4. The Missionary Church and Its Life Together

4

The Missionary Church and Its Life Together

The story of the Bible shows God leading all of human history to its appointed End, the restoration from sin of the whole life of humankind in the context of the entire creation. The church is invited to participate in this renewing work of the Triune God. Their role and vocation is to be a people that embody and announce the cosmic renewal of the kingdom. Yet, for Newbigin, if the church is to be a faithful sign of the kingdom there must be careful attention to the institutional expression or gathered form of the church. Issues such as worship, leadership, and ecclesial structures must be brought into line with the missionary identity of the church.

In the past too much attention has been given to these issues in ecclesiology; in fact,the church as institution and community has dominated ecclesiological discussion for much of church history. This has often led to an inward-facing church primarily concerned with its own institutional life. As a result it is not uncommon today to see those who have grasped the missionary nature of the church become impatient with these issues and ignore them or even react against them. Many others in both the ecumenical and evangelical traditions have followed this path. Not so for Newbigin.

There were at least three reasons Newbigin did not take this path. First, the way the church organizes and lives out its life together will either hamper or enable the church for mission; it will inevitably do one or the other. Second, it is only as the church continuously receives the life of Christ in fellowship and worship that the church can embody it in the midst of the world. Third, witness to God’s purpose flows both out of the congregation and back to the congregation. For this reason Newbigin was concerned throughout his life with ecclesial structures, forms of leadership, and the practice of worship. What we need to keep firmly in view as we continue through this chapter is that when Newbigin deals with various issues of the internal life of the church, it is always in the context of his understanding of the missionary identity and nature of the church.

In this chapter we will, first of all, attend to two important distinctions in Newbigin’s understanding of the church: first, local and universal, and second, gathered and scattered. Then we will look at worship, ecclesial structures, and leadership, and their importance for the missionary congregation.

Ecclesiological Distinctions

When we use the word “church,” we often have certain unexamined assumptions deeply embedded in our understanding. These hidden presuppositions can sometimes be a hindrance to our being faithful to the church’s missionary calling. Two distinctions are important for Newbigin and help us understand his assumptions about the church: the church is both local and universal, and the church is expressed in both gathered and scattered form.

Local and Universal

Newbigin believes that the word “church,” or ekklesia, is used in the New Testament always to describe visible communities of humans in two senses: (1) local congregations and (2) the entire people that belong to Jesus Christ. This double usage comes because the word ekklesia is always qualified by “of God” and “in Corinth” (or another place). This indicates that God is at work calling and drawing a community to himself as the new humankind. He is at work locally—in Corinth, Rome, Surrey, and Phoenix—and he is at work throughout the world. It is a single action of God that assembles his one new humankind in many places. And so since “it is the one Lord who assembles his people in every place, these many local assemblies form one assembly universally. For the same reason the assembly in each place is the catholic Church in that place, for it is the one Lord who is assembling them.” Thus, the church has both local and universal expressions. And both are to be visible expressions.

The distinction between local congregation and universal church is driven by a missionary concern. The local congregation is the new humankind in this particular place and is called to offer to all people in that place the invitation of Christ to be reconciled to God through him. At the same time, the church is a global community that is to offer the same invitation to humankind as a whole. It is precisely this discussion that led Newbigin to struggle throughout his life with ecclesial structures, forms of leadership, and ecumenical expressions. How can people see the church as the expression of the one new humankind across time and place as it becomes incarnated in many places?

Newbigin did not give equal weight to each of these expressions in his writings. Repeatedly he makes clear that the local church is “the fundamental unit of the Christian church” or “the primary unit of the church” or “the basic unit of Christian existence.” He learned this from his missionary experience in India, where various forms of witness that arose from missions—such as schools, hospitals, street preachers, and literature—moved people to want to come to the place where all of this was centered. Thus these village congregations were the foundation and center for every other form of witness. Moreover, he believed that the “whole thrust of the 20th century rediscovery of the missionary nature of the Church is lost if it does not lead to a radical re-conception of what it means to be a local congregation of God’s people.” And so he frequently expressed his conviction that the local congregation is the primary reality of the church and therefore the only possible hermeneutic of the gospel.

Nevertheless, this did not lead him to neglect the visible expression of the universal church. He was concerned for unity “all in one place,” as this gives expression to the one church in each place. He was concerned for ecumenical structures and rejected criticisms that this pursuit of unity is merely the complicated and costly machinery of committees and councils that encumbers the church. And this also led him to concern for connections through both space and time of leadership. Episcopal, Presbyterian, and papal forms of leadership all sought to visibly express that the church was a universal body.

Newbigin’s concern for the ecumenical or universal expression of the church is precisely so that the local congregation will be recognized as the one true people of God who will inherit the new creation. Disunity makes it appear that the church is just one more local religious body along with others. The local congregation is misunderstood if it is not seen to be a local presence of the universal church or the new humankind. It is not a branch of the ecumenical body but is where that new humanity is made visible. “When the local congregation speaks and acts, its words and acts must claim to be the words and acts of the universal Church if they are to be authentic. But this is hard to achieve, or even to acknowledge, in our divided state.” In a global world where the powers are increasingly transnational, this aspect of ecclesiology is becoming more important.

As we proceed in this chapter, the distinction between local and universal should be kept in mind, though Newbigin typically spoke of local congregations when he discussed the church, and—with a few exceptions—that will be the case in this chapter as well.

Gathered and Scattered

Often when one uses the word “church” what comes to mind is a visible body gathered in a particular place that is organized as an institution to carry out certain cultic tasks. And, indeed, this is one of the ways that Newbigin believes the New Testament uses the word “church.” It is a visible and communal expression of God’s people gathered around Christ, where he is present in their midst especially through Word and sacrament. However, to reduce the word “church” to this institutional expression would be to misunderstand the nature of the church in the New Testament.

Newbigin’s understanding of the church is fundamentally eschatological. It is nothing less than the new humankind incorporated into Christ, a sign and foretaste of the coming kingdom. As the one new humankind, the church cannot be reduced to a religious body that carries out religious rituals. That was the mistake of the enemies of the early church that classified the people of God as thiasos and heranos, private religious communities concerned with individual and otherworldly salvation. It was precisely the concern to maintain the public nature of the church as the new humankind that led them to adopt the word ekklesia.

Thus when the church is scattered about during the week, it is not any less the church. The laity are not fragments scattered about in culture that then become the church when they gather again for worship and fellowship. They are the new humankind, or the body of Christ, in both their scattered and their gathered form.

Newbigin asks, “Is it not an illusion that constantly fogs our thinking about the Church that we think of it as something which exists manifestly on Sunday, is in a kind of state of suspended animation from Monday to Saturday?” He goes on to express his ecclesiological conviction: “The truth of course is that the Church exists in its prime reality from Monday to Saturday, in all its members, dispersed throughout the fields and homes and offices and factories, bearing the royal priesthood of Christ into every corner of His world. On the Lord’s day it is withdrawn into itself to renew its being in the Lord Himself.”

This is evident also, as we saw in chapter 3, when Newbigin speaks of the new being of the total life of the church and of the church as a new social order as being expressed both when the church gathers and when it is scattered throughout the world during the week. Moreover, the distinction between missionary intention and dimension makes the same point. Newbigin says, “The basic reality is the creation of new being through the presence of the Holy Spirit. This new being is the common life (koinonia) in the Church. It is out of this new creation that both service and evangelism spring.” This new reality of the Spirit is the primary witness in the church. It is in the “whole life of the Church . . . through which the Holy Spirit carries on His mission to the world, and the whole of it thus partakes of the character of witness. The whole life of the Church thus has a missionary dimension, though not all of it has mission as its primary intention.” The church exists when gathered and when scattered, and the whole of its life has the character of witness, whether in intentional words and deeds or in the rest of its life in creation.

In the preceding chapter, we unfolded what it means to be church in the midst of the world. In the following sections of this chapter, we look at what it means to be the church gathered. And we are concerned especially to show that the church must be understood in terms of its missionary nature in both its gathered and its scattered expressions. Newbigin writes, “Mission belongs to the essence of the Church. . . . And you cannot have fellowship with Him without being committed to partnership in His mission to the world.” This raises the question: How does the communal and institutional life of the church partake in its essentially missionary nature?

