Hermann Sasse, a twentieth-century Lutheran theologian, had this to say regarding humanity's efforts to create an ideal church:

Ubi Christus, ibi ecclesia, 'Where Christ is, there is the church'. With this saying one of the oldest church fathers spoke of the mystery of the church. The saying also sums up Luther’s faith in the church. It is not the power of our faith, nor the holiness of our life that constitutes the church, but rather that 'Where Christ is, there is the church'. When the church is called a holy people, a communion of saints, it is not to be understood in the way it has often been understood in the history of the church: 'the church should be a holy people, therefore only the holy shall belong to her. Away with all the unholy! The honour of Christ demands it!' When the worst of sinners must be excluded from the fellowship, one must then begin to classify sins in order to determine which ones lead to exclusion. How often has not that been attempted, both in the past and more recently. How imposing was the strictness of the ancient church, when people sought to create a holy and pure church (as also happens now). Or consider the Donatists, who demanded that at least the clergy should be free of mortal sin. Whenever the attempt has been made to create an ideal church, the end result has always been bitter disappointment. The community of saints turns into a community of Pharisees.

As the Dutch theologian, Herman Bavinck, notes in the fourth volume of his Reformed Dogmatics, 'according to Scripture the characteristic essence of the church lies in the fact that it is the people of God' (298), of which Christ is the head. The church exists because Christ 'gathers, protects, and preserves for himself a community chosen for eternal life and united in true faith' (Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 54).

The church is not primarily an institution, nor is it a group of people who live perfectly holy lives or believe all the right things. To be sure, the church does have an institutional character, and its members do strive to be increasingly holy and to be faithful to Scripture in their doctrine. But none of these precede the fact that the church people of God, over which Christ is Lord.

(HT: Anthony Bradley, via Paul McCain)

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The denomination I am currently affiliated with, the Presbyterian Church in America, has been holding its annual General Assembly this week in Nashville. This is always an important time for the denomination, as the leaders of our churches gather together to discuss the future of the denomination and how the churches can continue to remain committed to the shared mission of being "faithful to the Scriptures, true to the Reformed faith, and obedient to the Great Commission."

Due to my schedule, I haven't been able to follow the assembly as closely this year as I was last year, but I tuned in for a little while last night. As they were deliberating on different matters, I was reminded of a something I read in The House Where God Lives, a book on ecclesiology by Canadian theologian, Gary Badcock, published toward the end of last year. What he says here is worth thinking about as meetings like the PCA's General Assembly happen. Consider this:

'I believe in the church.' In this confession of Christian faith there are, ultimately, grounds for hope. The church is what it is not because of some program, system of thought, or pattern of practice. It is what it is, in the final analysis, because God graciously chooses to deal with us as sinful creatures. As a result, the church is more than a hollow shell in which humans think theological thoughts, dream religious and moral dreams, and do good deeds. Hence neither the existence nor the renewal of the church is strictly our task; this is just as well, because on account of our half-formed thinking, our sloth, and our disobedience, the church in itself is bound to be a disappointment. God is able to renew the church, but this is entirely despite the fact of its limitations and sinfulness, despite its wrong-headedness and outright lies at times, rather than because of any inherent holiness or wisdom it possesses. Therefore, the renewal of the church does not even depend on an ecclesiology; in the end, even the theologian who labors to say as much must fall silent, give thanks, and pray.

What is absolutely required here is neither a theology nor a strategy but what [we may call] 'God's lightning,' the free action of God that strikes unexpectedly, in ways that surpass what we can ask and in the end is totally independent of our answers or our imaginings. For the renewal of the church takes place as God reaches out in power, truth, and love by his Word and Spirit, so that God himself comes to us – God, the unutterable one who transcends all our theological systems and stratagems alike, the one who judges all things and who makes all things new. The renewal of the church, though a goal toward which we can surely work and concerning which we can think, is ultimately something for which we must pray and wait. This is what I intend when I speak of the church as 'the house where God lives,' that is, affirming what is sufficient for our needs in this age and in all ages, and affirming what is finally the one great theme of ecclesiology as a question of Christian doctrine (337).

By no means, of course, is this a call for us to sit idly by and wait for God to work. Indeed, the work of meetings such as General Assembly is very important for the life of the church. But what Badcock wants us to realize here is that while our work is important, in the end it is nothing if God is not in it. When we stop and think about it this is perhaps an obvious truth, but in our day to day work it is easy to let something so simple – despite it being so crucial – slip from our minds.

To that end, let us continually be in prayer for the Spirit to be at work in our churches bringing life and renewal as we strive to be faithful to the one who called us, and as we labor in our mission to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. To him be the glory forever.

