20 Confidence in the Gospel
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 about how such congregations may be helped to become what they are called to be. I referred in the last chapter to the contrast, which I suppose everyone has made at some time or another, between the "ordinary parson-led congregation" and "something more exciting but less visible." The idea of an invisible Church is, of course, always attractive for the simple reason that one chooses in the privacy of one's own mind who are the members and who are not. By contrast, the Church in the New Testament is represented by visible communities of men and women located in places which can be visited and to which letters can be written. This is not to deny the very important point, which was the subject of Chapter 16, that there is a spiritual reality "in the heavenly places" which is not visible to the eye of flesh but which is the reality which has visible embodiment in these congregations; that there are "angels" of the churches, spiritual realities which are more than simply the sum of the individual members; and that the "angels" can be accused of behavior which is not in accordance with the will of God (for example, Rev. 3:15ff.). But the "angels" do not have any impact on events except as they are represented by visible congregations which have a specific location-whether in the primary geographical sense, or in the sense of location within one of the sectors of public life in a complex and multisectional modern society. I have already said that I believe that the major impact of such congregations on the life of society as a whole is through the daily work of the members in their secular vocations and not through the official pronouncements of ecclesiastical bodies. But the developing, nourishing, and sustaining of Christian faith and practice is impossible apart from the life of a believing congregation. It is therefore important for my thesis to consider, however briefly, the question of the leadership of such congregations.
In some Christian circles it is unfashionable to talk much about the ordained ministry, because of the fear of being guilty of elitism, one of contemporary society's catalogue of unforgivable sins. Without going into an elaborate discussion of this fear, I will make two simple points. First, I hope I have made clear my belief that it is the whole Church which is called to be-in Christ-a royal priesthood, that every member of the body is called to the exercise of this priesthood, and that this priesthood is to be exercised in the daily life and work of Christians in the secular business of the world. But this will not happen unless there is a ministerial priesthood which serves, nourishes, sustains, and guides this priestly work. The priestly people needs a ministering priesthood to sustain and nourish it. Men and women are not ordained to this ministerial priesthood in order to take priesthood away from the people but in order to nourish and sustain the priesthood of the people. Just as we observe one day of the week as "the Lord's Day," not in order that the other six days may be left to the devil but in order that they may all belong to the Lord; so we set apart a man or woman to a ministerial priesthood not in order to take away the priesthood of the whole body but to enable it. To be chosen ("elite") for this ministry becomes an occasion for sin only if this fundamental fact is forgotten. And, second, one can put the same point from the other side. The full participation of the members of a body in its activity does not happen without leadership. The business of leadership is precisely to enable, encourage, and sustain the activity of all the members. To set "participation" and "leadership" against each other is absurd. Clericalism and anticlericalism are simply two sides of one mistake.
What kind of ministerial leadership will nourish the Church in its faithfulness to the gospel in a pluralist society? It is frequently said that the Church in Britain is now in a missionary situation. It is not clear that the full meaning of this has been understood. We have lived for so many centuries in the "Christendom" situation that ministerial training is almost entirely conceived in terms of the pastoral care of existing congregations. In a situation of declining numbers, the policy has been to abandon areas (such as the inner cities) where active Christians are few and to concentrate ministerial resources by merging congregations and deploying ministers in the places where there are enough Christians to support them. Needless to say, this simply accelerates the decline. It is the opposite of a missionary strategy, which would proceed in the opposite direction-deploying ministers in the areas where the Christian presence is weakest. The large-scale abandonment of the inner cities by the "mainline" churches is the most obvious evidence of the policy that has been pursued.
If the gospel is the good news of the reign of God over the whole of life, public no less than private; if the Church is therefore called to address the whole public life of the community as well as the personal lives of men and women in the private and domestic affairs, what kind of ministerial leadership is needed? I suppose that the problem is (in some respects) simpler in a small village community than in a city. In the traditional way of life in a small English village it was the case, and sometimes still is the case, that the "Parson" was seen as a leadership figure for the whole community-for regular churchgoers and for those who hardly ever look inside the church door. In a modern city the situation is different. Society is fragmented. People are "plugged into" a variety of networks. Moreover, the presence of television has the effect of atomizing society; people spend most of their leisure hours glued to the TV screen as separate individuals gripped (if only for a time) by the message that is being beamed into the living room. The local community of neighbors becomes a much less powerful element in people's lives. It is much more difficult for the church and the minister to relate to the whole community. The minister is tempted to "look after" those individuals and families who attend church, and they-in turn-expect him to spend his time doing so. The vision of the church as a body which exists for the neighborhood and not just for its members, as the sign of God's rule over all, is much harder to sustain. Some years ago a survey was conducted in the South Indian city of Bangalore to find out something of the attitudes of clergy and people to the role of the Church and the clergy. Among the results of the survey was the discovery that while a majority of the lay members thought the clergy were far too much involved in business outside their congregations, a majority of the clergy thought they were not enough involved. This failure of communication and consequent divergence between the clerical and the lay view of the role of the minister is certainly not unique to Bangalore. Is it the primary business of the ordained minister to look after the spiritual needs of the church members? Is it to represent God's kingdom to the whole community? Or-and this is surely the true answer-is it to lead the whole congregation as God's embassage to the whole community?