Worship

Two Simultaneous Duties

In the mid-1980s a reviewer of Foolishness to the Greeks challenged Newbigin to apply the heady discussion of his book to the local urban congregation. As it happened, he was pastoring a poor urban congregation in Winson Green at the time, so based on that experience, he responded with reflections on what his “heady discussion” would look like in a missionary congregation. He begins with the affirmation that we have been chosen to be bearers of the good news for the whole world. The only way anyone will believe that God’s final word for the world is a crucified man is if there is a congregation that believes the gospel. He says the key is the work of God himself in the Holy Spirit both when the congregation is gathered for worship and when it is scattered throughout the world: “The Holy Spirit is present in the believing congregation both gathered for praise and the offering up of spiritual sacrifice, and scattered throughout the community to bear the love of God into every secular happening and meeting.” He then goes on to say that the “first priority, therefore, is the cherishing and nourishing of such a congregation in a life of worship, of teaching, and of mutual pastoral care so that the new life in Christ becomes more and more for them the great and controlling reality.”

It is typical of Newbigin to place worship either at the beginning of a list of characteristics of a faithful church, as he does here, or at the end. Putting it first enables him to speak of it as the first priority. Putting it at the end enables him to show its crucial need for nourishing the life of Christ for mission. For example, in another list he says, this “brings me to the fifth [and last] point, which is that the church will be a worshipping community.” He then comments that it “may be thought that this should have stood first in the list. But I think we understand its meaning better if we take it after we have considered the church as a serving, suffering, witnessing, open community.” His ensuing discussion shows why this is so important: only in worship can we recommit ourselves to the true story centered in Christ that gives meaning to human life and be nourished by his life week by week so that we can faithfully bear witness. We see here with clarity the importance Newbigin placed on the institutional and communal life of the church—and especially on worship.

The church is like an ellipse with two foci: gathered life and scattered life. The church, he says, “always has two simultaneous duties.” The first is to strengthen and make more real the citizenship of God’s people in the kingdom of God in word and sacrament, in prayer and communion, and in an ever-deeper rooting in Christ. And if the church fails to do this, “it is liable to become salt without savour.” The second duty is to involve itself more and more deeply in the affairs of the world in suffering as it bears witness to the life of Christ. And so he lists the first thing the church needs as the “strengthening of our churches in worship.” The “very first essential” is a “strong liturgical life” so that their eschatological existence might be made “more real and vivid.”

It is important to emphasize how significant this is for Newbigin. This kind of connection between mission—that is, evangelism, deeds of mercy and justice, and cultural vocations—and the worship life of the church permeates his writings. He often uses the word “withdraw” to speak of the time the church meets together to be prepared and nourished. On Monday through Saturday, people carry out their task of faithful witness, and then Sunday is “the day on which the Church makes a necessary withdrawal from its engagement with the world in order to renew the inner springs of the divine life within her through word and sacrament.”

The church, then, has two foci: the inner life of worship and fellowship in gathered congregations, and the outer life of mission scattered in the world. The danger is that “it is always relatively easy for the Church to do one of these things and neglect the other.” Far too often we “allow two things which belong together to fall apart—with consequences which are fatal for the witness of the church.” On the one hand, the church that isolates its worship from the task of caring for its neighbors or that focuses only on its inner life without an equal concern for its community ends up distorting its witness to the gospel. The result is an inward-focused, self-serving maintenance. On the other hand, when mission is separated from the worship life of the church, it becomes another human program that loses its power and character as witness to the kingdom. “It is precisely for the sake of the mission to the world that these two things must not be allowed to fall apart.” A faithful missionary church will “live in the tension of loyalty to both tasks, and in that place, in that tension, . . . bear witness to the gospel.”

The Gospel as the Source of the Church’s Life

One of the common ways Newbigin speaks of the mission of the Church is “to reproduce the life of Jesus in the life of the world.” The source of that life is the gospel, in which Christ communicates his life to his people. If the church is to be faithful to embody the life of Christ in the midst of the world as a sign of the End, then its whole life must be deeply rooted in and nourished by the gospel. This is the context in which Newbigin stresses our twofold relationship with Christ: (1) we are related to Jesus historically as a body rooted in certain events and sent to continue his mission, and (2) we are related to Jesus eschatologically as a people who constantly encounter the living and ascended Lord in the Word and sacraments of the gospel. It is where two or three are gathered together in his name that the living Lord meets and nourishes his people with his own life in the gospel. “The Church lives by faith in Christ, and the Word and Sacraments are the means whereby Christ offers Himself to men.” When “the Word is truly preached and the sacraments duly administered, Christ Himself is present in the midst with all His saving power. . . . [Then] God’s saving power known and experienced in the life of the redeemed community has to issue in all kinds of witness and service to the world.”

Christ’s saving power is known in the fellowship of congregations by the presence of the Holy Spirit. As Newbigin reviews the stories of a number of people who came to Christ in a particular setting, he reflects on one factor that was common to all their stories: a worshiping and celebrating congregation that was deeply involved in the daily life of their neighborhood. Mission isn’t a humanly devised program but “the work of the Spirit, present in the life of the congregation, flowing out into the community, through faithful words and deeds of its members.”

A favorite text for Newbigin was John 15:1–11. If we are to follow Jesus resolutely along the road of loving obedience that he trod, we must give priority to the cultivation of the life of Christ in worship, prayer, Word, and sacraments. The image of abiding in the vine is a beautiful picture of the way we as branches receive the life-giving sap of Christ’s life “through a million tiny channels hidden behind the hard bark of the trunk and branches.” These channels are the means of grace whereby God gives the very life of Christ to us so that we can participate in Christ. “Participation in Christ means participation in His Mission to the world, and . . . therefore . . . true means of grace will precisely be in and for the discharge of this missionary task.” Although Newbigin never used this particular phrase, to emphasize this crucial point we might call them the “means of missional grace.”

Means of Missional Grace

Newbigin speaks most often of four means of missional grace: worship, Word, sacraments, and prayer.

Worship

Worship is “by far the most important thing we do” and “the central work of the Church.” Newbigin even speaks of the church’s “most distinctive character” being a community of praise. For Newbigin, “worship” is an all-inclusive word that includes praise, proclamation, prayer, sacraments, and more. The missionary dynamic is one of being gathered together in worship to deepen one’s life in Christ and then being sent into the world. If there is to be a “committed people as the sign and agent and foretaste of what God intends, it can only be insofar as their life is continually renewed through contact with God himself” in worship.

Newbigin recognizes that the danger of a strong emphasis on worship may well lead to an inward-looking church concerned with its own liturgical life. This kind of worship is false religion. True worship enables us to be “conformed more and more inwardly to the Cross of Jesus.” The cross of Jesus means a total and costly identification with the world, on the one hand, and yet a radical separation from its idolatry, on the other. Worship renews us in this life of Jesus.

Precisely because worship is so important to the whole life of the church, Newbigin often addresses various distortions of worship in the life of the church, including worship that is slovenly or a matter of mechanical routine; worship in which the members are spectators—a “gazing-stock”—rather than participants; uncontextualized and cheap music; a consumerist approach that asks, What do I get out of it?; a trivial and chatty worship devoid of reverence; and the scandal of a “dry mass” that eliminates the weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper.

Word

A second means of missional grace that nourishes the church’s life for mission is the Word of God. For Newbigin this meant both the Scriptures and the sacraments. When the Word of God is read and faithfully preached, and when the sacraments are rightly administered, “Christ Himself is present in the midst with all His saving power.” And the church lives its life in the midst of the world by the power of word and sacrament. Newbigin writes,

This life-giving word of God is the power by which the Church lives. The Church is constantly renewed by the word of God. The word is given to us in two forms—the word spoken in the reading and exposition of Scripture, and the word acted in the sacraments. The same word is active in these two different modes. In both it is active through the Spirit. . . . The Church . . . lives by the word of God given to it as the word spoken and the word acted.

Anything that threatens the true preaching of the gospel or the faithful administration of the sacraments must be expelled from the life of the church. And so, because of their strategic importance, Newbigin asks, “Are we placing these in the very center of the Church’s life? Are we jealous that nothing shall displace them?”