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Melvin Tinker, the vicar of St John Newland in the city of Hull, and the chairman of the steering committee of the Yorkshire Gospel Partnership, was kind enough to send me an article a few weeks ago that he wrote with Peter Sanlon on ecclesiology (later: I found out that this article was originally published in the Church Society's journal, Churchman 123:4 [Winter, 2009]). Coming from an evangelical Anglican perspective, the article addresses a number of concerns that those within that context of Anglicanism have to deal with, such as the accusations of having a weak or entirely lacking ecclesiology that might come from those within Anglo-Catholic churches or the disaffection of those who have left evangelical churches pursuing riches elsewhere.

With some biblical exegesis and a very helpful section on the posture we need to maintain when discussing ecclesiology, the article is both challenging and encouraging. In the coming week or so I will post some of the other pieces of the article I found interesting.

To begin with, I want to highlight Melvin and Peter's discussion of family heritage. All church traditions have a heritage, be it one that spans centuries, or one that spans a few decades, and we all owe something to that heritage. I cannot speak for the UK, but I have noticed two dominant trajectories with respect to the way North American churches deal with their heritage: to varying degrees, they either entirely ignore it, or they idolise it. Melvin and Peter's insights on this point provide a very balanced perspective. They write,

Our family heritage, like any family, is far from perfect. If the reformers' teaching can be shown to be inadequate at points; not being entirely consistent with Scripture, then we are being most true to the reformers when we depart from them and draw closer to the teaching of the Bible. This is because the reformers were animated by the same heartbeat as modern evangelicals are—Scripture.

In the final analysis, our family heritage is to form us but not control us. Nobody appreciates an overbearing parent determined to mechanistically dictate every detail of their child's life. The reformers themselves never would have wanted their latter-day descendents to look to them for that sort of instruction. Rather they would have desired us to accept them as flawed, frail and imperfect family, who lived with the same passion that ought to enliven us. They are most respected when the heritage of active reformation and revival is pursued in ways that respectfully grow and develop from their firm foundation.

...the heritage of our earlier reformation family, by their divergences and growth, should stimulate us to further reflection and self-critique. If we only listen to the teachers who are alive today, with whom we agree, then we are consigning ourselves to only learn from leaders alive at a stage of church history when Western Christianity can hardly be argued to be in anything other than a weak, sorry state. Our family heritage in the reformers is rich and varied. Their acumen, scriptural insight and desire to spread the Gospel...should act as a real stimulus to our own growth and maturity. [But] we ought not to freeze any leader or period of history and simply try to repeat that. Engaging with the reformation writings earnestly would prevent us from doing so, for...the reformers were animated by the same heartbeat of scripture, but displayed considerable growth and difference.

A perspective like this avoids the extremes on either end of the spectrum. One side holds to the idea that there must be continual innovation and change in order to maintain relevance, and in this way, declares everything old to be obsolete and no longer useful. This can involve rather creative uses of scripture which downplay its authority. The other side pays too strict of an allegiance to heritage and tradition and can neglect to continually evaluate its scriptural validity which, in a different way, also downplays the authority of Scripture. Often, this is symptomatic of the sort of 'golden age' view of history that the article speaks of. This is not to vilify either side; indeed, the perspective Melvin and Peter put forth acknowledges there is much good in both, and that together they give us a balanced middle ground.

Heritage is important, and we ought not to neglect it. But likewise must we not elevate it to a level in which it begins to encroach on the authority if Scripture. The reformers recognised this; they did not intend for us to make carbon copies of themselves, but instead set an example for us to follow. Indeed, they confessed Ecclesia semper reformanda. May their spirit continue to inspire us.

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A short time ago, I mentioned and quoted from Gary Badcock's book on ecclesiology, The House Where God Lives, and as I read through his discussion of the mission of the church the other day, I found myself increasingly tempted to purchase the book, even with its $27 pricetag.

There is much worth thinking about in this section, a lot of it echoing the insights of missiologists such as David Bosch and Lesslie Newbigin. I found the following, in which Badcock links the mission of the church with the resurrection, to be very significant:

In the New Testament, indeed, the mission of the church is closely connected with the pivotal event of the resurrection of Jesus. It is in the Gospel of John that the link between the resurrection and the mission is clearest, for that is where Jesus' central appearance to his disciples, following his rising from the dead, brings both the bestowal of the Spirit and the ultimate commissioning for the missionary expansion that followed: 'As the Father has sent me, so I send you' (John 20:21). This statement picks up on themes scattered elsewhere in John's Gospel (e.g., John 17:1-3, 18, 23); and particularly when it is coupled with the teaching of Paul, it helps us understand what the character of the resurrection appearances might have been. The emphasis falls less on epiphany than on commissioning, or, to put the real point more precisely, it falls on sharing Christ's mission. The implication of all of this would be that where there is little appreciation of the importance of the Christian mission, there is a limited grasp of the resurrection faith. Therefore, whatever the cultural difficulties implicit in embracing mission as central to the doctrine of the church, the theological theme can scarcely be avoided.

There is a lot packed into this paragraph worth thinking about, not least of which is how our view of the mission of the church is linked to our understanding (or lack thereof) of the resurrection.