The Bible shows us two images of the city. There is the theme of the wicked city, the point of concentration for all that opposes God's purpose, from Babylon through all the great imperialisms to Rome as the seat of the great harlot. And there is the other image of the city as the place of God's dwelling, Zion the place where he has made his sanctuary and the type of the holy city which will come down from heaven as a bride adorned for her husband. In regard to the wicked city, there are at least two different strands of teaching as well. By far the most powerful in Christian history has been that strand which emphasizes the need to flee from the wicked city in order to escape the destruction which will come upon it. The picture of Lot and his wife fleeing from Sodom has been an immensely powerful one in shaping Christian imagination. In the English-speaking world it has been reinforced by the vivid imagery of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. "Come out from among them and be separate from them, says the Lord" (2 Cor. 6:16) has been an immensely powerful text in Christian history. It suggests a model of ministry in the city which has as its central thrust the effort to draw individuals out of the wicked city and bring them one by one into the ark of salvation.
But there is another image in the Bible, one that has had less impact on the Christian imagination. Its classic representation in the Old Testament is the story of Jonah, that improbable missionary who tries to run away from the wicked city but is stopped in his tracks by the Lord and ordered to go into the city to call it to repentance. The call meets with a fantastic response, but Jonah is left at the end in a thoroughly ambivalent position, not quite inside the city and not quite far from it, but sitting on its edge waiting to see what will happen, caring more about himself than about the fate of the city. Is this where the Church can stay-half in and half out, more concerned about itself than about the city? The end of the book of Jonah leaves us in no doubt. Jonah may not care, but God cares deeply-even for the dumb animals in their stalls.
Neither Lot fleeing from Sodom nor Jonah sitting under his gourd in the outer suburbs of Nineveh can provide us with the definitive image of the Church's relation to the city. That is given to us in the picture of Jesus riding into Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover. Jesus loved Jerusalem. He had wept over it. But Jerusalem had rejected him. He could have turned his back on it and led his disciples away into the desert and there-like the Essenes of his time-devoted their corporate life to praying and waiting for God to bring in his kingdom. Or he could have put himself at the head of the Zealots, taken up the sword, and made himself master of the city. What he did was neither of these things. He chose for his moment the festival of Passover, the moment of maximum national feeling, the moment when thoughts of a mighty deliverance for Israel were in all hearts. He chose for his mount not a warhorse or a chariot, but a mount that would call to mind the ancient prophecy of a king who would come in lowliness to claim his kingdom. By what he did he challenged the public life of the city and the nation. He claimed rightful kingship. He challenged all the powers that usurped God's rule over public life. He came as a king claiming the throne that was his by right. And he accepted, with open eyes, the cost of the claim. The throne would be a cross. But it was, and is, the throne. The death of Jesus was the place where "the ruler of this world" was cast out of his usurped throne (John 12:31). It was the place where the principalities and powers were disarmed (Col. 2:15).
This, surely, is the image that must control our thinking about the relation of the Church to the city, of the Church to the world. And it will therefore control the way ministry is conceived. The task of ministry is to lead the congregation as a whole in a mission to the community as a whole, to claim its whole public life, as well as the personal lives of all its people, for God's rule. It means equipping all the members of the congregation to understand and fulfill their several roles in this mission through their faithfulness in their daily work. It means training and equipping them to be active followers of Jesus in his assault on the principalities and powers which he has disarmed on his cross. And it means sustaining them in bearing the cost of that warfare.