The importance of Scripture as the means by which Christ meets and nourishes his people led Newbigin to stress the importance of both reading and preaching the Word. Preaching is not first of all the transference of theological ideas to the mind; rather, it is “the proclamation of the event of God in Christ” since the Scriptures are “the testimony of the witnesses to God’s saving act.” As the Christ-event is proclaimed, it is the very “means whereby Christ the Word is Himself present to speak to those who hear.” And so “we go to the Bible to meet Christ, our present and Living Lord.” As bishop, Newbigin spoke to preachers under his care, reminding them that “the business of the sermon is to bring hearers face to face with Jesus Christ as he really is.” This means that Jesus must be preached as Savior and Lord; gospel and law must be rightly related. One must hear both the comforting promises and the costly obligations of the gospel. One may not leave without understanding God’s grace but also God’s demands; neglecting either distorts the gospel. When both are proclaimed, we are comforted by the assurance that we are saved and also “re-enlisted in Christ’s army as fighters for the rule of God in this world.” Newbigin humorously captures one side of this in a limerick:

There’s a preacher I know in Turin

Who can preach for three hours about sin;

But he never has space

For a word about grace

So he doesn’t get under my skin.

When Newbigin spoke of the Word in the life of the church, he primarily dealt with preaching and teaching. He did not speak much about what may be called “formation” or “discipleship”—that is, other ministries of the church to equip and form the church through the Bible. However, he did speak often, usually quite generally, of the importance of deeply indwelling the biblical story, especially if the church is to be able to resist the power of the cultural story. He speaks, for example, of “remembering and rehearsing” the biblical story, which will only come by the “continual reading of and reflection on the Bible.” There is a burning need “to soak ourselves in this story so that we more and more understand that it is the real story and that the story we are listening to on the radio and in our newspapers is to a very large extent phoney.” The only way the gospel will ever be credible is if there are local congregations who believe, live, and act on the Bible, including pastors who allow the Bible to shape the way they see the world and Christians who also learn to dwell in the Scriptures and see the world through biblical spectacles. Newbigin then says he would like to refer to his own experience as an example: “I more and more find the precious part of each day to be the thirty or forty minutes I spend each morning before breakfast with the Bible. All the rest of the day I am bombarded with the stories that the world is telling about itself. I am more and more skeptical about these stories. As I take time to immerse myself in the story that the Bible tells, my vision is cleared and I see things in another way. I see the day that lies ahead in its place in God’s story.”

Newbigin did not give much direction on how the church should accomplish this immersion in the true story of the world, except some discussion of small groups. However, if we are to live faithfully in the biblical story in a world that has a different story—a powerful and seductive story—to tell about the world, we need to immerse ourselves in Scripture, both in our personal reading and in our local congregations, so that it might be the real story shaping our lives. Newbigin’s writing certainly motivates us to think of ways in which the Bible might more and more be our story.

Sacraments

The gospel sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are the third means of missional grace. We saw above that Newbigin speaks of these as the life-giving word of God enacted. A number of controversies over the sacraments, especially baptism, moved Newbigin to write more about the sacraments than about preaching. He fought the battle on two sides. On the one hand, he developed his understanding over against Western Christendom and its individualistic understanding of the sacraments—namely, that these were the channels by which individuals were passive recipients of God’s grace. On the other hand, he engaged mounting criticism from many in India who saw baptism as a Western rite that led to the self-centeredness of the church: baptism cut off members from their community and incorporated them into a Western institution separated from the life of India. Against both of these Newbigin argued that to “recover the meaning of baptism” must be “one of the most urgent tasks” of our day. “We shall not overcome the introversion and selfishness of the Church by dispensing with baptism. It is an illusion to suppose that we can. What is needed is something much more difficult and costly.”

He engaged both of these fronts by arguing that the sacraments, both baptism and the Lord’s Supper, have to be understood in three contexts: eschatological, communal, and missional. It is no accident that these are the same words used to describe the Spirit’s work. These are the means used by the Spirit to incorporate us into Christ’s work. Much of Newbigin’s rich theological reflection on the sacraments in terms of these three perspectives may be summarized as follows: Baptism is ultimately an eschatological sign, a rite of entry into the kingdom. One has passed from the old age into the age to come, dead to the old and alive to the new. Therefore, it is the sign of entry into the people of God, the communal context wherein the sacraments are enacted. It is in the church that the powers of the coming age are present as a sign, foretaste, and deposit of the kingdom. And our incorporation into the people of God means we enter a missional body committed to mission in the world: “It is our incorporation into the one baptism which is for the salvation of the world. To accept baptism, therefore, is to be committed to be with Christ in his ministry for all men.” The church is gathered “to be with him and to be sent out (Mark 3:14).”

Again, Newbigin does not diminish the individual reception of the means of grace for salvation; rather, he puts it in biblical context. The salvation that comes to God’s people is eschatological: the powers of the coming age breaking into history in Jesus and by the Spirit. The salvation that comes to God’s people is communal: as part of the elect body of Christ. And the salvation that comes to God’s people is missional: not simply enjoying salvation as a beneficiary but also participating in the mission of Christ.

Baptism is an initiatory rite that marks off those who belong to a community that shares in the life of the kingdom and is committed to following Jesus in mission. And the Lord’s Supper is the way we continue to renew and reaffirm the commitment of our baptism. “Baptism is the act through which we are committed to follow Jesus on the way of the cross. The supper is the act in which that same commitment is continually renewed. Each time we share in the Lord’s Supper we reaffirm our baptism.” As God’s eschatological people we join the mission of Jesus in the way of the cross in baptism and recommit ourselves to it in the Lord’s Supper.

Prayer

The last means of missional grace that Newbigin elaborates is prayer. For Newbigin “our life of intercession is quite central to discipleship.” A life of prayer is rooted in Christ’s mission, where we see him both deeply involved in laboring so that people might see the kingdom of God in their midst and, engaged in a life of prayer so that this might be so. All our talk “about being Christ’s witnesses and servants to the ends of the earth remains mere clap-trap” unless there is at the heart of it all “a life which has its roots deep down in a discipline of prayer.”

All true vitality in the work of missions depends in the last analysis upon the secret springs of supernatural life which they know who give time to communion with God. All true witness to Christ is the overflowing of a reality too great to be contained. It has its source in a life of adoration and intercession. . . . Any real power that God may give them will come through those secret channels which are in this age, as in every age, the true means of blessing for the world.

Newbigin regularly connects mission to prayer—both corporate prayer and individual prayer. If we are to be a holy priesthood in the midst of the world, “we need a secret altar,” a place where our inmost life, every part of it, is offered up day by day to God through Jesus Christ. There we receive God’s ever-new gift of grace and mercy. But we also need times of prayer “together on the Lord’s Day when he can take us as a whole community and renew us for his priestly service in the world.” It is precisely our daily individual prayer that enables our communal worship to be vital and to renew us for our missionary task. Our “corporate and public worship can become lifeless if it is not constantly fructified by the time we spend each day alone to keep fresh and clean the channels of love and obedience to God and of his grace and mercy to us.”

Newbigin’s theological reflection on many of these issues in worship is more profound and detailed than we can examine here. But the main point to be made is that he tied these means of grace—worship, Word, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and prayer—very closely to the missionary task of the church. These were the means of missional grace, as it were, that nourished God’s people for their task in the world. The gospel can “become public truth only insofar as it is embodied in a society (the church) which is both ‘abiding in’ Christ and engaged in the life of the world.”

An important point needs to be made in conclusion. We could misinterpret Newbigin’s understanding of worship if we viewed it solely in an instrumental way—that is, as only a means to mission. Mission has been our primary stress because of the theme of this book, but to view worship simply as an instrumental means would be mistaken. Worship is an end in itself. The church’s worship “is directed wholly to God for His glory.” But that important fact does not mean it cannot have a missionary dimension. In fact, worship may well be a “powerful possible form of witness,” as it was in the churches of the Soviet Union for years.

