rooms.indb 152 adapting to a gift economy a review essay williams, john, 2020. ecclesianarchy: adaptive ministry for a post-church society london: scm press isbn: 978–0334059806 barrett, al, and ruth harley, 2020. being interrupted: reimagining mission from the outside, in london: scm press isbn: 978–0334058625 reviewed by scott j. hagley associate professor of missiology, pittsburgh theological seminary shagley@pts.edu scott j. hagley—adapting to a gift economy 153 in the american television comedy community, a college student named shirley recruits her friend abed to make a film adaptation of the life of christ. she wants him to make jesus cool for young people. but abed is suspicious. he (rightly) suspects shirley’s evangelistic motives, and he thinks the “jesus-film” genre has been done to death. but after staying up all night reading the gospels, abed comes back to shirley enthusiastic about the project. jesus, he tells her, is way more interesting than christians claim. it is time to make a jesus film for the “post-postmodern world,” where jesus is a filmmaker trying to find god with his camera, only to realize that he is being filmed by god’s camera, “like a mirror in a mirror.” shirley doesn’t like it; she no longer recognizes jesus in abed’s portrayal. the abed-shirley dialogue should feel familiar for anyone who has worked at the edges of emergent, missional and church planting conversations over the past couple decades. wrangling over relevance in changing western contexts tends to leave enthusiasts for “postmodern” or “post-christendom” ministry at odds with those who hope to stop the bleeding. on the one hand, we quote from well-known autopsies of christendom and modernity, account for the white supremacist, colonialist, patriarchal, and neoliberal narratives that formed and fueled white mainline churches of the west and assure one another that an important deconstructive work is taking place. we are being set free for god’s mission. on the other hand, we are also members of mainline churches, and live with the steady decline of resources and congregational members every day. and so we hope to sustain institutions and bear witness to the gospel in a faithful and trustworthy way. like shirley, we desire new tools to update church practice in the short term. but like abed, we are caught in the liminal discourses of postmodernity. two recent books, ecclesianarchy: adaptive ministry for a post-church society by john williams and being interrupted: reimaging the church’s ministry from the outside, in by al barrett and ruth harley, wade into this ambiguity, balancing the need for e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 154 new ecclesial structures with pastoral concern for local congregations. writing about the church of england—though this analysis certainly holds for mainline churches in the us—both books show how inherited forms of church life prioritize hierarchical order at the expense of missional imagination, marginalizing possible sources of renewal in the process. ecclesianarchy invites the church into a “post-church” space, in which decentralized, flexible, adaptive and experimental forms of community are the new normal. being interrupted identifies the gift of neighbors and neighborhoods for calling the church into a more humble and human participation in the mission of god. both lean into an understanding of gift, in which the church receives new life by attending to its context. the term “ecclesianarchy” describes a flexible, fluid, bottomup approach to church organization. williams argues that church structures are not inherent in the being of god, but rather historical and contingent. as a missional people, the church thrives when it is adaptive to cultural contexts. the church of england, williams warns, ignores the anarchic nature of church life at its own peril. at present, it suffers from “an excess of ecclesiology,” in which church order is “warranted by a fundamental theological tradition” and unable to adjust to the post-christendom, postchurch realities of contemporary life (williams, 2020: viii). for a book that begins with anarchy, williams’s argument unfolds with a surprising amount of attention to the given ecclesial structures of the anglican church. after establishing the nature and scope of church decline in the uk, williams turns toward the traditional divisions of ministerial labor. drawing from a wide range of historical and ecumenical sources, williams argues that a contextual understanding of deacons, presbyters, and bishops suggests a more localized and laicized approach to ministry. pentecostalism, chaplaincy and fresh expressions provide contemporary examples of such flexibility, though each falls short of williams’s vision. in the final chapters of the book, williams offers his own missiology for ecclesial anarchy. in a post-church society, where scott j. hagley—adapting to a gift economy 155 religious expression has become deregulated and reduced to another form of consumer choice, christianity offers the impossibly good news of unmerited grace, or gift. drawing from the “gift” discourses of postmodern philosophy, williams suggests christian life and practice should be characterized by “creative possibility” in which “dispossessive [anti]structures, dispersed leadership, decentred worship, and dis-illusioned ecclesiality” make possible an encounter with the christian gospel (williams, 2020: 164). the anarchic plurality that characterizes these features of christian life witness to “the absurd but liberating truth that as christianity is impossible, so is any ideal of ministry as being an exemplary christian. in a post-church society, the subversive strategy of christian presence is a communion of the broken and a fellowship of the failed, a shaft of divine illumination in a frantic world where motivating yourself to succeed is frequently the sole, but bogus, recipe for happiness on offer” (williams, 2020: 196). while williams offers a moving picture of a decentred church organized in response to the ways god makes godself known in a postmodern setting, the anarchic proposal remains tethered to postmodern analyses in such a way that the innovations to ministry or structure that might emerge from pentecostal movements, chaplaincy, or fresh expressions remains lost. in the end, williams’s ecclesianarchy feels like it is in the analytical frame, with few concrete practices to offer church leaders. while he points to several well-known emergent churches to provide examples, one is left wondering where or how one might begin to form such community in one’s own congregation. being interrupted shares with ecclesianarchy a discomfort with the status quo and an analysis of post-church, post-christendom britain that suggests a more grounded, contextual, and pluralist approach to church ministry. however, rather than focus on internal church structures, barrett and harley situate congregational renewal outside the institution. they begin the book with a list of crises the church has been slow to address—brexit, the windrush scandal, the fire at grenfell tower, #metoo and the climate crisis—and suggest a reappraisal of the ways in which the e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 156 church thinks about and relates to its various contexts. using the metaphor “economy,” they argue that most congregations in the church of england operate within a “counting in” or “giving out” model of church. a “counting in” economy employs congregational resources for attracting people into the building, growing the congregation and the budget. it is a highly rational, efficient, and growth-oriented “mcdonaldization of church” (barrett and harley, 2020: 65). a church operating in the “giving out” economy repurposes its resources for meeting needs in the neighborhood and world. it desires to share its many gifts with those outside the church to work for cultural and societal change. but neither approach addresses the current moment. a congregation operating within a “counting in” economy can safely ignore the overlapping crises of structural racism, classism, socioeconomic inequality, patriarchy, and environmental degradation; the “giving out” economy can acknowledge these issues without wrestling with the church’s complicity in them. such crises, barrett and harley insist, interrupt congregational life and invite the church into a new economic reality: the gift of interruption. in the gospel of mark, jesus is interrupted at several key moments. a woman who is bleeding touches his coat, a syrophonecian woman asks him to heal her daughter, a woman breaks into a dinner party to anoint jesus with oil. each woman redirects jesus’ ministry and opens new possibilities for all parties. these stories form, for barrett and harley, the basis for the gift economy they call “being interrupted.” the church in this economy lives with, among, and for its neighbors; it is “neither anxious for its survival and its scarce resources, nor overflowing in its god-given . . . abundance. instead, it rejoices in its radical insufficiency—in its not wanting or needing to be everything—and in its role as a treasure-seeker” (barrett and harley, 2020: 130). drawing from asset based community development strategies and their own ministries, barrett and harley end the book with a rich description of congregational transformation through relationships of mutual care and listening with one’s neighbors and neighborhood. scott j. hagley—adapting to a gift economy 157 ecclesianarchy and being interrupted help us see that, in a quest for relevant missional ministries in post-christendom contexts, the high priests of postmodernism and the evangelists for outward-focused missional practices remain too tethered to the privileges that attend the christendom church. we need neither a new, post-postmodern jesus nor a more approachable and activist one. we need, instead, to take our cue from the rich young ruler, shedding the “excess of ecclesiology” that williams highlights and embracing the vulnerability that comes with joining the work of christ in the world that god loves. for what is god’s mission in christ jesus through the holy spirit, if not an enduring, surprising, persevering economy of grace? 115 kwiyani, harvey. 2020. multicultural kingdom: ethnic diversity, mission and the church. london: scm press. isbn: 978-03-3405-752-9 reviewed by sabrina müller university of zurich, switzerland sabrina.mueller@theol.uzh.ch harvey kwiyani was, until recently, a lecturer in african christianity and theology at liverpool hope university. he has been appointed as ceo of global connections (the uk evangelical network for world mission agencies) and is also leading a master’s programme in african diaspora christianity at the church mission society in oxford. kwiyani grew up in malawi, has lived in switzerland, austria, germany and the usa, and now lives in the uk. during his time in the usa as a phd student in mission theology, he realized that he was only reading about white mission theologians (male) in his studies and wondered what african voices could contribute to the discourse. his phd and his book multicultural kingdom were based on this thought. the focus is then on the two-in-one question of what african mission theology can contribute e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 116 to the western discourse and, more practically, whether african mission can religiously animate the secular west. his questions also lead directly to questions of diversity and racism. therefore, he combines his missionary theological concern with the concern to open the discourse to voices from other parts of the world. his latest book, multicultural kingdom, is divided into eleven chapters. it begins with the image of the mosaic and ends with an appeal to break up the monocultural setting in the churches (chapters 1 and 11). in the first chapter, the author narrates personally and narratively how he realised that the church should be a multicultural mosaic. in doing so, he refers to his home country malawi, where he experienced church as fundamentally multicultural and polyphonic. he experiences this differently in the western context, and in this book, specifically in the british context. the church is segregated, people of different skin colours and backgrounds do not worship together (chapter 1). from there kwiyani builds his argument, first drawing attention to the growth of christianity in africa and the growth of migrant churches, and then charting the missionary movements from asia, africa and latin america to europe. in doing so, he notes that europe itself has become one of the new and central mission fields (chapters 3 and 4). at the end of chapter 4, kwiyani reveals the concern and aim of his book: “it is the argument of this book that a proper engagement between british and non-western christians resident in britain will enrich british christianity, and hopefully help it rediscover its missional impulses to re-evangelize britain” (61). in the fifth chapter, the author presents the multicultural christian reality in britain with the conclusion that the number of asian, african and latino believers far exceeds the number of white british (chapter 5). in chapters 6–10, kwiyani discusses the chances of a multicultural church and a multicultural kingdom. in doing so, he argues theologically, drawing on the practice of the early church, insights from contemporary theology and his background. in chapter 10, the author first introduces a multicultural inclusive church and then discusses three concepts that can increase diversity in congregations and churches: hospitality, learning to listen and cross-cultural relationships. at the end of chapter 10 he states that a new post-colonial theology in a multicultural world is needed, one “that will discredit the racial prejudices that prevail in the church today. in christ, race should not matter” (142). in conclusion, the author draws a church of the future that is colourful, diverse and multicultural. multicultural kingdom deals with two exciting phenomena that many theologians, pastors and believers in europe are not even aware of: the rapid growth of migration churches and the re-missionization of europe. both topics sabrina müller—multicultural kingdom 117 are marginal or non-existent in the theological discourse and church practice of traditional state and national churches. the book does an excellent job of raising awareness and at the same time shows the biblical contexts of justification and the opportunities of a multicultural church. the strength of the book lies in the many, often personal, narrative sections. kwiyani excellently illustrates experiences that have shaped his thoughts and how his reflections relate to practice. at the same time, this book offers an african theological contribution to the european situation, which is highly exciting. the weaknesses of the book lie in three areas: 1. there is some repetition, which does not offer a new perspective on the discourse. 2. not all concepts have been clarified: christianity and church are sometimes used analogously. mission theology mainly refers to the protestant mission, which is then again used as a concept for the whole mission theological discourse. 3. i would have liked to see more critical questioning of whether and why mission, especially from a multicultural perspective, is necessary at all. does europe need to be re-missionized, and if so, what are the decisive arguments for this, apart from the biblical motives and the decline of christianity in europe? despite these critical points, i highly recommend this book. it takes the reader on a multicultural journey in their own context, brings to mind things that are only marginally considered and is, especially through the narrative parts, very catchy – even while on the last page, the story of kwiyani’s mother from the first page was still fresh in my memory. rooms.indb 162 tira, sadiri joy and juliet lee uytanlet (eds.), 2020. a hybrid world diaspora: hybridity and missio dei pasadena: william carey publishing isbn: 978–1645082880 reviewed by andrew recepcion pontifical gregorian university, rome a.recepcion@unigre.it the chapters of the book are woven into a whole discourse on the value of diaspora and hybridity in understanding god’s mission today. going beyond the perspective of mission that is tied to geographical territories, evangelism and church-planting, the book puts together the contributions of mission leaders and scholars through a global consultation, organized by lausanne movement and the global diaspora network, on the implications of hybridity and diaspora in mission. every chapter speaks of the different facets and nuances of hybridity and diaspora in the context of cultures and experiences that capture like in a mosaic the different faces of people in diaspora with mission reinventing itself in terms of hybridity. every experience of hybridity highlighted andrew recepcion—a hybrid world diaspora 163 by each chapter can also be seen like a tapestry of different colors that come from multiple settings of geography, ethnicity, cultures and stories. the contributions of different authors do speak of the need to face the challenge of hybridity and diaspora not simply as an after-thought of mission but as an indispensable foundation of missioning today—a constitutive part of missio dei. the scope of the discussion and the value of the arguments presented can be validated in actual situations globally, for example in the case of dekasegi communities and nikkei identity in japan, brazil and peru (chapter 10). another interesting cases are on the coconut generation (chapter 11), the chinoy or filipino-chinese (chapter 9) communities, the experience of latinos specifically of being a mestizaje (chapter 8), and the complexities and challenges of a jewish-gentile intermarriage (chapter 7). these cases-in-point showcase that diaspora and hybridity are not simply mental constructs but they do indicate that we are dealing with varied experiences in which “a complex, globally connected hybrid world has developed”; and the truth is that “in this hybrid world, individuals and communities flourish as well as flounder”; thus these “hybrid worlds are also where folly, fragility and futility afflict individuals and communities” (61). the structure of the book allows readers to explore and to understand the themes of diaspora, hybridity and missio dei, beginning with some foundational themes from scriptures and theology. the concept of hybridity is not something new in the missiological discourse. recent developments in the areas of migration, intermarriage, and multicultural contexts outside known geographical and existential boundaries, have created opportunities for rethinking missionary methods that can navigate hybrid worlds that thrive on liminality, ambiguity and multiculturality. the middle part of the book opens multiple conversations on cases indicated above. the last part orients the readers to possible implications of diaspora and hybridity to christian mission and ministry. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 164 one of the areas that was not explored and included in the book is the contribution from narratives or stories of diaspora and hybridity in australian, oceanian and european contexts. the inclusion of these contexts might have completed the perspective intended by the book. the experience of diaspora both in terms of exile and refuge, of being uprooted and being re-planted, of separation and reunification, need not only be territorial but also existential. what is noteworthy, however, is that the whole book is a modest attempt to tell the stories of people and their struggles to live meaningfully in the midst of multiple identities, liminality, marginality, and ambiguity from the experience of human situations of exile, loneliness, homelessness, identity crisis, adaptation and integration. the challenge of a hybrid world to missio dei is articulated in the conclusion of the book: we would do well to reject all-too-easy meta narratives and grand strategies that do not take cultural complexity seriously. instead, we need to embrace realties of a globalizing, hybridizing world and strive to shape the third space of globalizing mission where the marginalized may speak.” (227) mission today happens in a hybrid world. this is the way forward. ef2-2.indb 126 ruddick, anna. reimagining mission from urban places—missional pastoral care. london: scm press, 2020. isbn: 9780334058656 reviewed by felix eiffler university of greifswald, germany felix.eiffler@uni-greifswald.de the book reimagining mission from urban places is an outline of anna ruddick’s doctoral thesis, in which she depicts the results of her qualitative ethnographic research as a practical theologian: she interviewed team members of the eden network and community members who live alongside each other in marginalized urban areas1 in the uk. the question that motivated her research is, “what does it take to change a life?” (189). the main result is a blend of missional aspects and pastoral care, called “missional pastoral care” (chapter 3), which is shaped by seven elements: “being among people who are different, living locally, being available, taking practical action, long-term commitment, consistency, and love” (1). 