Another recently published book on ecclesiology, coming from the standpoint of biblical theology, is written by Graham Twelftree, entitled, People of the Spirit: Exploring Luke's View of the Church. Using insights from the books of Luke and Acts, he draws out the implications of the church's mission being centered on the living Christ, and in doing so, reflects and expands on what Badcock is saying. Consider this:

Perhaps, above all else, Luke would say that the Church is the present and ongoing embodiment of Jesus and his mission. It is not that the Church is simply Christ-like or is to mirror and maintain the ministry of Jesus through emulating his activities and message. Rather, through receiving the empowerment and direction of the Spirit, the Church embodies and expresses that same powerful presence of God apparent in Jesus and his ministry...Not only does the life of the Church begin in Jesus' ministry, but also the life of Jesus continues in the ministry of the Church...

[Luke's] positive conclusion that the Church is fundamentally Christo-centric also stands as a critique of some contemporary understandings of the Church. For example, the Church is sometimes seen as essentially a community. But, for Luke, the Church is not fundamentally a community, though it is, in part, communal. In that Jesus is said to appoint a group (note Acts 1:21), Luke signals that he understood the Church was not a collection of individuals related to him but a community of his followers. Yet, for its identity, the Church depended on the call of Jesus not its collecting or being together. Also, the Church is sometimes seen as those gathered around the cross. However, for Luke, the community of the Church is not determined by gathering around or under the cross, it is gathered around the living Jesus...the Church is called into existence by Jesus and has its raison d'être in its ongoing embodiment of his life and mission.

That the church is gathered around the living Jesus is a significant point; in the book of Acts, for example, most the recorded sermons are centered on proclaiming that Jesus had risen from the dead and continues to live. It is this living Christ who gave the apostles the commission to go to all the nations and preach the good news. And it is this same living and resurrected Jesus who needs to continue to be the focal point of the church's mission today.

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For quite some time now I have been eyeing the book, The House Where God Lives: The Doctrine of the Church, written by Gary D. Badcock, a professor at Huron University College in London, Ontario. It has been on the shelf at the seminary's bookstore, but at nearly $27.00 (for a paperback!), the pricetag is rather steep and has kept me from purchasing it. It is unfortunate, because the bits I have read from it are good.

One of the chapters in the book focuses on the relationship of the Church and modernity, a discussion in which Badcock largely employs the critique of Reinhard Hütter, professor of theology at Duke Divinity School. About a decade ago, Hütter published a book called Suffering Divine Things, where he argued that "the church in the cultural context of modernity faces a distinct and massive problem." Badcock continues:

In the classical Christian tradition, the church was acknowledged as the setting in which it is uniquely possible to come to know God as the one who draws us into relationship with himself through the crucified Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit. By contrast, the historical path taken by the church in modernity has emptied it of this foundational theological confidence. We find ourselves in a situation so fundamentally shaped by modernity and its doctrine of the free individual that the individual subject now stands even at the center of what passes for ecclesiology. Instead of the church appearing as the context in which we are shaped by the Word and Spirit of God, the church is here reduced to rendering functional service to the modern doctrine of the individual. Under the conditions of modernity, Hütter maintains, the individual has become the 'end of the church'.

While the church's service to modernity in this respect might have made it culturally 'relevant' in a certain narrow sense, when viewed from the standpoint of the doctrine of the church as a strictly theological theme, the result is clearly problematic. The problem can be seen in several sectors of church life: on the one hand, in 'the service-jargon pervasive in contemporary church growth talk,' in which the market reigns supreme and the gospel must do it homage, or on the other, in something even worse—though it is, to be sure, a function of the same pressures—'the kind of free metaphorical constructivism characterizing especially North American Protestant theology in its more progressive representatives'.

Hütter maintains that what is missing from such approaches is any clear commitment to the church as locus of the distinct practices of the proclamation of the Word of the gospel of grace and the celebration of the sacraments, by which alone the triune God of the Christian revelation can be known, obeyed, and enjoyed. In Hütter's judgment, the importance of these practices has been generally belittled under the influences of modernity, as the religious experience of the individual has instead been refashioned and mediated by other means. The consequence is the pervasive spiritual and theological impoverishment of the church, which lives by the Word and sacrament or not at all (291-292).

A forceful critique, to be sure, but an accurate one. And nowhere is this more evident, perhaps, than within the context of the American church, which has been largely shaped by modernity and driven by the notion of individual freedom since its founding. It is unfortunate that critiques like this need to be made, but the "spiritual and theological impoverishment" that Badcock speaks of is a palpable reality in the modern church because it has sought, even if not intentionally, to find its source of life apart from Christ.

The life of the church is always and only Christ. We share in Christ and all his blessings by faith, and that faith is produced in us by the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Word and in the sacraments (Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 65). When these are lost, the very life of the church is in peril.

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