Ecclesial Structures

For Newbigin it is important to pay close attention to ecclesial structures. A couple of his statements express the importance of the issue. The “structure of the church is itself an expression of the Gospel,” and therefore “the highest priority must be given to bringing about those changes in the structure of the Church.” The reason this was urgent for him was that even though there had been a recovery of a radically missionary theology of the church, the present structures did not reflect that theology but rather hindered the missionary witness of the church. The kinds of structures Newbigin referred to were manifold: ecumenical, congregational, leadership, diocesan, institutional, budgetary, and missionary. In this section we will be concerned primarily with congregational and ecumenical structures. In the next we will focus on structures of ministerial leadership.

We have noted before that Newbigin was a highly contextual thinker. His writings are of an ad hoc and occasional nature, written to address specific situations. This is quite clear in his discussions of ecclesial structures. On the one hand, this means the issues he is addressing often are very different from ours and initially may seem irrelevant. This is no more true than in this particular subject. Many of his suggestions do not fit our situation. On the other hand, the way Newbigin returns to theological convictions to think toward solutions remains extremely valuable to us today—both in his method of thinking foundationally in a theological way and in the content of the theology that he offers as his starting point. This is important to observe in our setting. There has been much continuing reflection on congregational structures in the wake of Newbigin. The quality of that reflection ranges from quite helpful to superficial. What Newbigin can provide is not so much relevant structures for our day—that would go against his own convictions—as a way of proceeding in a theologically informed way. Yet many of his suggestions are still valuable. To the extent that space allows, we will engage the historical context that provides a background and impetus for his writings.

Urgency of Structural Renewal

In the period between 1938 and 1952, a missionary ecclesiology developed in the ecumenical tradition. But the primary barrier facing the implementation of this newly developed missionary ecclesiology after 1952 was structures from an earlier time. The missionary self-understanding that was developing needed missionary structures in order to become a reality. Newbigin was very much a part of this discussion. On a number of occasions he asks, “Does the very structure of our congregations contradict the missionary calling of the church?” He charges that we “are saying that we have recovered a radically missionary theology of the Church. But the actual structure of our Churches . . . does not reflect that theology.” The problem was that the “actual structures continue to placidly reflect the static ‘Christendom’ theology of the eighteenth century.” These Christendom structures, for Newbigin, meant a wealthy and established church centered primarily in a building standing in a central geographical location. There was institutional inertia that hindered any structural or institutional change. These structures existed primarily to channel grace to the church’s members. Thus they were directed more toward maintenance of an institution than mobilizing for mission in the world. At the very worst these structures led churches to become “clubs for self-centred enjoyment of the benefits of the Christian religion.” But the church could no longer maintain such a Christendom existence; the West was now a mission field.

Not only was the church’s place in society changing, but so was Western society itself. The secular society of the West in the twentieth century, when Newbigin wrote, was fast becoming a highly differentiated society, in contrast to the undifferentiated society of medieval Europe and even many Indian villages that Newbigin encountered. Christendom structures assumed a social organization in which the family, political, economic, and social life were intertwined in an indivisible whole. The church located geographically in the center of that religio-political unity could perhaps stand as a sign of good news for the whole community. But by Newbigin’s day, society was much more differentiated, complex, and mobile. A person lived in many “places” at the same time. The church needed new structures to be, do, and speak good news in this new social setting.

Twofold Criteria for Structural Renewal

The inherited Christendom structures were irrelevant and did not correspond to the missionary nature of the church; they had to be overhauled. Newbigin offers two closely related criteria for structural renewal: they have to be faithful to the nature and calling of the church, and they have to be relevant to the particular community in which the church is set. As Newbigin sees it, these criteria are really two sides of the same coin.

Structural renewal has to be faithful to the nature of the church. Every time Newbigin enters an extended discussion of structures, he begins with one or another of his definitions or descriptions of the church. From there he moves to discuss structures. Ecclesiology is important to establish since “every discussion of the structures of the Church presupposes a doctrine of the Church—hidden or acknowledged.”

A true church is missionary by its very nature, and so it is the new humankind that exists for the sake of the world. The way Newbigin formulates this is that the church exists for the place in which it is set. When the church “tries to order its life simply in relation to its own concerns and for the purposes of its own continued existence, it is untrue to its proper nature.” The church “does not exist for itself or for what it can offer its members.” The church exists to carry out God’s mission in the particular place in which it is set. This is the way Paul speaks of the church—for example, “the church of God in Corinth” (1 Cor. 1:2). The church is related to God. It exists for God’s mission, but it is also related to its place. It exists for Corinth, for Ephesus, for Surrey, for Tempe, and so on. It is of the very essence of the church that it is for that place, for that section of the world for which it has been made responsible.

The terminology “for the place” is ecclesiologically loaded for Newbigin, and so he takes time to unfold what he means by for a particular place. The word “for,” he says, “has to be defined christologically. In other words, the Church is for that place in a sense that is determined by the sense in which Christ is for the world.” Christ, and therefore the church, is for the world in a threefold sense: First, Christ is Creator and Sustainer; this means the church must love and cherish all of its created goodness. Second, Christ is the one who will bring all things to their appointed End; this means the church is to be a sign and preview of the true end for which that place exists. Third, Christ is the one who has died and who rose again for that place. In his death Christ not only identified with the created world he loved but also separated himself from its idolatry. And so the church must in every situation be wrestling with both sides of this reality: for and against the world. “The Church is for the world against the world. The Church is against the world for the world. The Church is for the human community in that place, that village, that city, that nation, in the sense that Christ is for the world.”

In light of this criterion, there are four ways the church fails to be the church for its particular place. The first is when it is irrelevant: if it adopts ecclesial structures and practices from another place or another time, it is seen as a foreign body. It also fails when it is conformed to the world and uncritically adopts the idolatrous structures and practices of that place. It fails, third, when it lives in polemical confrontation with the place and does not see the created goodness that is already there. And finally, it fails when it takes a conservative stance and becomes a static and outdated body that does not recognize the constantly changing context. A missionary church “must be where men are, speak the language they speak, inhabit the worlds they inhabit.”

The church will be for the particular place when it adopts the given structures of society, structures that are familiar and recognizable. This is precisely what the church has always done, but sometimes it is not recognized. Historically, in different times and places the church took on, for example, the structures and practices of the Jewish synagogue, the episcopal structures of cities that organized social power in this way, and the structures of the diocese in metropolitan centers. The problem is often that these inherited structures were supposedly read off the pages of Scripture as if they were simply biblical principles. However, it is not simply a matter of embracing these structures uncritically. Their idolatry must be cleansed with a gospel disinfectant. This certainly rings true today when, for example, the church is adopting corporate structures and business models as well as worship practices from popular culture and entertainment.

The church must be for the particular place. In the undifferentiated societies of medieval Europe and in the Indian villages of Newbigin’s experience, place was understood in exclusively geographical terms. People inhabited one place, where they lived, worked, played, and so on. Newbigin notes that this is changing today as most people now tend to inhabit many places: where they live, socialize, work, and play may be four different “places.” Accordingly, to define place only in terms of the geographical location of a person’s residence is inadequate. The church must be good news in every place where people are.

Here as elsewhere Newbigin approaches the subject both theologically and sociologically. Theology leads, but sociology contributes insight. He couples them, for example, when he says, “The sociologist and the theologian will be one in insisting that the idea of a structure-less Christianity is a pure illusion.” Here he makes use of the sociological insight that if an idea is to have an impact in history, it must take on an institutionally embodied form. In other places as well, he employs the insights of sociology. But time and again it is his theology—the gospel and the doctrine of the church—that leads his discussion.

Congregational Structures

In light of the criteria discussed above, Newbigin offers two critiques of existing structures: first, the fundamental ecclesial unit is too large; second, the structure of the church emerged from an undifferentiated society. Unfortunately, Newbigin’s discussion of the kinds of structures that can meet these criticisms and enable the church to be a faithful missionary body remains rather general, but again, the way he struggles with the issue is helpful. He suggests four different forms of small groups that answer the criticisms he makes.

The first is a neighborhood group. This is a small group that meets in a particular neighborhood for Bible study, prayer, fellowship, and involvement with unbelieving neighbors.