1. for marginalized urban areas in germany, see eiffler, felix. kirche für die stadt. göttingen: vandenhoeck & ruprecht, 2020, 179–202. felix eiffler—reimagining mission from urban places 127 anna ruddick criticizes the excessive use of the term “transformation” without clarifying what it really means and what the potential pitfalls are. in her opinion, the term is mostly used in a too-narrow sense that does not take into account the time that is needed for change (e.g. conversion as a process2). to describe how people change (chapter 2) she refers to the “meaning system” that every human being has. change occurs “through the re-evaluation and re-making of their personal meaning system” (27). to describe the process for life change, she introduces the method of “hermeneutical play,” which combines a challenge to perspective with an affirmation of personhood. this research points out to the discrepancy between expectations about mission and the daily reality that the interviewed team members experience so that “many struggle to accept their mission for what it is” (5). they find it difficult to reconcile “reality with their expectations” (13). she states that “reality is good enough” (chapter 1) and that mission is more than often “messy, slow, and complicated” (chapter 4). ruddick questions the dominant evangelical missional narrative as unfitting for the challenges of urban ministry (chapter 6). rather than abandoning it, she tries to rethink and enrich the evangelical missional narrative by a missio dei theology (and linked to it the theology of imago dei), the expectation of the incoming kingdom of god and a search for a foretaste of god’s shalom (chapter 5). this adjustment is a result of the experiences the interviewees made in their urban context. they discovered that god was already at work at those marginalized places through the people living there, even though they don’t consider themselves christians. this experience changed the perspective on mission for many interviewed team members, who mostly have an evangelical background. in the course of their mission in marginalized urban areas, their working (or operant) theology changed, 2. this matches with a greifswald study made in 2010 about the conversion of adults to the christian faith. see zimmermann, johannes, and annakonstanze schröder. wie finden erwachsene zum glauben? einführung und ergebnisse der greifswalder studie. 2nd ed. neukirchen-vluyn: neukirchener verlag, 2011. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 128 “allowing cultural and theological assumptions to color their attitudes” (169). anna ruddick summarizes, “mission doesn’t work the way we think it does. in reality, it works through making and remaking meaning, happening in shared life. it is not something we do to others for god but something god is doing in the world, including us” (7). the book is a well-made combination of empirical data and thorough theological reflection. from a lutheran perspective i would emphasize some aspects a bit differently (e.g. the relationship between bible and tradition) and appreciate a more critical approach to charismatic evangelicalism, but overall the work is persuasive. her conclusions and suggestions for the practice of mission (chapter 7) are as useful as they are inspiring. it would be promising to combine anna ruddick’s approach with the four dimensions of contextualization (transcultural, countercultural, contextual, culturally reciprocal) described by the german theologian christian grethlein.3 a critical point could be whether anna ruddick may be biased in her research, due to her membership in the eden network. regardless, this does not reduce the quality of her insights. 3. grethlein, christian. kirchentheorie: kommunikation des evangeliums im kontext. de gruyter: berlin/boston, 2018, 41–45. rooms.indb 124 james, christopher b. 2018. church planting in post-christian soil: theology and practice. new york: oxford university press. isbn: 978-0-19-067364-2 reviewed by kristine stache wartburg theological seminary, dubuque, ia kstache@wartburgseminary.edu christopher james, associate professor of evangelism and missional christianity at the university of dubuque theological school, embarked on what some may call an impossible endeavor, to search for the future of the church in one of the least likely places, seattle, washington—epicenter for the religiously unaffiliated (1). the result of his quest is perhaps even more surprising. the churches he researched (new churches) is this none-zone of the pacific northwest were found to be “relatively small and institutionally weak by comparison to their christendom predecessors, but they are also a vital, diverse, and engaged cohort” (241). furthermore, this “future trending city of seattle” (237), and the new churches located there and examined in this study, have something to teach the established church about being the church in all its ecclesial forms. kristine stache—church planting in post-christian soil 125 church planting in post-christian soil: theology and practice, is a missiological journey to explore the relationship between a church and its neighborhood—how a new church understands its identity within, and relationship to, its context. after making a case for his project in the introduction, james introduces his readers to the city of seattle in chapter 1 and proposes that it can serve as “a serviceable proxy for the urban us context in the coming years” (13). seattle it seems, is “a harbinger of urban religion in the future” (13). james then lays out his methodology, data, and survey results in chapter 2, describing the “religious ecology” of the seattle area through multiple demographic details, patterns, and currents (chapter 2). in chapter 3 james makes the case for his use of modeling to analyze these new churches individually and to compare them to one another. an overview of the ways modeling typology has helped the church study and understand congregations sets the stage for chapter 4 of church planting, where james lays out four new models of practical ecclesiology that emerged from his research: church as great commission team, church as household of the spirit, church as new community, and church as neighborhood incarnation. james differentiates between each of the four models by analyzing them with the three same characteristics: mission, spirituality, and identity. chapter 5 explores the four models through a missional theological lens to discern “the strengths and weaknesses inherent in each in order to promote increasingly faithful ecclesial forms of christian witness” (139). this lens is particularly important to the project as it makes the case for studying churches in context. he states (quoting missiologist david bosch) “thus the churchin-mission is, primarily the local church everywhere in the world” (147). james spends chapter 6 analyzing the models in light of what he calls renewing practice to provide “concrete steps that practitioners in each of the four models can take to minimize the characteristic weaknesses of their models and amplify their unique strengths” (184), with an eye for “increasing its potency for faithful and vital christian witness” (183). e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 126 james wraps up his thorough work in the final chapter where he shares with readers his own practical wisdom for the whole church that emerged from his work “in the field” (206). these five gems—embracing one’s local identity, cultivating spiritualties, witness and formation, hospitality, and discovering vitality in a diverse ecclesial ecology—are explored and critiqued across the four models with the goal to deepen each model’s impact and presence as church. he ends each section with a summary titled “implications for leaders,” containing insights for both theologians and practitioners. james does not hold back in his preference for the neighborhood incarnation model in the seattle area (and by extension other comparable post-christian contexts), while at the same time does not reject the others. he calls for a “‘mixed economy’ of ecclesial expressions” (183) to witness to the many and “multiple dimensions of the nature of the church” (183). while all models are needed for a diverse church witness, the neighborhood incarnation model’s priority on community, inclusivity, and hospitality is “especially well suited” (182) for the seattle context and other urban areas like it. church planting is not what one would call a light read, but well worth the time in whole or in part, with a little something for everyone. data, process, and research specifics are clearly laid out for those interested in formal inquiry, including three appendices with research methodology, survey parameters, and interview protocols. for seattle fans the book provides a peek into the gifts of this city as a predictor of urban life in other areas and its implications for learning from a context’s religious ecology. as a missiologist, james’s chapter on missional theological assessment was particularly engaging, exploring the nature of church itself, starting with an overview of missional theology and its implications for the four new church models. and finally, for those readers that like to jump straight to learnings and application, well, chapter 7 might just be for you. however, the contributions this book makes to the field is not limited to the summary of james’s findings, or even its implications kristine stache—church planting in post-christian soil 127 for starting and forming new churches. while the results and learnings are interesting in and of themselves, the value comes from the interpretation james offers and its implications for the church at large. there is no perfect model, or even one preferred model for true witness of the gospel. the church needs a diversity of ecclesial forms and interpretations. the hope for the future of the church does not reside in finding the one way of being church, but recognizing that all church forms have a place and responsibility to engage in ongoing theological reflection and evaluation grounded in its nature, context, purpose and gifts. “inasmuch as seattle offers the us church a glimpse into its future, there are grounds not only for hope but also enthusiasm,” james offers (240). in church planting in post-christian soil, christopher james fulfils his goal to teach the established church what it means to be church, learn as church, and live as church as the church moves into the future in all its locals. rooms.indb 158 soerens, tim, 2020. everywhere you look: discovering the church right where you are downers grove, il: intervarsity press isbn:  978–0830841561 reviewed by elaine a. heath neighborhood seminary, n. carolina eheath@wnccumc.net in his newest book, tim soerens makes a compelling case for the theoretical and practical restoration of parish, for protestants, but with an ecumenical twist. rather than conceiving of parish as the geographic area in which a local congregation lives and gathers, carrying out its congregational and denominational mission, parish is the geographic locale—the neighborhood—where christians live. while affirming the gifts of denominational traditions, church buildings and congregations, soerens pushes beyond these boundaries that divide christians, to argue for robust, missional networking of christians in local neighborhoods. in soerens’ view, this kingdom-minded vision must guide the church into the future if the church is to survive, thrive, and fulfill its mission. written in an accessible voice and filled with examples from everyday elaine a. heath—everywhere you look 159 life, the book is grounded in solid research and years of practical experience. as reflected in the book’s title, soerens wants readers to learn to see differently. not only does he want the church to embrace a different vision of what constitutes “church,” he also wants christians to wrestle with the most basic question of why the church should exist at all. drawing from simon sinek’s work, soerens urges readers to consider the golden circle, a concentric set of circles with “why” in the centre, “what” in the next ring out, and “how” in the outermost ring.1 by paying attention to why the church exists—to participate in christ’s work of making all things new (rev. 21.5)—the church can move with agility through culture shift to discern what to do to engage a given context, and how to carry out that engagement. that is to say, the church can return to being a fruitful movement. yet even in seeking to be a movement there is danger of co-opting the holy spirit for institutional interests, soerens writes. if a movement is just another way to “make the church great again,” the effort is a “profound mistake” (10). the first questions should always be about what god is doing, and what it might mean for christians to participate in that work. soerens’ vision for the new parish is oriented toward helping neighborhoods and cities flourish. like proponents of the nineteenth century social gospel movement, and the black church from its inception, soerens sees a primary function of the church being to shape society into one that is more equitable and just: what’s at stake is not simply a spiritual opportunity. our neighborhoods and cities are at stake too. at stake is the kind of businesses and economies we are going to create. what sorts of places will we design and build? how will we re-create our collective care for our kids? how will we reshape education? how will we confront the most horrific injustices of racism, sexual exploitation, and environmental abuse? (14) 1. simon synek, “how great leaders inspire action.” tedxpugetsound. 2009. retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/ simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 160 i am heartened to see soerens’ unabashed emphasis on social and environmental justice as critical components of what constitutes discipleship in this emerging era, especially since the book is published by intervarsity press, an evangelical publisher that is known for practicing injustice toward its own employees.2 in our polarized cultural context in which the majority of evangelicals continue to support trumpism and its attendant racist, homophobic, and xenophobic commitments, it is crucial for evangelical authors like soerens, who offer a justice-oriented vision for the church, to speak up. for soerens, the skill that churches really need to adopt is “the magic of paying attention” (49). by paying attention to the movement of the spirit in their neighborhood they can join in with what god is doing. the posture for christians is always to notice what god is doing and then respond. when the church behaves this way, it moves toward and participates in “the word becoming flesh and moving into its neighborhood” (jn 1.14 msg), rather than fearfully moving away from and attempting to barricade itself from the surrounding world. one of the toughest challenges soerens discusses relative to hindrances to the church living up to its potential in the neighborhood is the fiercely competitive nature of the church shaped by capitalism. the other biggest obstacle is the widespread practice of church as a consumer activity. in order for christians to properly show up, pay attention, cooperate with god in the neighborhood and release the outcome (the pattern i have taught and written about for many years in my own missional work), they must give up both of these perversions of the gospel: a spirit of competition with one another, and church as a consumer activity. the parish—a geographic neighborhood—is the best place for these two subversive changes to happen, writes soerens. 2. for example, intervarsity press enacted a policy nov. 11, 2016, by which any employee who supports gay marriage or disagrees with any other aspect of the company’s positions on sexuality will be terminated. dias, e. “top evangelical college group to dismiss employees who support gay marriage” time. 2016. retrieved from https://time.com/4521944/ intervarsity-fellowship-gay-marriage/. elaine a. heath—everywhere you look 161 central to soerens’ vision is a parish in which various congregations decide to work together for the good of the neighborhood, but not by having a an annual pulpit exchange. instead, he argues, christians in a given neighborhood need to connect intentionally and collaborate for the good of the neighborhood, embracing the truth that they are all on the same team (88). the path forward begins with asking this simple question: “what could we do together?” (94). as a group of christians in a neighborhood begin to meet and practice discernment around this question, paying attention to their context, the holy spirit will guide them forward. soerens concludes his book with, “it would be amazing if this work was already happening in denominations, seminaries, and foundations. someday that will be normal, but right now it’s not the case. we need to figure out how to make a big deal out of one another” (125). i could not agree more. the biggest obstacle to living the vision soerens casts, is cumbersome, bloated, bureaucratic institutionalism riddled with petty jealousy and a scarcity mentality, across christian organizations broadly. everywhere you look is an inspiring and accessible guide for congregations and small groups of christians to explore what it will take to truly live into their neighborhoods in step with the spirit. he draws from a breadth of theological voices as diverse as willie jennings, wendell berry, randy woodley, and michael polanyi. soerens’ target audience appears to be evangelicals, but the wisdom here certainly applies to the mainline church as well. rooms.indb 117 when the world is changing a roundtable review james, christopher. 2018. church planting in post-christian soil: theology and practice. oxford: oxford university press. isbn: 978-0-19-067364-2 keifert, patrick, and wesley granbergmichaelson. 2019. how change comes to your church: a guidebook for church innovations. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. isbn: 978-0-8028-7624-9 taylor, steve. 2019. first expressions: innovation and the mission of god. london: scm. isbn: 978-0-334-05847-2 118 reviewed by dustin d. benac postdoctoral associate, duke university divinity school dustin.benac@duke.edu change is neither novel nor avoidable for communities of faith. quite the opposite is true: disruption creates the conditions for innovations in christian thought and practice. to borrow language from j. r. r. tolkien: “the world is changing” (tolkien 2004, 1223). spoken by treebeard, a figure who embodies ancient and rooted wisdom, tolkien’s diagnosis gives voice to communities of faith, those who serve them, and those who study them. and, as gideon lichfield observed in the wake of covid-19, “there is no going back to normal” (lichfield 2020). the three works reviewed here represent different attempts to attend to a changing church when the world is changing. even though these works share a fundamental concern, their authors employ different methods, units of analysis, and rhetorical structures to attend to the changes that confront communities of faith. this review introduces each work, notes its distinctive contribution to the study of ecclesial change, and concludes by discussing future horizons for ecclesiological inquiry when the world is changing. christopher james’s church planting in post-christian soil attends to the theology and practice that guides church-planting in seattle, washington.1 following his description of seattle as a “future trending city,” james contends that attending to a cohort of church plants “yields practical wisdom for the us church as it seeks to faithfully engage with its emerging contexts” (4). four movements develop james’s argument over seven chapters: chapters 1 and 2 introduce seattle as a future-trending, post-christian context. based on his review of one hundred and five churches that were founded between 2001 and 2014, surveys submitted by fifty-seven pastors, and follow-up interviews with sixteen respondents, james identifies four different “paradigmatic ecclesial combinations” 1. the three works are reviewed in alphabetical order by author. dustin d. benac—first expressions 119 (62): the great commission team, household of the spirit, new community, and neighborhood incarnation. chapters 3 and 4 provides an interdisciplinary review of different attempts to model church, noting how existing typologies provide interpretive lenses to examine the theology and practice of church planting. the lived theology of james’s respondents, in turn, demonstrates the need for new practical ecclesiologies in order to engage the four paradigms he identifies. james takes a prescriptive turn in chapters 5 and 6, moving from what is to what ought to be based on his sociological-theological assessment. taking cues from missional theology, james argues the neighborhood incarnation model is “contextually superior” (178), meriting “increased theological and practical consideration” (139). following richard osmer’s four-fold paradigm for practical theological inquiry, james also proposes new practices across the four typologies he identifies. finally, james concludes in chapter 6 by describing the form(s) of practical wisdom that can enrich christian witness on the edge of christendom. james’s work is methodologically innovative, combining theology and social theory to enrich scholarship and practice within a shifting cultural-ecclesial environment. patrick keifert and wesley granberg-michaelson’s how change comes to your church is a guidebook for leaders who envision “transformational, missional change” in the communities they serve (24). at 154 pages and small enough to fit into a handbag, this collaborative work can be read in a single sitting. the work’s purposeful brevity, however, should not obscure the hard-won wisdom that informs it. drawn from three decades of combined ministry and consulting experience, the authors write as contextual savants, incorporating insights from ministry in multiple contexts and continents. six chapters organize their description of the conditions and process that supports transformation. following an antanagoge rhetorical structure, chapter 1, “what needs to change, and how?,” introduces the problem that occasions their work: ministry leaders know the challenges they face require change, but “we” don’t know how to achieve the change “we” envision. writing with a subtle precision, keifert and e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 120 granberg-michaelson consistently use the third person plural, as if to suggest a more capacious “we” provides a first step to understand this problem. accordingly, chapter 2, “making space,” describes the personal and organizational space transformational change requires. much as gary gunderson describes conflict and creativity in “boundary zones” as dyads of transformational change (gunderson 2004), they observe how disruption can create organizational and spiritual space for new patterns and practices to emerge. chapter 3, “nurturing a climate of discernment,” attends to the inner-organizational processes that sustain change. following craig dykstra’s account of pastoral and ecclesial imagination, they conclude meaningful change requires changing how decisions are made, which is itself an act of imagination. chapters 4 and 5, “dwelling in the word” and “sharing the journey” turn to consider two interrelated modes of discovery that can promote change within communities of faith: (1) sustained communal reading of scripture and (2) collective discernment of god’s missional call upon a congregation. when combined, these two modes invite communities to “trust the leadership of the holy spirit” (98) and “take the next steps in our shared pilgrimage toward missional transformation” (120). finally, chapter 6, “being transformed: practices for missional change,” describes the practices that enable communities to “find a useable past for a faithful future” (128). keifert and granberg-michaelson’s work offers companionship and literary salve for transition-weary pastors and communities of faith. as the authors conclude, change is inevitable for churches; they exist in ever-changing contexts and dynamic institutional settings. nevertheless, time, trust-filled relationships, and the word and work of god can enliven the kind of transformational, missional change that is embedded in the christian tradition. “innovation is nothing new,” writes steve taylor in first expressions (3). taylor’s work continues a decade of ecclesiological investigations by reexamining sites of ecclesial innovation in the united kingdom eleven years later. this longitudinal approach leads taylor to identify first expressions, representing “initial experiments in ecclesial innovation” (4), as a patterned process that dustin d. benac—first expressions 121 contributes to institutional change. four moves organize his investigation over thirteen chapters: part i introduces the methods and contextual centers that organize taylor’s longitudinal research, examining birth narratives for first expressions. part ii considers how patterns of organizational death and renewal reflect the adaptive process each innovation pursues. this section also includes taylor’s typology of four different approaches to ecclesial innovation: commerce, ecology, indigenous, and craft. part iii examines first expressions as an organizational innovation, noting the dual need for leadership to create a suitable holding environment as well as a nimble structure to sustain mission. finally, part iv considers how first expressions offer an ambient witness, bodying forth the word and work of god in relation to a local setting and a broader ecclesial matrix of relations. when patterned by forms of governance and practice that incorporate first expressions into an ecclesial politic, first expressions may find the conditions to form and flourish. as taylor concludes: “if the way of jesus is reformation, then our institutions, including their structures of governance, can be converted” (230). as an exploration of the practical theology of ecclesial innovation, taylor’s work is equal parts a descriptive and an imaginative inquiry. written in a lyrical style that includes several stanzas of poetry to open each part, taylor displays the “gift of poetic imagination” (124) that ecclesial innovation requires. further, taylor’s longitudinal design advances ecclesiological inquiry, providing a template for future studies of change within communities of faith. when read together, james’s, keifert and granberg-michaelson’s, and taylor’s work display three different modes of inquiry amid the changes that confront communities of faith. each work maps a shifting organizational landscape and discerns the requisite ecclesial, pastoral, and organizational responses. for james, a shifting cultural context need not diminish the possibility of mission-driven ecclesial engagement. rather, contextually attentive approaches can form and flourish. for keifert and granberg-michaelson, change comes to every community of faith. more than a crisis that is to be skirted, however, the challenges faith leaders face e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 122 invite discernment and missional transformation. for taylor, first expressions are at once missional response to changes in a broader ecclesial environment and places of possibility for ecclesial innovation. representing more than deviant expressions beyond the pale of institutionalize christianity, first expressions contribute to the vitality of a broader ecclesial communion. for scholars and practitioners in moments of cultural-ecclesial change, these books offer three insights about future horizons for ecclesiological inquiry: (1) cultural-ecclesial change occurs within a dynamic ecclesial ecology. this ecclesial ecology, which includes traditional, nontraditional, and para traditional approaches to organize a common life, may nourish and sustain the forms of witness, education, and leadership that are able to adapt to changing environments. (2) the study of shifting communities of faith requires an interdisciplinary framework that attends to the precise point of contact between theology, practice, and interdisciplinary perspectives. much like trying to hang a door, this task requires getting the hinges of an argument to line up in order for a rhetorical pin to fall through. (3) in so far as the christian tradition may guide the form of response, it demonstrates the need for a new and emerging form of wisdom, one that emerges from local communities of faith and is also borne by a broader intellectual community. the world is changing. for tolkien, the change is more than speculation, it is imbibed, sensed, and touched. “i feel [change] in the water, a feel it in the earth, and i smell it in the air,” treebeard shares (tolkien 2004, 1223). we similarly feel change in our communities. we see it on the news. we hear it in the tremoring voices of parishioners. we perceive it in shifting vocations for religious leadership. nevertheless, even when the world is change, the ancient and rooted wisdom that marks these three works may nourish imagination for a changing church. dustin d. benac—first expressions 123 bibliography gunderson, gary. 2004. boundary leaders: leadership skills for people of faith. minneapolis: augsburg fortress. lichfield, gideon. 2020. “we’re not going back to normal.” mit technology review, march 17. online. https://www.technologyreview. com/2020/03/17/905264/coronavirus-pandemic-social-distancing-18months. tolkien, j. r. r. 2004. the lord of the rings: the return of the king. boston: houghton mifflin. rooms.indb 128 campbell, douglas a. 2020. pauline dogmatics: the triumph of god’s love grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. isbn: 978-0802875648 reviewed by martin reppenhagen dean in the protestant church of baden, germany. martin.reppenhagen@kbz.ekiba.de [stay with this review as its author is adamant this is a book for missional practitioners—ed.] at almost eight hundred pages this volume is in the best sense of the word a magnum opus and can’t be praised highly enough. it is an excellent read. however, i have my problems in classifying it with regard to the theological disciplines. is it exegetical or systematic or even practical? was karl barth’s commentary on romans an exegetical one? the answer to the last question may direct our attempt to classify campbell’s pauline dogmatics and may lead to the conclusion, that it is more with barth than in line with james d. g. dunn’s the theology of paul the apostle from 1998. this said i would define it as a systematic theology of paul based martin reppenhagen—pauline dogmatics 129 on exegetical insights with an emphasis on modern christian life. thus, the truly interdisciplinary volume can be placed on the edge of biblical, systematic and pastoral theology. this is how the author himself sees his book: “i tend to lean primarily on my favorite theologian in this area for guidance, karl barth. .  .  . it needs to be appreciated immediately that barth is a useful guide to paul partly because he was such a faithful paulinist” (2). being himself a renowned nt scholar teaching at duke university he brings together insights from biblical scholars and different barthian thinkers like hauerwas and the torrances as well as historians, sociologists. this makes very much sense, when campbell himself makes clear the purpose of writing this book: “it has been written for christian leaders who live in the twenty-first century. so to be useful to them it needs to articulate where we also need to go beyond paul” (7). by the end of the book campbell defines the purpose of the work even more precisely as “a practical manual instructing leaders how to plant and to nurture communities of jesus followers, and to do so navigating the challenges of any context, including the especially astringent challenges offered by modernity” (741). although i question the term “manual” here, because it is not at all about “how to do in ten steps,” and would have preferred “handbook” instead. this book is without doubt a deeply missional book bringing together pauline church planting with today’s missional dynamics! the book divides into twenty-nine chapters in four parts: resurrection, formation, mission, navigation. every chapter concludes with a set of theses, key scriptural references, suggestions for key and further reading and a bibliography. thus, reading this didactically structured book is a great benefit, but using it as a study tool in missional teams would bring even more benefit reflecting practice and leading to practice. one finds here a twentynine-session course bringing together missional leaders, students, interested church members. it is full of theology without using incomprehensible academic language. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 130 campbell starts with a profound grounding in god respectively in christ himself. here he deals with god’s purpose for life, with the problem of sin and death, with resurrection and election to give some examples. like a good house builder campbell begins with solid groundwork. “if we don’t know god, we will probably not be able to talk about god with any accuracy, and so we will end up, as barth puts it wryly, talking about ourselves in a loud voice, which is unlikely to be much help to anyone” (13). from the very beginning it pops up in every chapter, which is so important for the whole book, that god’s purpose for life is fellowship with him lived in relational communities. i only wondered, why the cross of christ became a sub issue of resurrection contrary to paul who says, “but we preach christ crucified: a stumbling block to jews and foolishness to gentiles” (1 cor 1:23). following the basic insight of god’s intention to create fellowship with him and others campbell continues with the formation of a learning community. reminding the reader of a “personal god,” who “desires to commune with us as persons” campbell focuses on the church: “the church is all about its relationships” (194–95). the leitmotif here is love in its various settings. taking up the terms of robert putnam church consists of bonding and bridging communities being best in networking inand outwards. these communities are not bounded, but centered around christ, and therefore able to change, when situations, contexts, when people change. and “they should then spread out, opening into these relationships that are less or non-christian in mission” (375). although campbell never refers to paul hiebert’s “bounded and centered sets” i was very much reminded of this fundamental distinction for understanding missional churches. part 3 “mission” starts with the basic insight, that mission is communal: “a pauline community reaches out to those who lie outside of it as god does, because loving involves reaching out and journeying, and especially to those who are different from it and indifferent to it” (381). in mission church crosses boundaries and “produces” diversity, which is crucial for the understanding of a martin reppenhagen—pauline dogmatics 131 missional church. defining the others and friendship comes into focus. with the last part titled “navigation” campbell focuses on today’s issues and feels more clear the need of going beyond paul. once in a while i wondered why the author considers himself to be better grounded in paul’s trinitarian and christocentric understanding than paul himself. could it be that in “those realities—places .  .  . where paul must reinterpret paul” (7) it is actually campbell himself and his (post)modern view pressing against paul, e.g., in the field of ethics and very strongly with regard to sex and gender issues? campbell’s seemingly mandatory “sachkritik” (material criticism) does find its followers, but raises hermeneutical questions as well. here and there i felt the need to start a discussion using pauline positions and disputing with campbell. this said, campbell remains very much inspiring—and should be praised that he does so—taking up very important issues and questions in (post-)modern society that every missional community needs to deal with. in my agreeing and disagreeing this part is and remains thought provoking. writing a list of must reads for a missional church or fresh expression this book should definitely be one among the top ten. one can read it alone as a page turner, but better results will appear while using it as a study tool discussing it with others. the latter would definitely be more in line with the author’s purpose of writing the book. ef2-2.indb 129 a roundtable review müller, sabrina. lived theology: impulses for a pastoral theology of empowerment. eugene, oregon: cascade, 2021. isbn: 978-1725273962 hagley, scott j., karen rohrer, and michael gehrling, eds. sustaining grace: innovative ecosystems for new faith communities. eugene, oregon: wipf & stock, 2020. isbn: 978-1532687594 reviewed by patrick todjeras university of greifswald, germany patrick.todjeras@uni-greifswald.de e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 130 in the following review, i want to challenge you readers. i want to introduce two books that deserve to be presented and discussed together. a connection is not only given by the fact that, sabrina müller, scott hagley (as an editor), and kristine stache (as a contributor to the second book) are on the editorial board of this journal or that both books were published by the same publisher. rather, the spirit of the books is quite similar. the authors want to empower and help those who try to figure out what discipleship looks like as lived theology for müller, or what it looks like in an innovative ecosystem of communities of worship and witness for the editors of sustaining grace. sabrina müller has a rather concrete practical-theological conviction: “the concern here is that people who have not studied theology be perceived and taken seriously as representatives of lived theology, in order for them to be able to become constitutive part of ecclesial and theological praxis” (85). the central term of her book is “lived theology.” lived theology is based in experience, a change of the self and its system of meaning “that brings the entirety of the past, present, and future into god’s presence” (85). lived theology must support and serve everyday life; it continually changes; it empowers people; it remains in need of interpretation in daily life; it requires a conversation partner; it reveals itself plurally, multifacetedly, and sometimes controversially. sabrina müller makes a significant contribution to emerging debates around lived theology. rooted in qualitative empirical research, she situates the conversation around the theologizing of people in congregations with the theological notion of the priesthood of all believers. this book also contributes to the debate around discipleship. she defines “discipleship” as more of a search movement than a know-it-all indoctrination. she sees it as “a way of life and of faith that describes a movement in searching of common priests” (18). she uses five reference discourses to help her put the term into perspective. first, she explores the connection between common priesthood and volunteer work (5–23). although her system of reference is the german-speaking theological landscape, her approach supports a deeper understanding in general. she says, patrick todjeras—sustaining grace 131 “volunteer work is an active expression of the common priesthood, but only when the theological level and function of priests, namely their ability to ‘appear before god’ independently and to express themselves theologically, is not neglected” (15). secondly, she explores religious experience as the origin of a lived theology (25–46). third, she discusses the public realm of lived theology— digital and analogue (46–60). fourth, she elaborates on lived theology as an aspect of empowerment (62–73). finally, she moves on to a pastoral theology of empowerment (74–84). müller doesn’t focus in her interpretation of lived theology on traditional congregational forms, nor does she return to parochial core congregational structures. rather, social religious network phenomena are also the subject of this study. for in such digital places, lived theologies are emerging at a rapid pace and new leadership structures are being formed. sabrina müller thus adds an essential new aspect to the concept of the “common priesthood” and advocates for ordained and non-ordained people to meet on theologically equal footing. this is precisely why the question arises as to how “priestesses” and “priests” present themselves today, what their life plans are, and what their lived theology looks like, which has to change and prove itself again and again in everyday life. sabrina müller’s book is captivating not only because of its multi-layered perspectives, but also because she summarizes each chapter with a picture to increase the understandability of her arguments. she is thus forced to simplify argumentation structures in a comprehensible way—which she certainly succeeds in doing. sustaining grace explores the dynamic between new faith communities and denominational systems through the lens of stewardship and sustainability. sustaining grace is an outcome of a group convened by the church planting initiative of pittsburgh theological seminary and the 1001 new worshipping communities program of the presbyterian church (usa). the editors scott j. hagley, karen rohrer, and michael gehrling bring together both the academy and practitioners from church judicatories, church plants, and traditional church communities to offer a theologically grounded, practical, and generative conversation. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 132 scott hagley is associate professor of missiology at pittsburgh theological seminary. he is the author of eat what is set before you: a missiology of the congregation in context (2019). karen rohrer is the director of the church planting initiative at pittsburgh theological seminary. before coming to pittsburgh, she was an organizing copastor at beacon, a new faith community in philadelphia. michael gehrling serves the presbyterian church (usa) as an associate for the 1001 new worshipping communities initiative. the editors have collected eleven essays, which are divided into three sections. the three sections are preceded by an introduction—better described as a “vision” by scott j. hagley, who discusses the programmatic term “sustaining grace” (1–20). three sections follow: part 1, “sustainable ecologies for new church development” (21–56); part 2, “cultivating care” (57–100); and part 3, “leadership development in a sustainable church ecology” (101–30). as a collection, these essays suggest that to facilitate ecologies for innovation in our current era, established congregations and new faith communities must model the sustaining grace of god to one another in creative ways. thus, problems of sustainability are not for church planters to solve alone, but rather are related to the theologies of stewardship and the ecclesial system to which they belong (18–20). hagley says, “stewardship campaigns are not enough. we need systems that can institutionalize the ways in which legacy and new church developments need one another” (19). issues of vision are not for denominational systems to theorize alone, but are given shape on their historic foundations in the creative and prophetic structures practiced in new faith communities. scott hagley requests, “sustaining ecologies of innovation will require practices that form and inform faithful und sustained leaders to do the work of new and inherited faith communities” (19). i will only highlight a few inspiring insights of this book. karen rohrer’s essay certainly deserves attention. she investigates the question, “what practices might bring us closer to sharing all things in common across the broader church ecosystem, rather patrick todjeras—sustaining grace 133 than channeling resources toward particularly well-heeled corners and using them only in service to more highly valued forms of community?” (29–30). she provokes with the idea of a signing bonus for leaders called to convene new faith communities. she proposes this as a disruptive practice and discusses how money can create gratitude and partnership. the four essays in the second section give a particularly impressive account of how “cultivating care” as discipleship for new church development deserves attention. the suggestions are varied and range from truth-telling and truth-hearing in communities (michael gehrling) to the stewardship of prayer and play, as aisha brooks-lytle proposes (because they “are like partners on the dance floor,” 71). another aspect of care is learning to listen (kristine stache). stache encourages the seeing of the relationships of individuals in their particular place as vocation (81). finally—and here the connection to sabrina müller’s book is certainly the most obvious—michael moynagh, next to two other contributors, talks about leadership development. he pleads for the democratization of church planting and concludes: “let the spirit free it [church planting] from the clutches of an aristocratic band of gifted specialists. put it into the hands of ordinary christians, as part of their twenty-first-century discipleship” (112). these bright spots that i have been able to briefly highlight here show the range of suggestions for an innovative ecosystem that are offered. this edited book is excellent for all those involved in innovative church development, as theoretical and practical impulses are interwoven. it deals fruitfully with the conditions necessary for new faith communities to flourish. this book speaks to a central tension in the growing movement of church planting—the mutual need of and the mutual frustration between establishment leaders and innovators, conservators and risk takers. both books are inspiring, and one can wish them to be read and worked through! rooms.indb 165 the colouring of grey literature a review of “jvt quotes” and “answers on a postcard”  “jvt quotes,” a resource by jonny baker (https://jonnybaker.blogs.com/) “answers on a postcard” a resource by rev. jon marlow (https://www. marlow.me.uk/) reviewed by steve taylor te ara poutama tuatahi co-designer, angelwings ltd; senior lecturer, flinders university; honorary lecturer, aberdeen university kiwidrsteve@gmail.com grey literature is a technical term used to describe materials from organisations where publishing is not the producing body’s e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 166 primary activity (schöpfel and farace, 2010). it commonly includes reports, working papers, government documents, white papers and evaluations. turning to ecclesially-grounded mission, examples could include lenten bible studies, video resources like fresh expressions dvds, produced in the uk by the church of england, or position papers on the funding of mission or strategic reviews. while the academy produces books, the grey literature produced by ecclesial organisations equally articulates a missiology. hence, they invite review concerning their missiological strengths and weaknesses. in this review, i consider two “visual mission resources” as potential examples of grey literature. attractively presented, seeking to shape ecclesial futures, both invite reflection on the possibilities and limits of the visual in ecclesially-grounded missiology.  “jvt quotes” are a visual mission resource produced by jonny baker and distributed through out of the box cards (www.outofthebox.cards). the resource involves thirty printed cards, each 6 cm by 9 cm. on one side are the words “jvt quotes,” white letters on a black background. on the other side is a quote taken from mission leader john v. taylor (hence jvt quotes), positioned creatively in relation to a photograph taken by jonny baker. the thirty cards are attractively presented in a folded cardboard box, which provides further detail—“jvt. a selection of quotes from imagining mission with john v taylor, jonny baker and cathy ross.”   john v. taylor (1914–2001) was an english christian leader. ordained by the church of england as a priest in 1938, he spent nine years serving as a missionary in theological education. he later became general secretary of the church missionary society in 1963, then bishop of winchester from 1974 to 1984. recently, dr cathy ross, cms director of pioneer mission leadership training centre, gained access to taylor’s travel diaries while general secretary of cms. this pointed her to another “grey literature” source, the  cms newsletters, a personal communication from the general secretary to cms members. cathy read 124 of the cms newsletters written by john v. taylor and found steve taylor—the colouring of grey literature 167 herself marvelling “at the contemporary and challenging nature of taylor’s writings” (baker and ross, 2020: x). with jonny baker she wrote  imagining mission with john v. taylor. in promoting the book, key quotes were linked with visuals, resulting in “jvt quotes” as a visual resource. “jvt quotes” offer a missiology made accessible. the visual format provokes curiosity, while the quotes show the value of a well-turned phrase. quotes like “look to the fringes,” “dangerous openness,” and “the magnetism of jesus christ,” are poetic in quality, opening up new imaginative space. “jvt quotes” succeed in presenting the insights of a fine mission mind afresh.   however, the use of contemporary photographs forcibly frames john v. taylor into our contemporary world, at times in ways that jar. the quote “guardians of universality” is positioned on a photograph of a person wearing a hazmat suit. the photograph, in a time of covid, suggests a very different sort of guardian than that imagined by john v. taylor. another jar is the appearance of gender-exclusive language, evident in john v. taylor’s definition of mission—“seeing what god is doing in a situation and trying to do it with him.” the gendered language used of the divine is rendered more strange by the contemporary nature of the photographs, particularly of modern architecture and graffiti.  the priority of visual is a reminder that colours speak, conveying mood and emotion. ten of the thirty cards work primarily in black and white. the overall sense evoked by the palette is thus of a sombre missiology, a contrast to colours often associated with imagination and creativity.  how might “jvt quotes” be used? personally, i have used them during lent, randomly choosing a card each day as an encouragement to think missiologically on the easter journey. educationally, they could serve as conversation starters, shuffled, then handed to groups. even gendered language invites rich conversation about the images of god needed to sustain contemporary mission.  a second visual resource from the english anglican stable is “answers on a postcard.” this ecclesially-focused mission resource e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 168 was developed by rev. jon marlow, who at the time was mission community development team leader for the diocese of exeter. “answers on a postcard” is an image-based exercise, shaped by marlows doctoral work in different ‘ways of seeing’ and the implications for contemporary mission. his work in exeter involved helping deaneries and mission communities to develop strategic mission action plans. he created his own postcards to facilitate this work, printing a range of colourful images onto cards (see  http://www.marlow.me.uk/index.php/answers-on-apostcard/). the brightly coloured images were used as prompts to clarify values and capture dreams into how they see god at work now and in the future. the conversations that developed were then analysed thematically, enabling clarity in planning both locally and across the diocese. as a result, over 1000 people across his diocese engaged in significant conversations about future mission.  again, as with “jvt quotes,” we note the power of the visual. inviting people to think visually opens up different sorts of conversations and other ways of thinking. accessibility is possible for those without formal theological training. the visual creates curiosity. with every picture worth a thousand words, rich conversations are possible. both resources point to the power of the visual in shaping ecclesial imaginations. both visual resources are a contemporary expression of a rich seam of mission activity that in times past included newsletters, mission photography, even slide shows.  while christianity is often perceived as a book-based culture, the visual is an essential way to explore discipleship. a feature of the calls to follow jesus in john 1 are the priority on seeing. looking and seeing are affirmed six times (1.36; 38; 39; 42; 46; 48) as essential in the calling of andrew, simon peter and nathanael. hence both “jvt quotes” and “answers on a postcard” meet the definition of “grey literature.” they articulate a missiology in which colour and image are integrated into god’s mission. each demonstrate concrete ways that ecclesial organisations can use the visual in shaping ecclesial imaginations.  steve taylor—the colouring of grey literature 169 at the same time, these resources point to an irony in the term “grey literature.” the use of visuals suggests a more accurate description could be “colourful literature” instead of “grey literature.” changes in technology, including photo editing and print on demand, along with cameras on cell phones, make all of us potential providers of “colourful literature.” “jvt quotes” and “answers on a postcard” act as inspiring examples of ways to add colour to the greyness of local denominational mission literature.  bibliography baker, j. and ross, c. imagining mission with john v. taylor. london: scm, 2020. schöpfel, j. and farace, d. j. 2010. “grey literature.” in bates, m. j. and m. n. maack (eds.), encyclopaedia of library and information sciences. boca raton: crc, 3rd ed., 2010. rooms.indb 1 editorial steve taylor knox centre for ministry and leadership and flinders university, adelaide, australia steve.taylor@flinders.edu.au welcome to the second issue of ecclesial futures. this journal is a new initiative in missiological publishing that provides a particular interest in the future of local christian communities in relation to the world as it is, not as it was. we prioritize research that offers a dialogue between current literature for academics and practitioners, all the while taking seriously: i) a locus in which theology is generated with the local church. ii) the relationship between ordained and lay leadership in local christian communities. iii) how and where leaders are identified, discerned and theologically educated for mission. iv) the relationship between a local church and its “world” or context. issues of contextualization or as some prefer “cultural negotiation” or “intercultural mission” require urgent attention. v) the place of local churches formed outside of christendom and modernity e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 2 as editors, we (nigel rooms and steve taylor) have been encouraged by responses to issue 1. there has been affirming feedback about the visual appeal (“attractive, easy to handle,” “looks great”), the readability (“well pitched”) and connectivity (“interesting research and reflections on mission and the church and crucially it relates to what is happening on the ground”). we have been delighted to receive requests for extra copies of articles for use in training and formation of ministers, along with affirmations from an acquisition librarian in an internationally recognized university regarding the quality and craft. we continue to seek articles in areas that include: • longitudinal studies in congregational development over five to ten (or more) years • diagnoses of why different churches flourish or die • ethnographic studies of the cultural changes required in flourishing churches • methodological treatises on how to research in this field • how local churches can learn to experiment and fail • how might a whole denomination transform itself towards embodying the mission of god? • astute, hermeneutically aware bible scholarship on the future of the contemporary church • implications for theological education of the local church “as the hermeneutic of the gospel” • contextual studies of transformative churches from wideranging places—from the deeply secular to say, animist/shamanist contexts and everything in between • what kind of leadership is required for the local church to embody the mission of god? • what does a local church need to know before it can engage in mission? steve taylor—editorial 3 • systemic studies of local churches and the systems that support them. we want to encourage new authors who have not published before. to make this commitment practical various members of the editorial board are happy to mentor potential writers in the process of submission to peer review. indeed, we have been privileged to witness the delight among contributors to this issue new to academic publishing. the articles in this issue this issue contains five articles from four continents and various denominational backgrounds, including mainline, anabaptist, and pentecostal churches. all the articles in different ways are working with local contexts, providing “thickened” descriptions of the local church and the implications for their future in mission. this issue begins in the southern hemisphere, with particular attention to the earth. from australia, matt anslow develops a theology of krisis. anslow examines how the prophets in the old testament and jesus, particularly in john, understand krísis (judgment) is an as opportunity for repentance. the idea of judgment as an opportunity is then applied to agriculture and the environment. the result is a missiological reading of climate change as an invitation to make decisions that can shape present actions and the planet’s future health. anslow develops this theology of krisis as a call for the conversion of the church. this is a practical missiology. christian witness must recover elements of food production and eating, locating them in an eschatological frame as acts of christian mission that embody relationship, contextuality, and participation. what anslow offers is a missio dei of earth-making, centered in the local church. we move from australia to the continent of africa. from south africa, thinandavha derrick mashau examines the extent to which david bosch enacted his missiology of alternative church in his own context. the scholarship of bosch has been significant e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 4 to many in the missional church conversation. nevertheless, how liberated was bosch’s missiology of church in light of his ecclesiological praxis? mashau is careful to locate bosch in his times, in light of the decolonial agenda of the late 1970s. bosch is affirmed by mashau as a “prophet of paradigms,” offering a creative missiology rooted in the missio dei. however, bosch’s praxis contradicts his missiological creativity. he was able to reimagine church as an alternative community intellectually but to was unable to engage in a journey that liberated him from his whiteness. (there are connections between mashau’s article and the article by taylor and johnston, who deploy african scholar, teresa okure, in seeking to subvert the whiteness of the scholarship that surrounds the missional church literature.) amid this critique, mashau offers instructive insight. these include the value of learning an indigenous language in order to amplify indigenous knowledge and indigenous voices, prioritizing acts of solidarity with the oppressed and enacting a “hermeneutics of madness” as a liberating framework in the face of injustice. we move from the continent of africa to asia. c. nelson jennings, an american who lived in japan and korea for many years, provides a contextual study of how a particular local church in japan negotiates its “world” across cultures. “the love sonata” as an evangelistic mission is analyzed, with particular attention to contextualization and “intercultural mission.” a korean tv soap opera, exported to japan, becomes, through “the love sonata,” a contemporary altar to “an unknown god” (acts 17:23). the article probes the complexity of crossing cultures. pop culture is clearly glocal—shifting across cultures, yet received in different ways in different local cultures. also on display is the remarkable organizational capabilities that empower contemporary christian witness and enable contemporary churches—in this case-study, pentecostal—to mobilize for mission. at the same time, c. nelson jennings is sensitive to relationships that are historical and hence memoried. again, we see how mission creates possibilities for the conversion of the church, with senders and receivers both finding themselves challenged through “the love sonata.” e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 4 to many in the missional church conversation. nevertheless, how liberated was bosch’s missiology of church in light of his ecclesiological praxis? mashau is careful to locate bosch in his times, in light of the decolonial agenda of the late 1970s. bosch is affirmed by mashau as a “prophet of paradigms,” offering a creative missiology rooted in the missio dei. however, bosch’s praxis contradicts his missiological creativity. he was able to reimagine church as an alternative community intellectually but to was unable to engage in a journey that liberated him from his whiteness. (there are connections between mashau’s article and the article by taylor and johnston, who deploy african scholar, teresa okure, in seeking to subvert the whiteness of the scholarship that surrounds the missional church literature.) amid this critique, mashau offers instructive insight. these include the value of learning an indigenous language in order to amplify indigenous knowledge and indigenous voices, prioritizing acts of solidarity with the oppressed and enacting a “hermeneutics of madness” as a liberating framework in the face of injustice. we move from the continent of africa to asia. c. nelson jennings, an american who lived in japan and korea for many years, provides a contextual study of how a particular local church in japan negotiates its “world” across cultures. “the love sonata” as an evangelistic mission is analyzed, with particular attention to contextualization and “intercultural mission.” a korean tv soap opera, exported to japan, becomes, through “the love sonata,” a contemporary altar to “an unknown god” (acts 17:23). the article probes the complexity of crossing cultures. pop culture is clearly glocal—shifting across cultures, yet received in different ways in different local cultures. also on display is the remarkable organizational capabilities that empower contemporary christian witness and enable contemporary churches—in this case-study, pentecostal—to mobilize for mission. at the same time, c. nelson jennings is sensitive to relationships that are historical and hence memoried. again, we see how mission creates possibilities for the conversion of the church, with senders and receivers both finding themselves challenged through “the love sonata.” steve taylor—editorial 5 the next article moves us from the continent of asia to the continent of europe, with another case study of a local church, this time concerning how and where leaders are identified, discerned, and theologically educated for mission. (co-editor nigel rooms writes) here i am “butting in” to this editorial since the next article is jointly authored by my co-editor, steve taylor. rightly steve assigned the article to me for processing through peer review and for comment here. mark johnston and steve taylor as practitioner and academician combine beautifully to embody in this article what our journal is all about, not least in the way they move seamlessly between action and reflection on mark’s work in long-term mission at one particular location in scotland. we need examples like this in the contextualization of mission at the local level, which ground the ideas encapsulated by the missio dei in concrete action. thus, presented here, we have the implementation of active processes of listening, discernment, and action in dialogue with international and ecumenical theologians, resulting in missiological reflection and teaching materials from a live example within the scottish context. the article deserves a thorough reading, for it contains much wisdom and three particular things stood out for me. first, the use of metaphors in discernment—i really like the way the missioners here were able to step back, assess the “thick description” data of their listening period, and make sense of it through creative imagery. second, it is worth noting the courage and patience required for this kind of work, the project under consideration began in 2003, and here we are learning about it almost twenty years later. finally, to return to where i started, here is a perfect example of how the “academy” and the local church can be in mutually beneficial partnership—where both sides are learning. (co-editor steve taylor returns) we remain in europe with a fifth and final article. as in issue 1, we conclude with a methodological reflection. what type of methodologies are needed to ensure a locus in which theology is generated with the local church? to research the practice of pioneering, paul bradbury analyzes epistemology in the field of practical theology. his concern is to understand rightly spiritual experience as a missiological factor in e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 6 the discerning of missio dei. bradbury probes the possibilities and limits of critical realism, arguing that pneumatology provides valuable resources and enables experience to have a voice. he argues that practical theological research offers a participative methodology that is spiritual discernment. what is required is prayerfulness and attentiveness on the researcher’s part as they “eavesdrop” on the voice and presence of god in the lives of people and local communities. a highlight is the way that bradbury “walks his methodological talk.” this is evident in how the article draws on a personal dream in demonstrating a methodology attentive to the spirit’s role in mission. book reviews in this issue, the book reviews section invites creativity and diversity. one of the books that is reviewed at first sight looks unrelated to the interests of this journal, yet closer attention suggests otherwise. keep on reading! another review engages three books together in a round table discussion, while a third reviews one of those three books. as editors, we celebrate these trajectories. it causes us to reflect on the focus of this journal. there are two thoughts. on the one hand, the journal fosters dialogue between current literature for academics and practitioners. while the academy produces books, ecclesial organizations resource practitioners differently, through resources like lenten bible studies, video resources and position papers. the technical term is grey literature, which describes materials from organizations where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body (schöpfel and farace 2010). thinking about the focus of ecclesial futures, examples of grey literature include the fresh expressions dvds, produced in the uk by the church of england, faith stories and mission stories, produced in australia by the uniting church, or the “mission is” card game produced by cms in england. other examples of grey literature would include denominational resources that focus on funding mission or relate to the closing of churches. all of these are grey literature and all are steve taylor—editorial 7 articulating a missiology. hence they invite review with regard to their missiological strengths and weaknesses. on the other hand, the journal looks beyond the borders of missiology. this is evident in one book review which looks through the lens of missiology at other disciplines (in this case dogmatics and new testament studies), to extend our horizon and our learning. you will see a further expansion of what might be reviewed as you read through this issue. this is evident in the challenge (from radcliffe) for missiology to be engaged with hip-hop music. it is also evident in the research (by jennings) that documents a local church in dialogue with a tv soap opera. together, what is suggested is that popular culture is a site for missiological dialogue.1 this invites reviews of the missiological value of popular culture artefacts like films, video games and comics. developments in ecclesial futures in this volume, we welcome four new people to our editorial board. in alphabetical order: therese d’orsa from the broken bay institute, sydney, australia solomon kgatle from the university of south africa (unisa), pretoria, south africa fundiswa kobo also from the university of south africa (unisa), pretoria, south africa bokyoung park from the presbyterian university and theological seminary, seoul, korea as our first volume was published, we were rightly challenged, given our commitments to being an international and ecumenical journal regarding our editorial board’s diversity. as anthony reddie (2020) argues so powerfully, any ecclesial future must include a more critical, postcolonial deconstruction of whiteness and its genealogical links to “mission christianity.” 