It seems to me that, if this is our model, it will preclude our being captive to either of the two models which are often presented as the only alternatives. One model lays all the stress on personal conversion, the other on a diffused influence through the community. Those who accept one of these models are often deeply suspicious of those who accept the other. I have noticed this particularly in the context of mission to industry. There is, on the one side, a tendency to regard with contempt the "holy huddle" of those who claim to have been converted, who therefore keep themselves separate from the unconverted, who pray and study their Bibles but do not seem to take the risks involved in taking costly public positions on specific issues such as working con ditions in the factory or bargaining rights for workers. On the other hand, there are those who do not like to talk about "the call to conversion" but speak much about applying Christian principles to the working of industry, and who therefore appear to be purveyors of good advice rather than of good news. A similar split in the Christian view of the relation of Church to world occurs in other contexts. Defenders of the "parish church" approach are criticized by those who call for gathered communities of those who have a definite experience of conversion. Those in the former camp can be plausibly portrayed as people who have made a comfortable concordat with the world and fail seriously to challenge it; those on the other side can with equal plausibility be portrayed as selfish people who are concerned only with their own salvation and fail to love the world as God loves it.
I cannot doubt that the call to conversion is essential to any authentic understanding of the gospel. The ministry of Jesus began with such a call: "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand." The crucial question concerns the content of conversion. The widespread misunderstanding of the word is illustrated in the mistranslation of this word of Jesus in the Good News Bible. There metanoeite is translated as "turn away from your sins." If this were the true translation, Jesus would be merely a preacher of revival. In fact he was calling for something much more radical, a conversion of the mind which leads to a totally new view of life. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the "sinners" are the ones who understand and the "righteous" are the ones who do not. The call to conversion is much more than a call to turn away from those things which society (even apart from the events of Jesus' ministry) can recognize as sins. It involves, in fact, proving that the world's idea of what is sin and what is righteousness is wrong (John 16:8). The conversion for which Jesus calls, and which the Spirit now effects in those who turn to him, is a radically new way of understanding: it involves at the same time a demand for total selfsurrender and the gift of utter security. It involves both calling and promise, demand and gift, at the same time. And it concerns the whole of life-the public life of the world, the nation, the factory, the society, and the personal life of each believer. There can be no muffling of the call to conversion, but equally there can be no limiting of its range, no offer of a "cheap grace" which promises security without commitment to that mission for which Jesus went to the cross. The bearer of this call has to be a community which is both committed to that mission and also enjoying and celebrating that security.
What, then, will be the relation of the minister to this community? I have used such words as "enabling," "sustaining," and "nourishing" to describe his role in mobilizing the congregation for its mission. But how shall this be done? Once again, I think, we have to look at alternative images. The typical picture of the minister, at least in the Protestant tradition, has been that of a teacher. He faces the congregation as a teacher faces the class. They all, preacher and people alike, have their backs turned to the outside world. They face one another, and the minister encourages, exhorts, and teaches. Many biblical pictures portray Jesus in this relation to his disciples. The Italian director Pasolini (himself a Marxist) in the film The Gospel according to St. Matthew gives a picture of Jesus' teaching which is quite different and, once seen, unforgettable. It shows Jesus going ahead of his disciples, like a commander leading troops into battle. The words he speaks are thrown back over his shoulder to the fearful and faltering followers. He is not 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."
If one has once seen this picture, one cannot think of ministry in the way I have just described. Ministerial leadership for a missionary congregation will require that the minister is directly engaged in the warfare of the kingdom against the powers which usurp the kingship. Of course the minister cannot be directly involved in each of the specific areas of secular life in which the members of the congregation have to fight their battles. But there will be situations where the minister must represent the whole Church in challenging abuse of power, corruption, and selfishness in public life and take the blows that follow. As he or she does this, the way will be open for standing in solidarity with members of the congregation who have to face similar conflict. There is a sense in which the Christian warfare against the world, the flesh, and the devil is all one warfare. Those who display courage in one sector of the line encourage everyone. The minister will encourage the whole company by the courage with which he or she engages the enemy. And of course, as Paul reminds us, "the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds" (2 Cor. 10:4). The minister's leadership of the congregation in its mission to the world will be first and foremost in the area of his or her own discipleship, in that life of prayer and daily consecration which remains hidden from the world but which is the place where the essential battles are either won or lost.
I find warrant for this way of seeing ministry in the final chapter of St. John's Gospel, where-in the person of Peter-we have given to us a picture of apostolic leadership in the Church. Peter is first presented to us as an evangelist. He is a fisherman who, however, catches nothing until he submits to the Master's instruction. When he does so, there is a mighty catch which he brings, with the net intact and as the fruit of his work, one undivided harvest, to the feet of Jesus. Then the image changes and Peter is a pastor to whom Jesus entrusts his flock. He can so entrust it because Peter loves him more than all. But then, finally, the image changes again. Peter is a disciple who must go the way the Master went, the way of the cross. He is not to look around to see who else is following. He is to look one way only-to the Master who goes before him. Ministerial leadership is, first and finally, discipleship.