The second is a work group that provides opportunity for those working together in a particular factory or office to gather and live as a sign of the kingdom in that place. What characterizes this group is that they are in the same work space. For a short time in his life, Newbigin advocated rather daring experiments with ecclesial structures in work locations. As the bishop of Madras, a growing industrial city, he encouraged groups of Christians to establish a communal presence and be a sign of the kingdom in that place. For him these were not parachurch organizations or outstations of the local congregation but true congregations of Christ. They should be furnished with leadership (nonordained ministry), Word, and sacrament as the center of their common life. For Newbigin it was important that all mission should be seen to arise out of the gospel made known in Word and sacrament. This is a radical suggestion that needs to be further explored.

The third type of small group Newbigin discusses is a frontier group. These are small groups of Christians who work within the same sector of public life and meet together to struggle with what it looks like to live out their faith in light of the gospel. The primary goal of a frontier group is to search for ways to faithfully bear witness to the lordship of Christ in that particular area of culture.

The fourth is an action group. This group is organized around a concern for a particular kind of evangelistic or sociopolitical endeavor.

Newbigin expresses three dangers that will be present with the formation of small groups. The first is the twin dangers of introversion or activism. These groups may, on the one hand, become egocentric—a place where the benefits of salvation are selfishly enjoyed with little concern for the world. There must be an outward orientation that strives to understand what God’s will is for the office, factory, neighborhood, and so on. On the other hand, these groups may become activistic—not a witness to the kingdom but just another program to effect social change. To keep groups from becoming either introverted or activistic, Newbigin suggests four things to keep them on track: a nonordained leadership that is deeply involved in the relevant sector of life or neighborhood and is ready to give missional leadership; full access to the congregational and sacramental life of the community, either within the small group or within the wider fellowship life of the congregation; cross-confessional unity in a common commitment to a place and task; and commitments to prayer, Bible study, fellowship, and mission.

The second danger for small groups is that the great traditions of church history will be lost. Experimentation and novelty are vulnerable to the “real danger that we lose the great essentials which have been preserved and handed on through the ordered life and liturgy of the great churches.” The search for the new can blind one to the wisdom of the past.

The final danger is that these small groups will be disconnected from the universal body of Christ. The emphasis falls on local place, and so these groups have little connection with the wider fellowship of God’s people.

A missional ecclesiology demands that we think carefully about our congregational structures so that they enable the church to live out its vocation. Much thinking today on ecclesiology has been concerned with structures. Newbigin provides us with the kind of model we need: it is both theological and missional.

Ecumenical Structures

As Newbigin struggled throughout his life with ecumenical structures, he always did so, again, on the basis of a well-defined ecclesiology: the doctrine of the church must guide our reflection and action ecumenically as well as locally. Above we sketched his views on the local congregation and universal church as he understood Scripture’s teaching. He asks, “What is the form of the church order which will effectively offer to all human beings in this place the invitation of Jesus Christ to be reconciled to God through him? And: What is the form of church order which will effectively offer to mankind as a whole this same invitation?” If the church is to be good news for all humankind, it must be recognizable as both a local and a global fellowship.

Throughout his life, Newbigin asked many questions and suggested many structures that need not detain us here. But he continually pressed the issue of what it would mean to be the church in each place. While this is certainly important at the local level, we might ask whether it is important at other levels as well—such as the nation-state or the global. And, if so, what should it look like? In all of this, Newbigin says, “What matters is that the Church should everywhere be recognizable as simply the new, the true humanity; as the place where every human being is given the freedom of his own home where he can know and love and obey God as his Father, and Jesus as his Lord in the power of the Spirit who is himself the living presence now of the blessedness to which all are called.” Every congregation must ask from its place how it can express this universal reality of the church.

A Living Tradition

Two questions may arise at this point as to what we are to do with the structures of our past that have been bequeathed to us. First, what about parish churches? Most churches today are local congregations in places defined by geography. And second, what do we do with our inherited traditions—whether Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, or Congregational? Newbigin believes that the local congregation remains the fundamental structure for the church, but he also believes that daring experiments are needed that imagine structures beyond those that have been inherited. As for long-standing traditions, Newbigin employs an organic metaphor over against a mechanical one: when machines are no longer serviceable for the purpose they were constructed to fulfill, they can be scrapped, but a living organism maintains a continuity of life and must constantly adapt to its new environment. He calls for the reformation of existing structures rather than either revolutionary destruction (which many in the World Council of Churches were calling for) or conservative preservation (sought by others in reaction to the first).

A missionary self-consciousness or spirit is not enough; every church also needs missionary structures in order for that spirit to live. The structure of the church must be compatible with what it is—a missionary body. So what should not be lost in the detail of our discussion is that “the primacy of the missionary obligation” is “to be determinative of the forms of the Church’s life.”

Leadership

It may be fairly said that the two issues to which Newbigin devotes more space than any others in his writing, at least before his “retirement” years, are ecclesial unity and ministerial leadership. Much of his struggle is deeply contextual and distant from our experience today. Nevertheless, his efforts yield helpful reflection on leadership that continues to offer insight for today.

A clue to the importance he places on leadership can be found where he discusses this issue in his important book The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. He offers a well-constructed theology of mission in chapters 6 through 17. Then in chapter 18 it all comes to expression in the congregation as a hermeneutic of the gospel. He begins the following chapter: “If I am right in believing, as I do, that the only effective hermeneutic of the gospel is the life of the congregation which believes it, one has to ask how such congregations may be helped to become what they are called to be.” His answer is the title of the chapter: “Ministerial Leadership for a Missionary Congregation.” So we need to trace Newbigin’s answer to the question he puts before us: “What kind of ministerial leadership will nourish the Church in its faithfulness to the gospel in a pluralist society?”

Ministry and the Missionary Congregation

The proper place to begin to answer the question raised above is within the context of Jesus’s intention for the church to continue its mission. “We cannot talk long about ministry without talking about mission. Ministry must be conceived always in terms of the Church’s mission.” John 20:19–23 gives the substance of Jesus’s intention for the church, and Newbigin uses this as a starting point to discuss ministerial leadership. In these verses we find the following points: The church is sent and therefore missionary by its nature (“I am sending you” [v. 21]). The church’s mission is shaped by Jesus’s mission (“As the Father has sent me” [v. 21]). Mission is in the way of the cross (“He showed them his hands and side” [v. 20]). Mission can only be carried out in the power of the Spirit as the church shares in the resurrection life of Christ (“He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” [v. 22]). The church continues Jesus’s ministry of deliverance from the power of sin (“If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven” [v. 23]).

This shows Jesus’s intention for the church. To engage the subject of leadership, Newbigin opens up a standing debate on the passage: Does Jesus speak to his circle of disciples as “the ministry in embryo” or “the church in embryo”? Are they the first church or the first leaders of the church? Do we move from leadership to the whole church or from the whole church to leadership? Newbigin’s answer is, in essense, a plague on both your houses! The first leads to clericalism, which separates leadership as a higher class within the church, and the second leads to egalitarianism, which downplays the importance of ministerial leadership. To be forced to choose between these two is the result of “viewing the Church from a static, ‘Christendom’ perspective, rather than a dynamic and missionary one.” Newbigin fought against both distortions. His goal was to replace a Christendom pattern of ministry with a more missionary one.

Newbigin begins with basic insight that in John 20 Jesus speaks these words both to the first leaders and to the first members of the church. On the one hand, the commission is given to the whole church. We need ministers, from this standpoint, to lead and enable the church to fulfill its calling. He uses the analogies of Sabbath and tithing. There is one day that is holy but not because the rest are not; one day is holy so that all days may be holy. We do not give 10 percent because that is what belongs to the Lord; we give that portion to remind us that all we have is the Lord’s. So the whole church is sent, and leadership is tasked with making sure it is ready to live out its identity. On the other hand, the commission is given to the apostles as the first leaders. They are called to follow Jesus and then to lead and enable others to follow. “Ministry in the Church is so following Jesus on the way of the cross that others are enabled to follow and to become themselves leaders of others in the same way.” The boundary is fluid between leadership and other members. Leaders lead and equip so that all may follow and so that others are ready to lead and equip others to follow—and so on. It is multiplication of discipleship.