1. for more, see, e.g., marsh 2018. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 8 as editors, we are deeply concerned about the whiteness of much of the missional church literature. we are encouraged by the strengthening of our editorial board, and we hope for further expansion and diversity as we move forward. we are excited about the focus of several articles in this issue, along with further articles currently under review. a call for papers in this regard, we find instructive the trajectories for missiology outlined in the recent work of dwight radcliffe. radcliffe documents the lack of a black missiology. however, a missiology exists: “an existing catalogue of black scholarship that deals, directly and indirectly, with mission but is often not given the same latitude and review that white scholarship is afforded” (2020, 169). helpfully, radcliffe identifies ways forward for researchers. first, to prioritize theologies rooted not in notions of a sending god, but in theologies of incarnation. second, valuing theologies that articulate the particularities of lived experience, particularly voices on the edges and other-sides of dominant cultures. third, to value global cultures, including the missiological work that for radcliffe is present in contemporary hip-hop cultures (an argument which resonates with themes in the article in this volume by c. nelson jennings). we offer these trajectories as we seek papers for ecclesial futures. in particular, we hope for contributions that respond to these instructive trajectories offered by reddie and radcliffe as they apply to local christian communities’ future. noteworthy under the title “ecclesial futures,” whitley college, a theological college of the university of divinity, melbourne, are offering two phd scholarships that aim to generate critical innovation and creativity in order to inform and shape the practices of mission and steve taylor—editorial 9 ministry by, with, and among the baptist churches in victoria and elsewhere in australia. a buv scholarship of up to $10,000 per annum will help support study toward a phd at the university of divinity. applicants must demonstrate how their research can contribute to the strategic research objectives of the baptist union of victoria and whitley college in the area of languages other than english (lote) congregations and initiatives. a cities of god scholarship of up to $10,000 per annum will help support study toward a phd at the university of divinity. applicants must demonstrate how their research can contribute to understanding and engaging with the urban mission practice and ecclesiology of churches, congregations, and initiatives in the culturally and religiously hyperdiverse cities of australia. enquiries to rev associate professor darrell jackson, director of research, whitley college, university of divinity. thanks finally, in closing, there are numerous people to thank in relation to volume 1, issue 2. first, my co-editor, nigel rooms who provided prompt advice and wise counsel. second, the publishers at wipf & stock who deserve all the plaudits for the positive feedback regarding visual appeal. third, each reviewer for this issue has so ably taken up our invitation to review in constructive ways that aim to improve each article published in ecclesial futures. fourth, patrick todjeras (who constantly remains eager to receive book reviews). finally, you, our readers who have begun to engage this journal with such enthusiasm. a new journal relies on all of us: each one to spread the news, write an article or pen a book (or following radcliffe, a hip-hop album review). please be in touch with the editors with your comments, thoughts, and questions. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 10 bibliography marsh, clive. 2018. a cultural theology of salvation. oxford: oxford university press. radcliffe, dwight a. 2020. “black-ish missiology: a critique of mission studies and appeal for inclusion in the united states context.” mission studies 37 (2): 169–92. reddie, anthony. 2020. “reassessing the inculcation of an anti-racist ethic for christian ministry: from racism awareness to deconstructing whiteness.” religions 11 (10). online. doi: 10.3390/rel11100497. schöpfel, joachim, and dominic j. farace. 2010. “grey literature.” in encyclopedia of library and information sciences, edited by marcia j. bates and mary niles maack, 2029–39. 3rd ed. boca raton, fl: crc. rooms.indb 1 editorial nigel rooms church mission society, oxford, uk, and the queen’s foundation, birmingham, uk nigel.rooms@churchmissionsociety.org welcome to the first issue of ecclesial futures. this journal is a new venture in missiological publishing with which we seek to fill a “gap” in current literature for academics and practitioners around the question of the future of local christian communities in relation to the world as it is, not the world as it was. background our new journal brings together, at least in the initial phases, two groups of scholar-practitioners. the first is an invitation-only annual conference of around twenty to thirty people who have called themselves the international research consortium: researching missional congregations (irc). they include people from the usa, europe, and africa and cross several denominations, mainly protestant. they meet to share existing research projects and form a learning community around how local churches can be transformed by working with the theological concept of the missio dei. the second is a “study group” within the international association of mission studies (iams),1 which is the internationally 1. see iams 2016. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 2 recognized association for missiology. iams has a growing membership in the hundreds and is truly global and ecumenical, combining people from mainline protestant, pentecostal, roman catholic, and orthodox denominations. most of these denominations are represented on the journal’s editorial board, though we do want to see this expand this in future. our approach in ecclesial futures we understand local christian communities as (a) the hermeneutic of the gospel and (b) meeting god’s future as it comes towards us in the shape of the reign of god within the particular time and place that each finds itself. this requires these communities to be in a constant level of transformation as they orient themselves towards god’s preferred and promised future for them in a rapidly changing world. we believe study and research in how local churches change to be increasingly faithful in their everyday apostolicity is urgently needed. we define local christian communities broadly to include traditional “parish” churches and independent local churches, religious communities and congregations, new church plants, so-called “fresh expressions” of church, and “new monastic” communities. the sources of this work theologically are threefold at least: (a) the missio dei—we believe the missio dei to be axiomatic for ecclesiology, that is missiology precedes ecclesiology. a large proportion, possibly worldwide, of local christian communities and the systems that support them were formed in modernity and therefore with the culture and norms of modernity, christendom, and colonialism (although see the discussion below on the limits of this assumption). if adopting the stance of the missio dei is indeed a paradigm shift as bosch (1991) claims then it is no surprise that there is deep resistance to the implications of this “about face” within such communities and the systems that support them.2 research2. while there is wide and critical acceptance of the basic tenets of the nigel rooms—editorial 3 ing how and why christian communities may make this paradigm shift as they embody the missio dei is vital work. (b) andrew walls (e.g., 2002) has traced the history of the waxing and waning of christianity over the centuries. his work clearly demonstrates that local christian communities can both flourish and they can die, never to be seen again. for example, there is no christian community in north africa contiguous with that of the one present at the time of augustine of hippo. given this historical reality and the current decline and fragility of the church in many parts of the world we need to know much more about how and why some churches meet their end and some live, sustaining themselves through generational change. thus, while we appreciate the contribution of congregational studies, ecclesiology, sociology, and ethnography and will need to draw on all these fields in our own work, we do not believe they are sufficient research methodologies in themselves for the situation local christian communities find themselves in. rather we require an orientation to the future of how god is both calling and sending the church in our time and place to witness to the coming kingdom. (c) the “missional church” movement, arising from the work of lesslie newbigin and later the “gospel and our culture network” (gocn) has been working on these questions over twenty years, particularly amongst protestant mainline denominations in usa and elsewhere. there is a large amount of literature published over those two decades, too large to cite here. a recent example might be gelder and zscheile (2011). while this movement has no monopoly on these questions, our work will need to stay in critical contact with developments in “missional church,” while broadening the concerns across the whole spectrum of denominations from the world church engaged in mission. missio dei amongst theologians and missiologists, there is also good evidence that its receptivity in local christian communities is extremely patchy and fragile across many denominations (clark et al. 2010). e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 4 further implications of local christian communities taking mission seriously and areas of contestation in this field (which may prove fruitful areas of research and publishing) are: (i) the return of the locus in which theology is generated “in, with, to, for, under, and against” the local church (and therefore away from the monopoly of the academy). (ii) the relationship between ordained and lay leadership in local christian communities. (iii) how and where leaders are identified, discerned, and theologically educated for mission. (iv) the relationship between a local church and its “world” or context. issues of contextualisation or as some prefer “cultural negotiation” or “intercultural mission” require urgent attention. (v) the place of local churches formed outside of christendom and modernity in this debate—we add a further paragraph regarding this here below, especially in relation to “missional church.” this fifth point above is an important issue for the worldwide church. a lot of existing research is emerging out of the challenges of mission in the western world, but many practitioners and theologians in the non-western world are also passionately interested in the mission of the local church and reimagining ecclesial futures (cf. bolger 2012). in order to discuss “ecclesial futures” in the non-western world, we need to develop a missiological approach which seeks to contextualize the missional church debate in nonwestern churches. this is because the western and non-western christianities do not always share the same historical background. while newbigin’s critique of the western churches and the subsequent discussion about the missional church among his followers (gocn) emerged out of the new historical background of post-christendom in the west, some non-western christian churches do not share such an experience of christendom and post-christendom. thus, when we talk about the ecclesial futures nigel rooms—editorial 5 in non-western churches there is a whole new task of listening, research, analysis, and theorizing. a call for papers having described above our theological and missiological approach we now call for contributions to the journal. this first issue presents, we think great examples of the kind of articles we welcome and we hope to range much more widely in time. all articles are peer-reviewed, around six thousand words long and will make an original contribution to the field. the co-editors are very open to discussing with potential authors their ideas for submissions and are happy to correspond until something suitable emerges for peer review. we would also really like to encourage new authors who have not published before—and to this end some members of the editorial board are happy to mentor potential writers in the process of submission to peer review. here are some titles/content of the kind of articles we would love to publish. they are just a sample of course. • longitudinal studies in congregational development over five to ten (or more) years • diagnoses of why different churches flourish or die • ethnographic studies of the cultural changes required in flourishing churches • methodological treatises on how to research in this field • how local churches can learn to experiment and fail • how might a whole denomination transform itself towards embodying the mission of god? • astute, hermeneutically-aware bible scholarship on the future of the contemporary church • implications for theological education of the local church “as the hermeneutic of the gospel” e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 6 • contextual studies of transformative churches from wideranging places—from the deeply secular to say, animist/shamanist contexts and everything in between • what kind of leadership is required for the local church to embody the mission of god? • what does a local church need to know before it can engage in mission? • systemic studies of local churches and the systems that support them we envisage original research papers, review papers, case studies and occasional conference reports. the work will come from masters, doctoral, and post-doctoral researchers as well as practitioners. it will originate in seminaries and university theology departments as well as the judicatory bodies of particular denominations and local churches themselves. we expect papers to come from all corners of the world since the church exists in very many places. the articles in this issue the body of this issue is five articles from three continents and from at least five denominational backgrounds. without exception they are all working with the missio dei, each with their own critical approach and at the same time “thickening” our understanding of this key foundation for the so-called “missional church.” at the heart of the issue are three articles presenting field research. these are excellent examples of the work we would like to showcase in the journal. what is interesting to me is how provisional such research turns out to be—presenting a snapshot of a much longer journey, always raising more questions, never giving easy answers. we are “consciously incompetent” in this time to know what “church” might authentically look like—my hope is that this journal will contribute to deepening and widening our vision for what the church might be. nigel rooms—editorial 7 nelus niemandt is a long-standing and well-respected missiologist from south africa. he has been involved for many years in the drive of the dutch reformed church to become a church shaped by the missio dei. his article opens this issue as it presents the theological and missiological “big picture” for readers of the journal. his research concern is giving content to the missio dei since it can easily become the blessing of all things and therefore somewhat devoid of content. niemandt notes the importance of “flourishing life” in recent theological literature and official church documentation and connects this directly to the mission of god in which the church3 participates. what is especially helpful is that he then goes on to explicate church praxis which arises from this missional stance. the article stands as a marker for what this journal represents and sets us off in the right direction—notably facing towards the future and the eschaton. the evangelical lutheran church of america (elca) is declining like many other mainstream western denominations. kris stache, a lutheran theologian based in dubuque, iowa wanted to do something different in a research project as she set out “to explore the stories, metaphors, and texts that shape a ministry leader’s understanding and practice of visionary leadership in the elca.” in her article stache presents important field research (thirty in-depth interviews with specifically identified and chosen “visionary” leaders) which, for me as editor, puts further “flesh on the bones” of the missio dei as set out in the first article—we have here in fact many actual on-the-ground descriptions of “flourishing life.” stache’s approach is to encourage these key leaders to tell stories which point to the presence and activity of god in their ministries—noting how they witness the missio dei. what emerges is a wonderful testament to asking the right questions of the right people! these voices, as they speak about the activity of god in their communities and through their leadership need to be heard. as kris notes there is true holiness here in the stories they 3. in this journal we will stick to the convention of capitalizing church when referring to the institution or church body and church when the local manifestation in a christian community is in mind. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 8 tell. overall, while there is no “magic bullet” for decline there is clearly a “future and a hope” for the elca if the six ways that god is working through these leaders can be “passed-on” to others. we now jump straight in to so-called “fresh expressions of church” with sabrina müller from zurich, switzerland. the fresh expressions movement is one of the church of england’s responses to the post-christendom decline of the church and sabrina studied it for her doctoral research. the particular aspect of this ecclesiological shift she addresses in this article is the notion of the “mixed economy”; that is, how do these new forms of church exist alongside and even in harmony with what has been present for centuries. in a journal focused on the future, the third submission in the first issue is a historical survey of how fresh expressions came to exist and be accepted as a fit and proper ecclesiological form of church. this is no accident however since what we learn from müller is how institutional change happens in an overall church institutional system. she then connects that learning with the reception of the principles of fresh expressions on continental europe which broadens the scope of her work in fascinating ways. there are three things that commend this article to me. first the physical border crossing nature of the original research—as a church of england priest it is wonderful to have an outside view on my own context. second the theological borders that are also being crossed by this work—missiology and practical theology looks very different even across europe and it is important to have the questions the fresh expressions raises aired in this way. finally, the article leaves us wanting more from müller given the breadth of what she has been capable of here. crossing another border into germany we now meet michael herbst and patrick todjeras from the university of griefswald. their robust and in-depth field research is presented here on new forms of church in rural germany. once again the background is overall church decline and in some places reactionary responses offering only denial concerning the reality of what is happening. however rather like kris stache, herbst and todjeras go looking for places where something new and visionary is happening and nigel rooms—editorial 9 subject these initiatives to their intensive research methodology. the interventions they discover demonstrate an incredible range of both missional and innovative approaches. these are categorised in really helpful ways. in a connection with müller’s paper they discover differences in leadership between their research and other research on fresh expressions and the mixed economy which raises, of course, more research questions. they conclude with several really helpful recommendations for how these innovations could be encouraged across the whole church. last, but no means at all least, there is a really important article from scott hagley which asks what we are doing theologically when we research in and with missional congregations as they attempt to embody the missio dei in their life together. in interesting ways this article sums up this issue, critiquing several parts of it and offering many new paths for the journey ahead. hagley is a scholar-practitioner based in pittsburgh, pa, and he is able to move seamlessly between the complexities and questions of both trinitarian theology and post-modern ethnographic researching. this paper will repay reading, re-reading and inwardly digesting as hagley utilises jenson’s trinitarian understanding to develop a pneumatological solution to questions raised about the triune god’s relationship with the world. drawing on the work of natalie wigg-stevenson and mary fulkerson in ethnographic research, hagley provides concrete proposals to enable a congregation’s self understanding as a missional church as they participate with the spirit in their public worlds. we present a handful of book reviews in this issue (which we hope will develop with the journal in future issues), covering material published in our field—and readers will notice from further afield. thus, one of the reviews brings thinking from studying online innovation and creativity to churches participating in the mission of god. as i close i’d like to thank a few people. my co-editor, steve taylor, for constant encouragement. the publishers at wipf & stock for taking us on as a new and untried journal. all those institutions, who need to remain anonymous, but who generously e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 10 funded the start-up of the journal. the editorial board all of whom reviewed the papers presented here with acumen and alacrity making substantial improvements to them. patrick todjeras who has put the book reviews together at very short notice. you, our readers who have picked up the journal and hopefully learnt from it. please spread the news and consider writing an article or review a book for us. do be in touch with the editors with your comments, thoughts, and questions; we would love to have feedback on this first issue. bibliography bolger, ryan, ed. 2012. the gospel after christendom: new voices, new cultures, new expressions. grand rapids: baker. bosch, david j. 1991. transforming mission: paradigm shifts in the theology of mission. maryknoll, ny: orbis. bria, ion. 1996. the liturgy after the liturgy: mission and witness from an orthodox perspective. geneva: wcc. clark, j., et al. 2010. foundations for mission in the uk and ireland: a study of language, theology, and praxis. london: ctbi. gelder, craig van, and zscheile, dwight j. 2011. the missional church in perspective: mapping trends and shaping the conversation. grand rapids: baker. international association for mission studies (iams). 2016. “christian communities and mission.” online. https://missionstudies.org/index. php/study-groups/ecclesial-futures-local-christian-communities-inmission. stamoolis, james j. 1986. eastern orthodox mission theology today. maryknoll, ny: orbis. tennet, timothy. 2010. invitation to world missions: a trinitarian missiology for the twenty-first century. grand rapids: kregel. vassiliadis, petros, ed. 2014. orthodox perspectives on mission. oxford: regnum ef2-2.indb 123 olofinjana, israel oluwole, ed. world christianity in western europe: diasporic identity, narratives & missiology oxford: regnum books international, 2020. isbn 978-1-913363-31-4 reviewed by pavol bargár protestant theological faculty, charles university in prague bargarp@yahoo.com in this book, its editor israel oluwole olofinjana, the founding director of the centre for missionaries from the majority world, brings together a variety of papers that reflect on the phenomenon of the diasporic life of christians from the majority world in western europe. the primary focus of the volume is on pentecostal and charismatic forms of christianity as embodied by migrants as well as second-generation migrants. the book opens with an introductory study by olofinjana that provides the reader with helpful orientation when it sheds light on relevant issues, such as the study of world christianity, diaspora, migration (both in the bible and contemporary world), pentecostalism, and pentecostal studies. toward the end of this e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 124 chapter, the author proposes a new approach to studying world christianity through the lens of multi-ethnic congregations. world christianity in western europe can then be read as an elaboration of this approach. in accordance with their primary focus, all chapters are divided into three sections, engaging with diasporic identity, missional narratives, and missiological insights, respectively. the chapters represent a good balance between rigorous academic contributions and narrative accounts by reflective practitioners across all three sections. it is somewhat regretful that the volume does not more vocally emphasize the dynamic and multi-layered interaction between the stories of the migrants and those of “indigenous” europeans, both christians and non-christians/post-christians. although this theme is reflected in some chapters (for instance, those by jim stewart, claire and mark ord, and usha reifsnider), it deserves more prominent attention, as it is not only diasporic identity that undergoes a process of transformation vis-à-vis its encounter with european society and culture. the transformative process is mutual and multilateral, even going beyond the confines of christianity. as such, the actors engaged in this dynamic play the role of “transcultural mediators,” to use the terminology of paul hiebert, fostering cultural hybridity that is increasingly becoming a hallmark of many (especially urban) settings. as far as diasporic believers are concerned, this process involves a struggle for one’s core identity in the continuous exchange between “original” and “host” cultures. the book emphasizes that identity is shaped as faith is intertwined with various political and economic issues. amidst all these factors, christian mission emerges as a creative combination of history, heritage, and theology, as dulcie dixon mckenzie proposes. in this account, “heritage” refers to “a contemporary use of the past” (74) for the sake of nurturing community development and fostering one’s identity. in addition, christian mission involves several other aspects that are helpfully explored in the book. for example, hospitality is introduced in the context of a complex yet delicate web of guest-host relationships. furthermore, the contribution of women to mission is recognized pavol bargár—world christianity in western europe 125 when women are asserted as agents of non-coercive power. finally, the frequented notion of “mission in reverse” is conceptualized not merely as a pursuit of personal evangelism and church planting but also as an initiative that addresses structural issues to bring about systemic change. for the field of ecclesiology and practical theology, world christianity in western europe represents a welcome addition to the discussion as it reminds us that the church is a colorful people “on the move,” sharing their diverse stories to make an irreplaceable contribution to missio dei. methodologically refreshing and theologically inspiring, it is desirable that the project on diasporic identity, narratives, and missiology expands ecumenically (to include other christian traditions besides pentecostals and free churches) and geographically (beyond western europe) to offer an even richer portrayal of contemporary world christianity. 125 olsen, steen, 2020. jacob’s ladder: missional church in the 1970s. st. marys, australia: sa & rl olsen. isbn-13: 978-06-4899-680-4 reviewed by patrick r. keifert president and director of research, church innovations institute, saint paul, minnesota usa pkeifert@churchinnovations.org “once upon a time,” there was a christian community in adelaide, australia called jacob’s ladder. unlike most new christian communities in that time, jacob’s ladder was midwifed by very young, inexperienced christians engaging in a street ministry centered, initially, in a coffee house. the coffee house was at the top of a flight of stairs, hence jacob’s ladder. somethings about steen olsen’s book encouraged me to read jacob’s ladder as a fairytale. reading it as a fairytale allows distance for the teller and those told. i am a friend of steen’s and needed some distance from the book and the teller. i realize that using the fairytale genre can sound like i think the story is not true. i do not mean that at all. some fairytales limit the kinds of truth claims to nostalgia or a 1960s disneyland retelling of a fairytale. such a fairytale would not meet the interest and purposes needed for using jacob’s ladder for e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 126 purposes of ecclesial futures. however, fairytales can allow for multiple layers of meaning, meaningfulness and truth claims, especially through nostalgic realism. jacob’s ladder uses nostalgic realism. much more of the truth to be had from it comes from interpreting it as a fairytale. by way of nostalgic realism, jacob’s ladder invites the reader interested in ecclesial futures a chance to find a useable future in our past. in particular, jacob’s ladder allows a retiring generation to tell its story to younger generations without pretending to just present the facts or that contemporary circumstances are not in important ways different. quite to the contrary, the nostalgic realism of jacob’s ladder allows the present reader an insight into the mythos, the social imagination, and the shards of the metanarrative that made jacob’s ladder possible and that led to its demise. i find by this approach that it then provides enduring insights for contemporary work on ecclesial futures. some of the obvious insights. the chief actors in this fairytale are young, very young, naïve, inexperienced adults. i remain amazed what the young can accomplish that as an older, experienced person would not even try. these young adults worked the streets, took up conversations with persons who would simply never be attracted to a local church. rather than initially see themselves as the hosts, they sought to be those hosted by the street folk. they listened with the expectation that god was up to something in these people’s lives. they discerned god’s movement in the relationships they developed. over time they formed new kinds of households and communities. some worked and some didn’t. they were remarkably naïve about sex, power and money. as someone who has spent years studying and consulting with congregations, i have learned sex, power and money drive much of the life of christian community. as the early monastic movement learned, it was necessary to take three vows: chastity, poverty and obedience. no matter how we might shape our ecclesial futures, the remarkable spiritual discernment of naivete and wisdom with respect to sex, power and money remains. one of the greatest strengths of the narrative of jacob’s ladder is the supporting evidence from diverse persons, organizations and periods in the life of this local church community. not everyone has the same story to tell: 1. the narratives do not provide a seamless sense of community development. 2. different perspectives make for clear lines of conflict without reducing the conflict to simple resolutions. 3. the enduring failures of established, inherited church and this fledgling ministry to find ways forward remain common. i think of the patrick r. keifert—jacob’s ladder 127 challenging work of ‘fresh expressions’ and the inherited church in the united kingdom. 4. the critical place of spiritual practices of prayer, listening, reading and worship. 5. the power of and the remarkable upspringing of the arts: drama, music, dance, graphic arts etc. i find this evidence especially confirming the insights of the importance of the expression of the aesthetic in our lives as central to forming local churches. 6. perhaps because this is a “lutheran” local church, the place of scripture and theology stands out. be that as it may, communities require a shared narrative and christian community grows well out of a biblical narrative. further, some reflective moments are necessary if a community is to learn anything. no one learns from experience alone but only from experience reflected upon and articulated. this narrative gives ample examples of learning from experience. this last point of action/reflection learning leads me to a most obvious note: the author of this fairytale is himself a part of the tale. imagine ella telling cinderella. steen olsen tells the tale of jacob’s ladder. he draws from a myriad of relationships, evidence, memories, original texts and plausible narratives. he brings the wisdom of someone who becomes a bishop, teacher and churchwide director of mission. he kindly tells a tale that makes himself and others uncomfortable: nostalgic realism. he hints at darker realities but does not shame or blame. as a friend of steen, i had my doubts that i was an appropriate reviewer of this book. hence the need to get some distance through the conceit of a fairytale. be that as it may, i advise you to read this book, retell its tale, and gain insight in this past for ecclesial futures. ef2-2.indb 1 editorial steve taylor director, angelwings ltd, and flinders university, adelaide, australia. steve. taylor@flinders.edu.au welcome to this issue of ecclesial futures and five articles that each in different ways provide original research to guide the work and witness of local christian communities in the world today. we begin in korea, with a missiological reflection on the impact of covid-19. bokyoung park shares two stories of profound personal loss. she then skilfully uses narrative theology, drawing out the “footprints of god” in these stories, in order to develop a contemporary missiology of healing through hospitality. to follow christ in a world suffering from the global pandemic requires the church to recognize itself as wounded. as the body of christ dwells in the pain of humanity, hospitality can be offered to others. the result is healing as pain is reframed in the story of jesus. jesus is the “wounded healer” in which we experience a “hospitality in the hope of resurrection.” hence hospitality has a missional dimension. park issues a prophetic call to the church in korea and a theological challenge to more propositional theologies. her work is poignant and prophetic, a rich demonstration of the power of narrative theology and missional wisdom for the church encountering the wounded world. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 2 a central theme of this issue is imagination and a trio of articles offer imagination in ecclesiology, hermeneutics and missional practice. it is imagination that enables us to contemplate alternative social projects that “nourish the conviction that things can be changed” (kearney 2001, 370–71). for kearney, nourishment comes from the awakening of imagination that is simultaneously ethical and poetic. the call of the other is needed to cultivate an imagination that is ethical. an inventive making is needed to liberate an imagination that is poetic. both are evident in the ministry of jesus. a poignant example is the moment when jesus playfully writes on the sand, an imaginative act that liberates an imaginative and ethical response to the woman breaking the law of moses in john 8:1–11. an imagination that is ethical is evident in ian robinson’s hermeneutical proposals in relation to the use of business analogies in leadership formation. an imagination that is playful is evident in bradbury’s use of the metaphor of wilding and james fox-robinson’s approach to writing in researching ways in which a monastic lifestyle might embody the church’s understanding of mission in our time. paul bradbury argues that the metaphor of wilding offers significant resources for the future of the church in mission. wilding is a process that offers a new paradigm for land management. as nature leads, human agency is re-centered as facilitative rather than directive. bradbury outlines a way that wilding might be a generative metaphor for the church, providing an “ecclesial imaginary.” bradbury develops jürgen moltmann’s paradigmatic shifts in the ages of the church in dialogue with charles taylor’s articulation of the “social imaginary” in secular western contexts. the metaphor of wilding provides a way to develop ministerial life and contextual ecclesial forms, as the church understands herself as a co-agent with the holy spirit. this involves embracing humbler and more collaborative postures in order to participate with the already-present-and-active holy spirit in the building of the kingdom of god. hence, the church finds herself participating in the emergent life generated through the power of the spirit. steve taylor—editorial 3 the article invites further research, not only empirical research of wilding as it might apply in the lived experience of the church in mission, but also the biblical and theological probing required of any contextual ecclesiology. hence, it is helpful to place the article by ian robinson after the work by paul bradbury, given the way robinson examines the hermeneutical implications involved in the imaginative use of analogy and metaphor. writing from australia, robinson courageously enters the field of business. having experienced the misuse of business analogies, robinson analyses the hermeneutical principles in jesus’ parables. given ten parables include analogies about leadership in business, robinson examines epistemologies of analogy in education and inter-disciplinary studies and develops seven hermeneutical principles. these principles provide an analogical hermeneutic which is then tested against two contemporary business analogies. the kingdom of god is like kodak. the kingdom of god is also like toyota. the article is playfully generative, yet cautiously wise. the seven principles can be applied iteratively to illuminate leadership insights and enhance the effectiveness and fidelity of a congregation and a denomination. equally, these seven principles can prevent the church from taking analogy too far, too little, or too analytically. the result is a wisdom for the church that is practical and imaginative. a third article in this imaginative trio is provided by james fox-robinson, who researched contemporary monastic spiritual practice. fantasy fiction, in particular the character concept from the pilgrim’s progress, is used to develop characters directly from fox-robinson’s research into new monasticism. this enabled the lived experience of participants, including their words and expressions, to be re-presented in a dramatic script. fox-robinson’s creative dialogue drew on wider literature and included an imaginative conversation with characters from the franciscan tradition. fox-robinson’s characters demonstrate how values of simplicity, contentment, generosity, and hospitality might be lived in everyday life. his research shows that emerging new monastic communities are engaged in the task of drawing the wisdom from e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 4 more traditional monastic and mendicant orders and embodying it into their own contexts and experiences. monastic spiritual practices become a call to each and every one of us. they involve not necessarily the joining of a monastic order but the living of an alternative lifestyle. this article is thus an imaginative pushing of the boundaries of academic writing and an argument for the ways in which a monastic lifestyle might embody the church’s understanding of mission in our time. such an imaginative approach to research and writing raises significant questions about the nature of academic writing. in an act of remarkable serendipity, the fifth and final article examines the craft of writing. the article is a collaboration by four authors across three countries and multiple time zones. the genesis for this work of reflexive praxis was the willingness of four members of the ecclesial futures editorial board to accept an invitation to offer short spoken reflections on the craft of writing for the missional research workshop 2021. following this online event, the four contributors worked to further develop their thinking on writing, including in conversation with helen sword’s research into academic writing. for sword, writing is