in recent years, the reports statistical support for that narrative nevertheless evoked surprise. Revival is of course a word resonant with hope, expectation, perhaps a dose of nostalgia, and most certainly a sense that whatever is happening is not predominantly our doing, but God’s. And it raises the question of how we respond? We have been so focussed on dealing with the problem of people – not enough of them, not enough clergy, people who need training, people who need releasing, people who need resourcing – that it’s as though we are not prepared for the rather different question of how to be the church in an era of greater openness and spiritual exploration.

The Quiet Revival report arrived in my consciousness around the same time as Lamorna Ash’s book was published. Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever charts Ash’s very personal quest to (tongue-in-cheek) ‘become a Christian in a year’, in response to the shock of discovering that two of her contemporaries have recently found faith.

Ash might well be a good example of someone within the movement of young adults highlighted in the Quiet Revival report. To provide a reason for the report’s finding the authors argue that the ‘new atheism’ which seemed to be on the ascendancy in the 2000s has lost its credibility. Hostility and apathy toward Christianity has been replaced with openness. The authors of the report also see the need to belong, the search for order and belonging as a key driver in the shift that they argue the statistics are witness to. Ash’s openness to whatever Christianity has to offer in terms of experience and exploration is boundless. And I notice that it is in the places that hold her in community: a Quaker meeting, the Iona community, the St Beuno’s retreat house, that seem to provide the places of encounter which direct her own journey most profoundly.

What both of these recent publications ought to draw out attention to however, is the rather annoying reality of the church’s critical relationship with the environment around it. It would be so much better if, in our attempts to get the people problems sorted and arrange the church as efficiently as possible to fulfil its purpose, its environment remained the same. Our job would be so much easier. Yet the truth is the church has to keep finding itself in its engagement with a constantly changing environment. ‘The world’ said John V Taylor, (a former General Secretary of the Church Mission Society) ‘is the church’s milieu’. Which at first sounds rather obvious. Except that much of the time the church acts as if the world is a rather static landscape, or worse, a kind of docile bank of resources for its own purposes.

That the world is the milieu of the church ought instead to make us far more deeply attentive to the world in all its complexity, mystery and change, than to itself. But further, theologically we have in the last century recovered a practical understanding of the world as a place where the God’s missionary Spirit is present and active. To be attentive to the change we see in the world around us, is not simply to respond in the way any organisation might, but to participate in what the Spirit is doing in the world.

It’s in this context of remarkable change in the world around us that we have brought together a series of essays and practical reflections into a book called Being the People of God. The sub-heading, ‘Missional ecclesiology in uncertain times’, is an overt reference to the fluid and challenging environment that we are in. And in many ways what each contribution to the book offers is an insight into the remarkably diverse and creative dialogue the church is engaging in between itself and the world. From traditional parishes, to church plants, pioneer ministry, fresh expressions, diaspora congregations and cathedrals, in a whole variety of contexts, each contribution is inhabiting the space in between, expressing the wrestle and the dynamic between the tradition of the church and its changing environment. There is no definitive missional ecclesiology to be gleaned here. This is not the presentation of a missional ecclesiology. Rather, it is a significant contribution to the ongoing conversation regarding how the church is being shaped, and how it might need to be shaped, in the light of its presence in the midst of a changing world.

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Paul Bradbury is a pioneer minister, freelance researcher and writer, and a visiting tutor with the Church Mission Society and Ripon College Cuddesdon.

He is the co-editor, along with Isabelle Hamley and Andy Smith, of Being the People of God, which is available to order here, with 20% off all orders before the end of July.