Discipleship and leadership, then, go together. Newbigin saw this in the villages of India as churches were formed. New converts learned the faith, shared it with their neighbors, and led them on to more faithful discipleship. “As those learning to follow Christ, they were at the same time leading others. In a missionary situation that is how it is. And that is how it was in the first centuries of the Church. There was no class of what we call clergy.” The distinction between clergy and laity arose when Christianity became the established religion of the empire.

Lead and Equip

Two operative words keep appearing in Newbigin’s discussion of ministerial leadership: “lead” and “equip.” What is distinctive is the way he relates the two: leaders are those who lead, first, by following hard after Jesus and, second, in the process, they equip others to follow after.

Two scriptural texts undergird his notion of leading: 1 Corinthians 11:1, “Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ”; and Mark 14:42, which Newbigin translates, “Come on: let’s go.” In the Markan text we see Jesus leading by way of example as he goes to the cross. Newbigin draws on a picture of Jesus portrayed by the Italian film director Pasolini in the movie The Gospel according to Matthew. Jesus is pictured as a commander leading his troops into battle. He goes ahead of the disciples, leading them while throwing words of encouragement, instruction, and challenge back over his shoulder as they follow him in their missionary task. A leader is not “like a queen bee who remains at the center while the worker bees go out into the world.” Nor is a leader “like a general who sits at headquarters and sends his troops into battle. He goes at their head and takes the brunt of the enemy attack. He enables and encourages them by leading them, not just by telling them. In this picture, the words of Jesus have a quite different force. They all find their meaning in the central keyword, ‘Follow me.’”

Newbigin makes a strategic choice with the word “leadership” precisely because he wants to convey this notion of participatory engagement in leading. He recognizes that in the New Testament there are many metaphors for leadership: shepherds, overseers, watchmen, stewards, ambassadors, servants, and so on. He notes that the primary metaphor today is that of a shepherd with the term “pastor.” He says, however, that the shepherd today conveys a very different picture from in biblical times, when a shepherd was a king who governed his people and led them into battle. The word “leadership” best conveys the combined notion of discipleship and leadership found in the New Testament.

As one who leads, a leader is also to equip others for the task. Newbigin uses many terms to describe this equipping: “serve,” “nourish,” “sustain,” “guide,” “enable,” “encourage.” He points to four ways a leader may equip the congregation. First, a leader is responsible for the ministry of word and sacraments to the congregation. We have seen the importance of this role in the preceding section. Second, leaders are called to uphold their people in prayer, “to hold them up by name before God as they go out into the world day by day to wrestle with the principalities and powers.” Third, leaders can provide “space” and structures in which training for cultural callings may take place. Finally, ministers must be deeply involved in the ministry of the world themselves if the first three are not to be carried out in a Christendom pattern. This will involve both engagement with the powers in a social and political setting and evangelism: a leader “should be ready himself to be engaged—as opportunity offers and calls—in direct evangelistic efforts or in pioneering movements of Christian action in the secular world.” This does not mean that the minister is directly involved in all areas of culture. Rather, as situations arise the leader is called to represent the whole church in challenging the idols and powers in public life.

Ministerial Order and the Missionary Church

Leadership is important for the health and welfare of a missionary congregation. But as a more permanent leadership arises out of the process of ongoing discipleship, the question arises: Is there one order that best exemplifies this view of ministerial leadership? Newbigin believes there was immense fluidity and variety in the forms of ministry in the early church. And no historical forms of leadership—whether papal, episcopal, presbyterial, or congregational—can be irrefutably demonstrated from Scripture. Scripture does not offer us a universally valid order of ministry. But there are criteria for judging different forms; an examination of Newbigin’s vast writing on leadership shows us five.

First, ministerial order must be shaped by and appropriate to the missionary calling of the church. Newbigin’s constant refrain is that the “question that has to be asked—and repeatedly asked—is whether the traditional forms of ministry which have been inherited from the ‘Christendom’ period are fully compatible with the faith that the Church is called to be a missionary community.”

A second criterion is that forms of ministry have to be flexible and contextual. Various cultural contexts and missionary situations will demand different forms of leadership in order to carry out the missionary calling of the church. The church is not to demolish forms and structures of culture but to renew them. They are to manifest the provisional form of the new humanity in familiar forms. It is “entirely congruous with the proper character of the Church that, from the very beginning, it took over into its own life the forms of social organism which it found in the society of which it was a part.” Eldership arose from the forms of the synagogue, the episcopate took on forms of political leadership in the cities of the empire, and so on. It is appropriate to take over cultural forms, but it must not be done uncritically; the idolatry must be recognized and purged.

A third criterion for ministerial order is the right relationship between the personal and the corporate. Leadership should involve individual initiative but always as part of the involvement of the whole community. Leaders are neither dictators who impose their wills nor pollsters who register the desire of the majority.

A fourth criterion is that both settled and mobile forms of ministry must be present. The New Testament speaks of elders, bishops, pastors, and deacons in the local congregation. These leaders are permanently settled to lead in one place. But there are also mobile, nonlocalized ministries such as apostles, prophets, and evangelists. However, with the coming of Christendom all ministerial leadership was concentrated in the local and settled ministry, which led to the “practical elimination of the universal, travelling ministry of apostles, prophets, and evangelists.” Modern-day missionary movements have attempted to reintroduce mobile ministries into the church, but these have not been integrated into official ecclesiologies or ministry orders.

A fifth criterion is that the ministerial order must express the local and universal dimensions of the church. There must be leadership at the local level but a connection with the broader church that expresses the universal nature of the church. Episcopal, Presbyterian, and papal forms of leadership are attempting to express this universality.

Theological Education and Ministerial Training

Newbigin believes that if ministerial leadership is to be appropriate to the nourishing of missionary congregations, there must be radical changes in theological education. He joined a good number of missionary leaders who struggled with the question of theological education at a time when the churches in the global South and East were rapidly growing. The ecumenical movement and later the evangelical tradition engaged these questions, but their rich reflection never really took hold.

The problem was that the Western university model of theological education was being transported to the non-Western world. Newbigin notes that the problem is “not just that the theological schools of the Third World needed to be brought up to the ‘best’ western standards. It was the question whether these standards really are the best; whether the models of ministerial formation accepted in Europe and North America are really the right ones for the Third World—or even for the areas where they have been developed.”

First, there are structural questions about whether an academic institutional model can train the kind of missionary leaders the church needs. In a university model of theological education, students are withdrawn from ministry into academic institutions that are little relevant to actual ministry. Students follow a path to become elitist professionals and lose touch with both ordinary church membership and the poorer classes of society. Newbigin points to twentieth-century educational philosophers Ivan Illich and Paulo Freire, both of whom believed that the classroom model of education was a poor way to learn. The bankers’ model of education, so labeled by Freire, is a matter of passing along intellectual information for students to bank away to be drawn on for later use. This creates the professional class of clergy and leaves one unprepared for actual ministry. Ministerial training needs to be more like business and medical models, where teaching is done as leaders engage in the practice of ministry.

Second, there are urgent questions about the contextualization of the gospel. Most seminaries do not deal with cultural context and consider theology to be timeless truth when in reality it is Western theology. The light of the gospel does not engage the current issues of the day. Newbigin has reservations about the way contextualization was understood, since it often tended to diminish scriptural authority. He is also uneasy with a certain kind of liberationist epistemology that reduces theology to reflection on praxis. But, these concerns registered, Newbigin wants to see the Bible brought to bear on particular contexts in a relevant way. As long as universal Western theologies are seen as the norm, those not formed in that culture or in that time will find them irrelevant to ministry. Theology needs to be contextual. The responsibility of theology is

to declare to each generation what is the faith, to expose and combat errors destructive of the faith, to expel from her body doctrines which pervert the faith, and to lead her members into a full and vivid apprehension of the faith. . . . This is always a fresh task in every generation, for thought is never still. The words in which the Church states its message in one generation have changed their meaning by the time the next has grown up. No verbal statement can be produced which relieves the Church of the responsibility continually to re-think and re-state its message. . . . The church has to state in every new generation how it interprets the historic faith, and how it relates it to the new thought and experience of its time. . . . Nothing can remove from the Church the responsibility for stating now, what is the faith. It belongs to the essence of the living Church that it should be able and willing to do so.