behavioral, artisanal, social, and emotional. these dimensions are used to argue that writing is a missional and emergent task: first, as writing seeks to encourage and enhance the participation of ourselves and others in the mission of god, and second, as writing is developed “on the job” through reflexive practice. the article affirms diversity—“no one way of writing”—and yet examines shared feelings including fear, stuckness, and reviewer feedback in the process of writing. what also emerges is the social nature of writing and the potential for collaboration across the entire writing process; whether wise others, early readers, editors, and peer reviewers. the article offers a vulnerable, and at times tender, meditation on writing as a missional and emergent task. in order to ensure academic integrity, the proposed article was de-identified and sent to four (rather than the normal two) peer reviewers. to ensure further academic integrity, three of the reviewers were external to the journal. all four reviewers were steve taylor—editorial 5 established writers. each was unanimous in affirming that the article was worthy of publication. pleasingly, they also observed things they had learned for their own craft. we are glad to offer this article, so filled with practical insights that can “help you find and grow in your own unique approach.” developments in ecclesial futures a driving commitment for ecclesial futures is to encourage authors new to publishing. to make that commitment practical, in june 2021, the journal hosted the missional research workshop, a writing workshop. the workshop filled a space left vacant by the postponement of the international association of mission studies conference and the resultant impact on the vitality of the christian communities and mission study group, which is an important partnership for ecclesial futures. the missional research workshop created an online space for feedback on work in progress. to encourage writing, the ecclesial futures editorial board members were invited to participate, first by sharing their learnings about the craft of writing, second by providing constructive feedback to research in process. a number of articles for review have resulted from the missional research workshop. another development during 2021 has been the ecclesial futures ma prize in mission. this results from a partnership with churches together in england (cte), who seek out good-quality research at the ma level from students completing their studies at a uk-based college or university around the topics of mission, evangelism, and church planting with a particular focus on mission in the uk context. a panel of cte judges read all the submitted theses and decided on a winner. ecclesial futures extend our congratulations to the 2021 winner, daleen ten cate, for her ma dissertation, “a critical examination of the theological basis of a christian charity engaged in community ministry.” this edition of ecclesial futures includes a description of her abstract, along with information about four other shortlisted finalists. for all our e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 6 readers, the judges’ comments are a window into exemplary practice in contemporary research. thanks in closing, my thanks to a range of people. first, my co-editor, nigel rooms, who provided prompt advice and wise counsel. second, the publishers at wipf & stock, who continue to receive plaudits regarding the visual presentation of the journal. third, the reviewers who work to provide constructive feedback in ways that aim to improve each article. fourth, patrick todjeras, who constantly remains eager to receive book reviews. finally, you, our readers, who engage with our journal in such different ways. please be in touch with your comments, thoughts, and questions. and do follow us on twitter—@ecclesialf. bibliography kearney, richard. the wake of imagination: towards a postmodern culture. london: routledge, 2001. rooms.indb 113 moynagh, michael. 2017. church in life: innovation, mission, and ecclesiology. london: scm press. isbn: 978–0-334–05451-1 reviewed by patrick todjeras university of greifswald, greifswald, germany patrick.todjeras@uni-greifswald.de church in life can be understood as the sequel to an earlier book called church for every context (2012) by the anglican theologian rev. michael moynagh. moynagh, based at wycliffe hall, oxford, uk, has served as a theologian and consultant for the fresh expressions of church movement in britain since its beginnings in 2004. moynagh follows a “see–judge–act” methodological structure in this book following the lead of joseph cardijn. in part one he “sees” new ecclesial communities emerging, using his “innovation framework” to describe the processes involved (17–140). part two “judges” these new communities in light of the church’s theological identity (141–294). part three “acts” in the sense of describing dynamics and practices that founding teams can attend to and encourage to fan the flames of innovation from which new ecclesial communities emerge (295–415). e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 114 in his previous book church for every context, moynagh discussed the theology of new contextual churches, like fresh expressions of church, and how missional thinking developed new forms of church up to and since the publication of the influential church of england report “mission-shaped church.”1 in church in life he develops a model of innovation for new forms of churches, which he calls new ecclesial communities. moynagh combines complexity and entrepreneurial theory through which he examines the process of innovation in the church. he explores a theology for change and within it a theological understanding of innovation and invention.  he draws deeply from ideas which are emerging in business, technology and social science and is always looking for a theological angle to what he is seeing and learning by the examples he interprets. he also includes practical examples illustrating his points and draws out his theory through data from informal interviews conducted with practitioners. moynagh envisions three audiences for this book: those who reflect on the church’s life, people who lead and encourage new forms of church, and traditional church planters (6). moynagh’s work assumes a british society in which the local church’s presence has decreased and the church in general is in retreat. through the process of innovation new ecclesial communities are being established among the unchurched. although moynagh calls them “ecclesial communities” due to the fact that he wants to highlight the relational aspect of these new forms, moynagh understands them as being or becoming church. they ought not to be stepping stones to traditional, inherited churches but be fully church on their own. this focuses the discussion on the relationships within the ecclesial community rather than the practices or structures of it. the models that he advocates are organic, making space for complexity and change, and have a narrative structure that is self-involving (19). the strategy for establishing new ecclesial communities is a “serving-first journey.” entrepreneurial teams would serve a certain segment of society, share its concerns and joys, becoming 1. editor’s note: see the article from sabrina müller elsewhere in this issue. patrick todjeras—church in life 115 truly incarnational. through the offering of friendship, a community builds around common questions and interests. together they explore what it means to be disciples. here it is obvious that the first step is not establishing a worshipping community but building relationships and contributing to the needs and aspirations of people in a certain context. the re-occurring framework through which moynagh understands the future of the church is innovation. he boldly declares, “through innovation eternity takes root in the midst of history” (8). he proposes using the innovation framework of dissatisfaction, exploration, sense-making, amplification, edge of chaos, and transformation, and encourages the reader not to think of church development in terms of a linear progression. these can be useful paradigms for a founding team as they analyze what has brought them to start a new initiative (dissatisfaction with the existing state), explore new possibilities, make sense of them theologically and contextually, draw others in (amplification), tread the fine line between seeking stability and continual innovation (edge of chaos), and gradually see transformation in the people or cultural landscapes in which they are operating. moynagh opens up some new ways of thinking about the church today regarding its nature, its purpose and its identity. he founds his ecclesiological thoughts on what he calls the “essence” of the church, by which he understands four dimensions of relationships which need to be fostered: relationship to god, relationship to the wider church, relationship to the community, relationship to the context. he differentiates the essence from the “essentials,” which would include practices such as baptism, scripture, eucharist and so on. for moynagh such an approach is the new work of the holy spirit, as he mentions, “the coming kingdom contains possibilities for natural and human flourishing. imagining these possibilities creates dissatisfaction with the current state of the world. through the spirit, this dissatisfaction breeds a desire to bring the kingdom closer” (63). as concerns leadership, moynagh’s advice is provoking. leaders are to be entrepreneurs rather than managers. leadership is e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 116 supposed to be exercised dispersed among the community. leaders are to be “hosts” not “heroes” who do not centralize control and therefore reduce reflexivity (i.e., self-critical and exploratory thinking) and flexibility (fast response to changes). these leaders host ideas and talents. other provoking thoughts are, for example questioning the idea of sustainability of new ecclesial communities. he critiques that the emphasis on longevity which has become a dominant paradigm instead of the quality of a new church’s existence. moynagh says, “what matters is not the durability of new ecclesial communities, but their fruitfulness. . . . it is not difficult to think of congregations that have existed for many years but no longer appear fruitful” (375). besides the enriching thoughts moynagh proposes, there are a few concerns one might have when placing moynagh’s book in the broader discussion on missiology and ecclesiology. first, moynagh is little concerned with so-called “inherited churches” (those that have historically existed in parish contexts) and only focuses on the newly established ecclesial communities. he suggests that innovation only (!) comes from these new forms. that might be an arrogant statement in light of church history. furthermore, the tenor of this book is that fragmentation is the future of the church, which raises the question of how the unity of the church will be put into practice in embodiment. second, it seems that moynagh has a strong belief that all new ecclesial communities are innovative, are “expressions of god’s reign” (7), and are church without ever discussing how right beliefs, doctrine or right practice might relate to that. these observations might trigger discussions which add to what this book has to offer the interested reader. ef2-2.indb 7 notice ecclesial futures ma prize details ben aldous principal officer for mission and evangelism, churches together in england ben.aldous@cte.org.uk the inaugural year of the ma prize in mission is a new venture between churches together in england, the national ecumenical instrument, the mission research network uk, and the british and irish association of practical theology. in this inaugural year of the prize we received twenty-five entries from students based in a wide range of locations from falmouth, cornwall, to barrow in cumbria and representing a range of denominations. the aim of the prize is to draw out good-quality research at the ma level from students completing their studies at a uk-based college or university around the topics of mission, evangelism, and church planting with a particular focus on mission in the uk context. this year’s winner of the prize was daleen ten cate, whose ma dissertation, “a critical examination of the theological basis of a christian charity engaged in community ministry,” was deemed by the judges to be a robust and rigorous piece of work which clearly engaged a community of practice out of deep relationships. her ma in contextual theology was taken through luther king house in manchester. daleen is an ordained urc minister e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 8 based just outside blackburn. she currently works for the united reformed church as a missional discipleship mentor alongside thirty-seven churches across lancashire. originally from south africa and an afrikaaner, she moved to the uk twenty-two years ago, initially learning english at a local village school. the judges were particularly impressed by the passion and level of engagement that daleen showed in her work and the way in which she had rolled up her sleeves, got her hands dirty volunteering for six months, and built significant relationships. they felt the level of reflexivity was particularly rich. her abstract is set out below. abstract of the ma prize winner this dissertation is a critical examination of the theological basis of a christian charity engaged in community ministry. through using theological action research (tar) as my methodology i identified the “theological voices” of this charity and hopefully enabled formative transformation for practice, but also to allow practice to contribute to the transformation of theology. in undertaking the research i conducted ten in-depth, semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions and also administered twenty-four questionnaires. based on the three theologies of mission, according to bevans & schroeder (2005, 35–72), type c: transformation and liberation was endorsed by the participants as the charity’s espoused theology. however, data also revealed that type a: mission as saving souls and extending the church and type b: mission as discovery of the truth were also prominent theologies. yet despite these differences and the different denominations of staff members, the charity clearly unites in practice. their key biblical text headlining their website, expressing their vision, is isaiah 61:1, which is in line with the espoused theology of transformation and liberation, became their normative theology. incarnation and kenosis were unanimously endorsed by interviewees as an appropriate operant theology for this charity. this operant theology is brought in conversation with the formal ben aldous—ecclesial futures ma prize details 9 theological voice of john vincent and his vocational cycle (2013, 59) and the transformation that took place through the eyes of his discipleship cycle (2013, 61). this theological methodology used in conjunction with interdisciplinary dialogue in this dissertation took place alongside theologies of mission, such as bevans & schroeder (2005, 2011), bosch (1991), davey (2010), and frost & hirsch (2003); as well as reflecting on and dialoguing with different models of community work and social action such as ledwith (2005), morisy (1997), and ballard & husselbee (2007) and finally also by listening to the challenging voices of liberation theologians such as vincent (2013), west (1999), and brueggemann (1998). four other shortlisted finalists were: tiffany jackson, whose ma in theology, ministry, and mission from trinity college in bristol explored one of the earliest examples of a mission document found in mark 16:9–20 by exploring the themes of power, truth, and allegiance. by studying mark’s longer ending through a missional hermeneutic and in dialogue with charles kraft’s model, jackson opened up a discussion around the miraculous and mission. robin ham’s ma in theology and ministry from the university of cumbria reflected on the experiences of church planting in a small town in the north of england in conversation with tim keller’s planting model for cities. mark nam in his ma asked, “what can the church of england learn from east asian theology in terms of contextualizing the gospel?” describing the five marks of mission as a template for mission and polity in the c of e and drawing on bevans and schroeder’s prophetic dialogue, nam asks what role, if any, east asian theologies might bring to bear in c. of e. contexts in twentyfirst century britain. christopher collins, who was awarded an ma in theology and transformative practice from the queens foundation in birmingham, asked the seemingly simple question, “is the e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 10 present-day methodist church as prophetic as it could be or as it perceives itself to be?” collins argues that by drawing on the work of john hull the church could give greater attention to the intersubjective witness to injustice and broader engagement with the complexities of truth and power, challenging injustice rather than focusing on relieving its effects and becoming less self-interested for the sake of justice. all these dissertations and a wide range of other phdand ma-level work may be accessed via the new churches together in england mission research library at the following: https://cte.org. uk/mission/research/#/. rooms.indb 31 towards the acceptance of diversity: a brief history of the mixed economy of church and continental european adaptations1 sabrina müller theological director of the center for church development, theological faculty, university of zurich, zürich, switzerland sabrina.mueller@theol.uzh.ch abstract during the past fifteen years, the self-understanding of the church of england, a traditional state church with its parish structure has changed. the mother church of the anglican world communion claims since 2004 to be a mixed economy church; one that supports and recognises innovative ecclesial spaces (fresh expressions of church) as church, as well as parish churches. it is the goal to have an innovative diversity of churches in a pluralistic 1. this article originally appeared in german as “eine kurze geschichte der mixed economy of church” in pastoraltheologie: monatsschrift für wissenschaft und praxis in kirche und gesellschaft 109.1 (2020) 5–18. it has been translated into english, peer reviewed, and edited from the original. the journal editors are grateful to all those who contributed to creating the english version. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 32 society. at the same time these churches should be recognisable and contextual. it is the concept of the mixed economy that manages a fair cooperation between parochial and fresh expressions of church. in the meantime, the concept of mixed economy is not only received in the uk, but rather in different national and free churches in continental europe. as of late the concept is taken up by the cpce (community of protestant churches in europe). introductory remarks for centuries the church of england was characterized by liturgy, episcopacy and parochial structure. (“the lambeth quadrilateral” contains four articles adopted by the lambeth conference in 1888. these contain: scripture, creeds, the two sacraments and the historic episcopate. see booty et al. 1998, 502.) in the last twenty years, however, it has undergone major changes in its ecclesiastical self-image. not only has the religious diversity within parishes and services increased but also more than two thousand new churches outside established parishes, so-called fresh expressions of churches, were begun (see müller 2016; lings 2016). of the fresh expressions of church, some claim church status and others already have church status. in the church of england the term mixed economy of church is used for this coexistence and sometimes also confusion of churches. (it can be observed that some prefer the term mixed ecology, “which has a more organic ring” [moynagh 2012, 432].) the following article discusses the historical development of the mixed economy and its confirmation by the church of england and gives some insights into its reception in continental europe. in addition, the opportunities presented by this programmatic approach are discussed and the challenging question of how unity in a diverse church should be thought and understood is reflected upon. the aim of discussing the mixed economy as a concept for a sustainable church is that it can lead to a change in attitude, especially at the level of church leadership. through the horizon of thought of the mixed economy, a generous understanding of sabrina müller—towards the acceptance of diversity 33 ecclesiology can be promoted, in which the church is recognized as diverse and can thus also be promoted. it also allows new local and missional forms of ecclesial community to reflect and find their place in a larger whole. a large part of the data referred to in this article comes from my phd project: ekklesiologische beobachtungen und interpretationen einer neuen kirchlichen bewegung. the monograph was published in 2016. i spent six months in england during 2010– 2014 for the project, conducting numerous participant observations and expert interviews with archbishop rowan williams, bishop steven croft, bishop graham cray, dr. george lings, mike moynagh, and many others. origin and reception of the mixed economy in the church of england unity in diversity for more than one hundred years, and perhaps even since its inception, the church of england has been concerned with the question of how unity in diversity should be thought of (see lings 2012). therefore, the emergence of a way of thinking and programmatic approach like that of the mixed economy of church must be regarded in a longer temporal horizon