An odd Church!

This morning Matthew Charlton, an American Methodist minister from Nashville, delivered his remarkable paper in our working group. His paper is entitled " “That’s Not So Odd: The Spiritless Church in a Post Christian Age.” (simply click on the link to download it).

In this paper Matthew argues that one of the real problems with the Church in a 'post-Christian' era is that it has become tame, ordinary, and so much a part of society. Of course I asked the question whether we do truly live in a post-Christian era (you only need to look at the Church in the two-thirds world that is growing at a rate of knots to realise that perhaps we are not living in a post-Christian era, but merely in a post Western-Christian era!)

However, Matthew's paper (which is incredibly well written and is WELL WORTH READING - hint, hint to all my students!!!) resonated with a feeling that I had whilst in London. On Saturday I visited St Paul's Cathedral (my New Testament students should be familiar with this image, remember this is the Cathedral that the Queen described as "Awful, amusing, and artificial" after Christopher Wren spent most of his life working on it. I use this as an illustration to show how important it is to understand the context locked language of statements - in Wren's time awful meant to be filled with awe, amusing meant amazing, and artificial meant something that is intricately crafted and well engineered - all in all she was giving him a compliment, of course. The point that I try to make is that the language of the Bible (which is much older, and more context locked than the English of 300 years ago) can be similarly misunderstood and abused).

However, I have digressed!

Matthew's paper reminded me how I felt when I visited St Paul's Cathedral. This is a magnificent testimony to the triumphalism of Christianity some 300 years ago! It was erected at the height of the relationship between Christendom and the empire to offer worship and honour to God! I am certain that over its life it has served as a place of refuge, comfort, inspiration, and even discovery of new life and forgiveness, for many people. However, in 2007 it was nothing more than an oddity! It was something to visit and marvel at. However, for most of the persons who visited it it had nothing to do with faith, with Christ, with death, with sacrifice, with real life. Rather, the building was amusing (in the modern sense of the word!) There are 443 steps to climb to the top (I climbed them all! Here's the picture to prove it! This picture shows the view from the top of St Paul's across the Millennium bridge to the Tate Modern art Gallery along the Thames in London). Sadly, St Paul's does not seem to have space to encounter God. Well, very little of it anyway. Mostly it is just a hustle and bustle with tourists coming to be amazed and amused.

I wondered if the 'institutional' Church of our day is not facing a similar challenge? People look at it and can recognise that at some stage it was grand and glorious, but it is so far from what they need, want, and experience in their everyday lives that they simply regard it as "awful, amusing, and artificial" - in the modern understanding of these words. I think that Matthew's paper, which suggests that the Church needs to be odd (in a very different way to that of St Paul's) gives us some real answers! The Church needs to be odd in discipline, in holiness, in vocation, in mission, in true live. The Church needs to be Spirit filled and Christ lead. It needs, not to be in contrast to the world (like a prophet), but lovingly and evangelically presenting the world with a real alternative that may seem odd, but that brings life - a message of Christ that saves, of a world in which no one person has too much, and no one has too little.

Anyway, I was challenged by this!