Third, there are concerns about the content of the theological curriculum. In the West, in too many ways biblical studies and theology have allowed the gospel to be absorbed into the cultural story rather than challenging it. The Bible is no longer the narrative within which theology is done. Newbigin speaks often of biblical studies operating with a faith commitment to the “creed of modernity.” He laments that “as training for Christian ministry was assimilated to the critical methods of modernity, thousands of prospective ordinands in their earliest months of theological training had to be gently but firmly moved from the confessional position to the scientific one.” The move toward higher criticism, even though it has given much insight, “is misunderstood if it is seen as a move to a more objective understanding of the Bible. It is a move from one confessional stance to another, a move from one creed to another.” This kind of blind captivity to modernity needs to be challenged by those outside the Western world who are not so shaped by this story. But we are a long way from this ideal since even non-Western scholars have been well schooled in the Western story they received from their theological training in Western institutions. How can Western biblical studies and theology, so domesticated by the idolatry of the cultural story, be renewed?

But the problem with the theological curriculum isn’t only its syncretistic Westernized theology; it is also its nonmissionary theology. The main patterns of theology and theological education were formed when “the ends of the earth [had] ceased to exist as a practical reality in the minds of Christians.” Theology, then, is “not concerned so much to state the Gospel in the terms of non-Christian cultures as with the mutual struggle of rival interpretations of the Gospel.” Church history is “taught not as the story of missionary advance in successive encounters of the Gospel with different forms of human culture and society, but rather as the story of the doctrinal and other conflicts within the life of the Church.” The theological curriculum needs to be reworked in terms of being both more contextual and more missional.

Fourth, the responsibility for theological education has been removed from the churches. Newbigin believes “the task of theological training cannot be simply handed over to the universities. It is the task of the church, and the church must take responsibility.” It is only when theology and theological education are done “in the context of the confessing and worshipping church” that there will be a “real dialogue between gospel and our culture.” Newbigin is not opposed to academic settings; it is just that those involved in that kind of institution must raise foundational “questions about the very presuppositions upon which the university faculty operates.”

If there are to be missionary leaders, there is a need for a new kind of theological education in structures, pedagogy, and theological curriculum.

The Ministerial Task of Discipline

Discussion of the subject of ecclesiastical discipline is relatively sparse in Newbigin’s writings. Yet in his memoirs it is clear that discipline was a regular and important part of his own ministry as a bishop. We refer to it here briefly because in the three or four places where he does discuss it, he makes clear that this is a crucial element in the missionary church. Discipline means more than excommunication, of course, but that is included. A church must take responsibility to enable converts to be renewed in their lives when conversion removes them from their old social spheres. They must continually be guided to leave behind sin and idolatry. It has to be both firm and gracious. And there will be times when excommunication must take place when people allow public sin to have a foothold in their lives. The goal is ultimately restoration to faithful living. If the church does not take discipline seriously, “the Church’s witness to the non-Christian world becomes hopelessly compromised.”

In his own memoirs of his time as a bishop, Newbigin describes times where he had to exercise discipline. He stresses the importance of firm discipline in love. The exercise of discipline is “in many ways the severest test of a church’s Christianity. It is easy—fatally easy—for a congregation simply to shut its eyes to the sins of its members and to do nothing about them. It is also easy for it, under certain circumstances, to adopt a hard legalistic attitude which is without redemptive power.” True discipline must avoid both of these approaches.

In a sermon Newbigin preached as a bishop to his ministers, he says, “The duty of discipline . . . is part of the whole discipline laid upon us in our ordination.” He rejects a Pharisaical approach that is harsh and condemning as well as a Sadduceean path that is an “easy-going compromise with the world which merely shrugs its shoulders in the presence of evil and prefers to avoid trouble by saying nothing. Evil then goes unchallenged, and becomes comfortably established in the Church, like a tenant who cannot be evicted.” The object of all discipline is that the person may be forgiven and restored to the church’s fellowship; that must never be forgotten. It must be done with humility because we too are forgiven sinners. Significantly, Newbigin makes a special point of challenging those under his care “to be fearless in tackling the sins of the rich and powerful.” It is easy to shrug off discipline of those with social and economic power. Yet if we only discipline those who do not hold this kind of power, we “expose ourselves as cowards and bullies.”

Discipline is necessary for the missionary congregation if it is to live its distinctive life in the midst of the world as a sign, foretaste, and firstfruit of the kingdom. The life of the missionary church must evidence the power of the gospel. A compromised and domesticated life blurs the witness of the church.

Conclusion

Traditionally, ecclesiology has been devoted to questions of the church as institution—worship, preaching, sacraments, organization, leadership, and so on. Moreover, in popular imagination the word “church” often stands for these things. But these aspects of the church’s life have been disconnected from the mission of the church in the world. Some more recently have reacted against this institutional introversion and ignored more than a thousand years of ecclesiological reflection. Newbigin did neither. He often struggled with traditional questions but always reframed them in light of the mission of the church. If the church is to be a faithful sign, foretaste, and instrument of the kingdom, then worship, ecclesial structures, and leadership—indeed all the aspects of the church as institution and community—are important.

. Johannes Hoekendijk is a great example of this in his book The Church Inside Out, ed. L. A. Hoedemaker and Pieter Tijmes, trans. Isaac C. Rottenberg (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966).

. See further Michael W. Goheen, “As the Father Has Sent Me, I Am Sending You”: J. E. Lesslie Newbigin’s Missionary Ecclesiology (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2000), 228–73 (chap. 6).

. Lesslie Newbigin, “The Basis and the Forms of Unity,” Mid-Stream 23 (January 1984): 7.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “A Fellowship of Churches,” Ecumenical Review 37 (1985): 176.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “Which Way for ‘Faith and Order’?,” in What Unity Implies: Six Essays after Uppsala, ed. Reinhard Groscurth (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1970), 118.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “Our Task Today” (address, fourth meeting of the diocesan council, Tirumangalam, 1951), 4.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “The Work of the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Asian Churches,” in A Decisive Hour for the Christian World Mission, by Norman Goodall, Lesslie Newbigin, W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, and D. T. Niles (London: SCM, 1960), 26.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “The Church—Local and Universal,” in The Church—Local and Universal: Things We Face Together, ed. Lesslie Newbigin and Leslie T. Lyall (London: World Dominion Press, 1962), 20.

. Lesslie Newbigin, Unfinished Agenda: An Updated Autobiography (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 1993), 53–54.

. Newbigin, Unfinished Agenda, 118.

. Lesslie Newbigin, review of New Ways for Christ, by Michael Wright, International Review of Mission 65 (1976): 228.

. Lesslie Newbigin, Sign of the Kingdom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 62; Lesslie Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 227.

. Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 88.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “The Christian Layman in the World and in the Church,” National Christian Council Review 72 (1952): 185–89. Throughout this article he continues to refer to the church scattered in their various vocations as “the Body of Christ” and says we have forgotten this when we limit the church to the gathered congregation.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “Bible Studies: Four Talks on 1 Peter,” in We Were Brought Together, ed. David M. Taylor (Sydney: Australian Council for the World Council of Churches, 1960), 96–97.

. Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 136–37; Newbigin, Truth to Tell, 85–87.

. Lesslie Newbigin, One Body, One Gospel, One World: The Christian Mission Today (New York: International Missionary Council, 1958), 20.

. Newbigin, One Body, One Gospel, One World, 21. Emphasis added on the opening phrase.

. Newbigin, One Body, One Gospel, One World, 26–27.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “Evangelism in the City,” Reformed Review 41 (Autumn 1987): 4 (my emphasis).

. Newbigin, “Evangelism in the City,” 5.

. Lesslie Newbigin, Journey into Joy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 112.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “The Evangelization of Eastern Asia,” International Review of Mission 39, no. 154 (April 1950): 142.

. Newbigin, “Evangelization of Eastern Asia,” 143.

. Newbigin, One Body, One Gospel, One World, 16–17.

. Newbigin, “Evangelization of Eastern Asia,” 143.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “Reflections on an Indian Ministry,” Frontier 18 (1975): 26.

. Newbigin, “Reflections on an Indian Ministry,” 26.

. Newbigin, “Evangelization of Eastern Asia,” 143.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “The Bible Study Lectures,” in Digest of the Proceedings of the Ninth Meeting of the Consultation on Church Union (COCU), ed. Paul A. Crow (Princeton: COCU, 1970), 211.

. Lesslie Newbigin, The Reunion of the Church: A Defence of the South India Scheme (London: SCM, 1948), 60–72.

. Newbigin, Reunion of the Church, 102.

. Newbigin, “Our Task Today,” 4–5.

. Lesslie Newbigin, Mission in Christ’s Way: Bible Studies (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1987), 19–20.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “Abiding in Him,” in Uniting in Hope: Reports and Documents from the Meeting of the Faith and Order Commission, Accra, Ghana (University of Ghana, Legon), 1974 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1975), 141–44; Lesslie Newbigin, Good Shepherd: Meditations on Christian Ministry in Today’s World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), 140–44.

. Newbigin, “Abiding in Him,” 141; see Newbigin, Good Shepherd, 141.

. Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of the Church (New York: Friendship Press, 1954), 167.

. Using Acts 2:42, Newbigin adds fellowship to the Word, the Lord’s Supper, and prayer. See, e.g., Lesslie Newbigin, Sin and Salvation (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1956), 94–96.

. Newbigin, Good Shepherd, 37.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “Bishops in a United Church,” in Bishops, but What Kind?, ed. Peter Moore (London: SPCK, 1982), 156.

. Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 227.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “The Life and Mission of the Church,” in We Were Brought Together, ed. David M. Taylor (Sydney: Australian Council for the World Council of Churches, 1960), 59.

. Newbigin, Journey into Joy, 112–13.

. Newbigin, Good Shepherd, 98.

. Newbigin, Good Shepherd, 28.

. Newbigin, Good Shepherd, 32–34.

. Newbigin, Good Shepherd, 35–36.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “Worship—Cleaning the Mirror,” Reform, September 1990, 7.

. Newbigin, “Our Task Today,” 4.

. Newbigin, Good Shepherd, 23.

. Newbigin, Reunion of the Church, 106.

. Newbigin, “Our Task Today,” 4.

. Newbigin, Reunion of the Church, 132, 134.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “The Heritage of the Church in South India: Our Presbyterian Heritage,” South India Churchman, January 1948, 54.

. Newbigin, Reunion of the Church, 131.

. Newbigin, Good Shepherd, 24.

. Newbigin, Good Shepherd, 25.

. Lesslie Newbigin, St. Paul in Limerick (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 1998), 58.

. Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 147.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “Biblical Authority,” unpublished article, Newbigin Archives, University of Birmingham (1997), 6.

. Lesslie Newbigin, A Word in Season: Perspectives on Christian World Missions (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 204–5.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “The Church and the Kingdom” (unpublished article, 1973), 10–11.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “How Should We Understand Sacraments and Ministry?” (paper for the Anglican-Reformed International Commission meeting, London, 1983), Newbigin Archives, University of Birmingham; Lesslie Newbigin, “Our Baptism Renewed in Bread and Wine,” Reform, July/August 1990, 18; Newbigin, “Church and the Kingdom.”

. Lesslie Newbigin, “The Future of Missions and Missionaries,” Review and Expositor 74, no. 2 (1977): 217.

. Newbigin, “Our Baptism Renewed,” 18.

. Newbigin, “Our Baptism Renewed,” 18.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “Renewal in Mind,” GEAR (Group for Evangelism and Renewal in the URC) 29 (1983): 6.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “Forgetting What Lies Behind . . .” (sermon, fiftieth-anniversary observance of the Edinburgh 1910 World Missionary Conference, Riverside Church, New York City, May 25, 1960), 5.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “Developments during 1962: An Editorial Survey,” International Review of Mission 52, no. 205 (January 1963): 14.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “An X-Ray to Make God Visible in the World,” Reform, December 1990, 7.

. Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 39 (my emphasis).

. Newbigin, One Body, One Gospel, One World, 21.

. Lesslie Newbigin, review of Canterbury Pilgrim, by A. M. Ramsey, and Great Christian Centuries to Come, ed. Christian Martin, Ecumenical Review 27 (1975): 172.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “The Call to Mission—A Call to Unity,” in The Church Crossing Frontiers, ed. Peter Beyerhaus and Carl Hallencreutz (Lund: Gleerup, 1969), 263.

. Newbigin, “Developments during 1962,” 9.

. Newbigin, Unfinished Agenda, 148.

. Lesslie Newbigin, Honest Religion for Secular Man (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966), 102–11.

. Newbigin, “Developments during 1962,” 8.

. We see the same argument in these two major discussions on ecclesial structures: Lesslie Newbigin, “The Form and Structure of the Visible Unity of the Church,” One in Christ 13 (1977): 107–17; Lesslie Newbigin, “What Is ‘a Local Church Truly United’?,” Ecumenical Review 29 (1977): 115–28. He begins with the contemporary context of the question, moves to a discussion of ecclesiology, and then moves to structural renewal.

. Newbigin, “Form and Structure,” 110.

. Newbigin, “What Is ‘a Local Church Truly United’?,” 119.

. Newbigin, Sign of the Kingdom, 45.

. Newbigin, Word in Season, 53–54.

. Newbigin, Word in Season, 54.

. Newbigin, Honest Religion, 112.

. Newbigin, “Form and Structure,” 113.

. Newbigin, “Form and Structure,” 109.

. Newbigin, Honest Religion, 111–14.

. Newbigin, Sign of the Kingdom, 66–67; see his full discussion of structures on 57–67.

. Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 230–31.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “Cooperation and Unity,” International Review of Mission 59, no. 233 (January 1970): 73.

. Newbigin, “Which Way for ‘Faith and Order’?,” 118.

. Newbigin, “What Is ‘a Local Church Truly United’?,” 128.

. Newbigin, “Developments during 1962,” 8.

. Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 234.

. Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 234–41.

. Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 235.

. Lesslie Newbigin, Priorities for a New Decade (Birmingham, UK: National Student Christian Press and Resource Centre, 1980), 8–9.

. Newbigin, “How Should We Understand Sacraments and Ministry?,” 9.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “Ministry” (unpublished paper, 1982).

. Newbigin, “How Should We Understand Sacraments and Ministry?,” 9.

. Newbigin, “Ministry,” 6.

. Newbigin, Good Shepherd, 75.

. Newbigin, “Ministry,” 3.

. Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 240.

. Newbigin, “How Should We Understand Sacraments and Ministry?,” 5.

. E.g., Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 234–41.

. Newbigin, “Bible Studies: Four Talks on 1 Peter,” 119; see Newbigin, Good Shepherd, 143.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “Episcopacy and Authority,” Churchman 104, no. 4 (1990): 338; Newbigin, Good Shepherd, 80–81.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “The Bishop and the Ministry of Mission,” in Today’s Church and Today’s World, ed. J. Howe (London: CIO Publishing, 1977), 246; see also Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 240; Newbigin, Good Shepherd, 60–61.

. Newbigin, “Developments during 1962,” 8.

. Newbigin, “Form and Structure,” 114.

. Newbigin, “How Should We Understand Sacraments and Ministry?,” 9.

. Newbigin, “Ministry,” 8.

. Lesslie Newbigin, “Theological Education in a World Perspective,” Churchman 93, no. 2 (1979): 105–15.

. Newbigin, Reunion of the Church, 137–38.

. Newbigin, Proper Confidence, 83.

. Newbigin, Proper Confidence, 79.

. Newbigin, Proper Confidence, 80.

. Newbigin, Honest Religion, 102–3.

. Newbigin, “Theological Education,” 115.

. Lesslie Newbigin, A South India Diary (London: SCM, 1951), 72–75.

. Newbigin, Household of God, 7.

. Newbigin, South India Diary, 73.

. Newbigin, Good Shepherd, 50–53. In South India Diary, 72, Newbigin tells a story of where this very thing took place. A “very influential member of the church” was not disciplined for a serious sin. “Evidently the influence of Mr. T. weighed more with the Pastoral Committee than the fear of God.”

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