and as historically grown. since 1910, the church of england has been repeatedly affected by various movements that have questioned its self-image and ultimately changed it. thus the idea of unity in diversity, which is now made fruitful also in the face of today’s plural ecclesiastical situation, goes back to the ecumenical movement and liturgical innovation (see müller 2016, 71ff). the ecumenical movement dates back to the world missionary conference in edinburgh in 1910. the first world conference on faith and order was held in lausanne in 1927 (see butler 1998, 47). through the ecumenical movement the awareness arose within the church of england that unity in diversity is possible within a church: “in recognizing other ways to do and be church, we could no longer think there was only e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 34 one way. here was a harbinger of unity yet acceptable diversity” (lings 2012, 162). another movement in which the idea of unity in diversity played a central role was the liturgical revision of the 1960s. in 1958 the lambeth conference recognized that the book of common prayer could no longer be the sole basis for church unity (see chapman 2006, 126). this led to the development and introduction of alternative liturgies and worship services by the anglican congress in 1963. these changes increased the flexibility of individual parishes and better integrated contextual and pastoral needs. in addition, the language of worship became more understandable (see hatchett 1998, 141ff). such liturgical revision led to a great variety of liturgical forms and approaches in the church of england. the unity expressed before the liturgical revision by the common, uniform liturgy is now, according to bishop steven croft, determined above all by common values: “it is, i believe, in the articulation and shaping of common anglican values that we will find, preserve and deepen our unity as the church of england” (croft 2006a, 180). in the church of england, the awareness of unity in diversity has grown historically. for a long time, however, it was mainly interpreted in terms of different religious traditions and was without any theological or structural implications. in the anglican church, three or four theological traditions are distinguished, whereby each tradition again exhibits a great diversity in itself. this becomes clear in the different designations: the first tradition is called evangelical or reformed, the second anglican catholic or traditionalist and the third liberal, broad church, central or nonparty. the position of anglican charismatics is often not referred to as a tradition in its own right, as it has affected and influenced all other currents. it has brought them greater spontaneity in worship, renewal of spirituality and trust in the holy spirit (see avis 2000, 15). however, the role of religious traditions in creating the context for diversity in the last fifty years of the twentieth century should not be underestimated. it may be correct to say this did not sabrina müller—towards the acceptance of diversity 35 have structural implications at the time, but it did have theological implications concerning unity in diversity. from “unity in diversity” to the mixed economy of church with the emergence of the church planting movement and later the fresh expressions of church, the principle of unity in diversity was expanded, theologically reaffirmed in the doctrine of the trinity and described at the ecclesiological and structural level with the term mixed economy. at the end of the 1970s and in the 1980s there were disagreements in the church of england. for, inspired by the american church planting movement, new church plants also emerged in the church of england, which began to cross parochial borders. as a result, a commission was set up to observe, analyse and recommend how to deal with these new churches. the results of the analysis were presented in the breaking new ground report, published in 1994 (see harris et al. 1994). two conclusions contributed to the emergence of the mixed economy. first, it was recommended that church planting be understood as a complementary strategy to the parochial system. through church plants local congregations should be supported and supplemented. at the same time, it was suggested that social changes such as mobility and relational networking require the parochial system to be supported and supplemented. secondly, strong cultural and sociological changes have been observed in british society. for example, it was found that the municipal boundary is often no longer identical with the people’s relationship environment. recommendations for church action were derived from this. through the distinction between geographical borders, neighborhood and networks of relationships and interests, it was established as a consequence that a people’s church needs complementary, new structures (see harris et al. 1994; müller 2016, 75ff). the new church plants grew rapidly and became more diverse, so that in 2002 the church of england considered it advisable to re-establish a working group to revise the breaking new ground report and review developments for change and progress. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 36 the relevant report mission-shaped church came from this working group. the report published in 2004 became an influential and remarkably widely read document in the church of england. the newly elected archbishop of canterbury, rowan williams, gave additional meaning to the report in his guiding foreword: if “church” is what happens when people encounter the risen jesus and commit themselves to sustaining and deepening that encounter in their encounter with each other, there is plenty of theological room for diversity of rhythm and style, so long as we have ways of identifying the same living christ at the heart of every expression of christian life in common. (cray et al. 2004, vii) the mixed economy of church already in the preface of mission-shaped church unity in diversity was emphasized. the introduction to the report was then more explicitly related to the parochial principle, in which the changes of the last ten years were also presented: breaking new ground saw church planting as “a supplementary strategy that enhances the essential thrust of the parish principle.” perhaps the most significant recommendation of this current report is that this is no longer adequate. the nature of community has so changed (and was changing long before 1994) that no one strategy will be adequate to fulfil the anglican incarnational principle in britain today. communities are now multi-layered, comprising neighborhoods, usually with permeable boundaries, and a wide variety of networks, ranging from the relatively local to the global. increased mobility and electronic communications technology have changed the nature of community. it is clear to us that the parochial system remains an essential and central part of the national church’s strategy to deliver incarnational mission. but the existing parochial system alone is no longer able fully to deliver its underlying mission purpose. we need to recognize that a variety of integrated sabrina müller—towards the acceptance of diversity 37 missionary approaches is required. a mixed economy of parish churches and network churches will be necessary, in an active partnership across a wider area, perhaps a deanery. (cray et al. 2004, x) in addition to mission-shaped church, the a measure for measures report published in the same year concluded that the parochial system and with it the principle of “one-size-fits-all” as the only model in a plural society no longer meets the requirements (see toney 2004). both reports point out that the parochial system is no longer sufficiently capable of fulfilling the incarnational mission of the church. it needs to be supplemented and this is seen through a mixed economy of church, consisting of local congregations, contextual expressions of church, network congregations, house churches, church plants, etc. .  .  . only in this way could a people’s church still do justice to its actual task of being in dialogue with the people of the country about god and of turning invitingly to them. the naturalness with which the term mixed economy is used in the reports is therefore surprising because the term was introduced only two years earlier. the term “mixed economy” was first used by rowan williams, the former archbishop of canterbury, to refer to the church of england. during his term as archbishop of wales he used this term in the report “good news in wales”: “we may discern signs of hope. .  .  . these may be found particularly in the development of a mixed economy of church life. . . . there are ways of being church alongside the inherited parochial pattern” (smith et al. 2012, 7). michael moynagh gave the programmatic approach an additional impetus, and his definition is often referred to: “the phrase ‘mixed economy’ . . . refers to fresh expressions and ‘inherited’ churches existing alongside each other, within the same denomination, in relationships of mutual respect and support” (herbst 2018, 24:159). e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 38 mixed economy—the theological and ecclesiological programme according to bishop graham cray, who led the fresh expressions movement from 2008 to 2014, the term economy is not understood as an economic metaphor, but is located in the biblical context. thus economy is linked back to the greek original word οἰκονομία (administration, budget, and plan for salvation; see bauer et al. 1988, 1134–35). reference is made to ephesians 1–3 and god’s plan of salvation in and through christ described therein. cray calls the church, which shares the responsibility for god’s plan of salvation, “god’s household.” in this way the mixed economy is defined as a theological programme that challenges and changes ecclesial self-conception (see müller 2016, 176). the theological leitmotif of the program is, besides the idea of god’s household and plan of salvation, the concept of the trinity. the trinity is used, among other things, as a symbol of “unity in diversity” and thus also for the mixed economy of church. in addition, reference is made to the gospels, acts of the apostles, and ephesians 4. the biblical references show that the principle of “unity in diversity” and thus also the mixed economy are already biblical and that unity cannot be equated with uniformity. while unity appears as a desirable goal leading to consistency in the body of christ, uniformity is seen as narrowing. the fresh expressions of church are attributed with the function of having extended ecclesiology in the sense that church can be diverse, multiform and structurally variable as bishop steven croft points out: fxc helps us to lose our arrogance about “there is only one way of being church.” but we regain a sense of mission, of humility, of being church for others, service. . . . and that is producing a helpful learning and shift back to seeing church in a more diverse and generous way. which i think is very helpful for our overall mission, but it is profoundly an ecclesiological shift that is taking place. (müller 2016, 171–73) sabrina müller—towards the acceptance of diversity 39 it has to be noted that the mixed economy in the church of england is not only and not first of all an organization-logical programmatic approach, but a theological and ecclesiological one, which should then be reflected in the structures. (the deep philosophical and financial commitment to resource church has reshaped this narrative somewhat since “renewal and reform” but further research might be worthwhile. see church of england 2016.) structural dimensions of the mixed economy over the last fifteen years, the mixed economy has become part of the church of england’s implicit ecclesiological self-image: both traditional parochial congregations and fresh expressions of church are to be promoted (cf. croft 2006b, 178). the aim is to create relationships based on partnership and not competition within the church. for this reason, the mixed economy was structurally anchored at the national level of the church of england by a synodical decision. the dioceses are encouraged to implement this equivalent ecclesial partnership. bishop graham cray remarked: what archbishop rowan has called the mixed economy, the positive partnership of an on-going inherited ministry in the parishes and the planting of fxc is the official policy of the church of england as agreed by its synod. so we have the “this is what we do.” yes, we have some people who haven’t quite realised yet, that’s what we do, and yes, we have people who are waiting for those in fxc to come to what they call “real church,” but we have committed ourselves to this, we have approved it through our national synod three times, we’ve had a formal ‹faith and order› report written on it, jointly with the methodists, and the general synod, and the national conference of the methodist church have both unanimously approved it, so it’s our policy. (müller 2016, 176–77) with the mixed economy, ecclesial diversity is to be further promoted and it has been ensured that fresh expressions of church do not form a parallel structure within the church of england, but are e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 40 given a legitimate place in it. (given that just under 15 percent of the churches in the church of england are fresh expressions of church and that these account for 10 percent of the total number of participants, the preemptive synodical decisions on mixed economy were strategically important decisions to avoid divisions and promote a sense of unity. cf. lings 2016, 53ff.) in the structural dimension of a mixed economy church the bishop—whether female or male—plays a key role. an important structural change since mission-shaped church has taken place in the church of england at the national level. it concerns the bishops mission order (bmo). the bishops mission order was approved by the general synod in february 2008 and came into force immediately. the bishops mission order is intended as a flexible tool to support the development of the mixed economy in contexts where broad and well-supported recognition of non-parochial churches is necessary and helpful. the bishops mission order can be issued by the bishop of the diocese and gives an fxc legal, authorized recognition and the status of an anglican church, which in turn means some financial security (see church of england 2019). the bishop is the point or focus of unity under which a mixed economy is realized. a parish can also have a mixed economy within it, but the core is the idea that there should be churches which are not geographically fixed churches working alongside parishes. therefore, in the church of england the diocesan level is decisive for the programme and also the regional deanery areas are of importance. the task and function of the ordained office is also changing. only 54.8 percent of the fresh expressions of church are directed by ordained persons (lings 2016, 62). this means that in a mixed economy a close partnership between pastors and volunteers is necessary and responsibility must be shared. in this situation a real implementation of the priesthood of all believers becomes necessary and the pastors assume a maieutic function in the promotion of the theological productivity of volunteers (see müller 2019, 66–88). sabrina müller—towards the acceptance of diversity 41 liverpool is a successful example of a diocese in which the mixed economy is consistently promoted and lived.2 for many years, the diocese of liverpool has relied on diversity and creativity as part of its identity (see diocese of liverpool n.d.). in liverpool, cooperation between traditional and new forms of church expression is standard, and hence this diversity is also visible in the anglican liverpool cathedral, for example. thus the life of the church in the cathedral is consistently contextual (see liverpool cathedral n.d.). since this basic attitude has long been cultivated in the diocese, 68.2 percent of the churches are local congregations and 31.5 percent are new non-parochial congregations (cf. lings 2016, 53). mixed economy of church—a challenging concept with potential not everywhere is the mixed economy as harmonious as in the diocese of liverpool. statistically it is clear which dioceses promote a mixed economy and thus also non-parochial communities and where this is considered superfluous. in the following statistics, the differences in the implementation of the mixed economy and the promotion of fresh expressions of church are clearly visible (lings 2016, 53ff): 2. the diocese of liverpool works with the idea of the mixed economy but uses for the communication of this the metaphor of the lake and river. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 42 during the last nine years of my research in the church of england on fresh expressions of church and the mixed economy i have been confronted with the struggle for a good and fair mixed economy. th e question of the status of non-parochial congregations and local congregations, the diff erent distribution of fi nancial resources, but also mutual accusations of traditionalism and ignorance of mission and context make the mixed economy a challenging concept. th ere are still dioceses which adopt a critical sabrina müller—towards the acceptance of diversity 43 attitude towards a mixed economy and only grant the status of “church” to the traditional local congregations. fresh expressions of church and its leaders are struggling with recognition, support and finances in these dioceses. the different dioceses show that a mixed economy can be prescribed structurally, but that this does not guarantee successful implementation. a functioning mixed economy depends on people and their beliefs. like many theological and ecclesiological programmes, that of the mixed economy also describes an ideal that can be aspired to, but the basis for a successful implementation is mutual goodwill and a generous and broad understanding of ecclesiology. structurally, there is a need for people who see themselves as a hub and thus take on a mediating position, people who care about very different expressions of church, such as the former archbishop of canterbury rowan williams, the current archbishop of canterbury justin welby, steven croft, bishop of oxford, or paul bayes, bishop of liverpool. reception of the mixed economy in continental europe the programme of the mixed economy quickly spread beyond the church of england and attracted great interest in many denominations and in various countries. in continental europe there are meanwhile different receptions of the mixed economy. the community of protestant churches in europe (cpce), together with some researchers from germany, england, denmark, holland, sweden, switzerland, and norway, has taken up the topic in its plenary assembly 2018. resolution 6 under point 3.2, “social ethics of the 8th assembly 2018,” reads as follows: the assembly welcomes the research groups on “mixed economy” and “church in rural areas” which emerged from the document “ecclesia semper reformanda.” she recommends that these groups be continued and that the council continue to provide material to the groups, e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 44 collect results and send them to the regional groups. (cf. cpce 2018, 7.6) in addition, within the framework of the formulation of objectives 2018–2024, the cpce general assembly pointed out the importance of church renewal processes under objective 2, measure 6: the cpce will recognize new forms of church, such as fresh expressions. through appropriate instruments such as consultations and study processes, it will reflect upon their ecclesiological meaning and ask how they contribute to the renewal of the church. the cpce will seek conversation with these churches, movements, and communities. what was decided by the cpce in 2018 has been prepared by an international research group since 2016. in april 2016, as part of its “reform and renewal” process, the cpce invited various researchers to discuss current ecclesiological challenges in europe. some researchers saw the mixed economy as an ecclesiological concept that could serve the churches in europe and that should be further explored. at this first meeting in frankfurt am main some overlaps could be identified between the programmatic approach of the mixed economy and the cpce reform paper “ecclesia semper reformanda,” which in turn spoke in favour of further deepening the topic. on the one hand, “ecclesia semper reformanda” refers to the necessity of structural diversity and contextuality. secondly, the concluding recommendations state: “it is the fundamental conviction of protestant churches that the gospel does not prescribe the form of the church. the church is continually called to transform herself in response to the gospel” (protestantse kerk 2017). the mixed economy should therefore be examined more closely as a possible practice of “ecclesia semper reformanda” (this latin expression was born in the protestant tradition, it clearly dates from the reformation. in this way we note the lack of a greater sense of the catholic church’s ecclesiology that still courses through the veins of the church of england in continental sabrina müller—towards the acceptance of diversity 45 protestant churches). a further meeting was then organised in durham uk in september 2017, where an extended group of researchers met to discuss the issue. european researchers from different denominations discussed the programme and its practice in various european countries (germany, denmark, england, the netherlands, switzerland) and sent the cpce a final report. the report made clear that the mixed economy is received in the various member churches and is regarded as an important topic for church development. however, the mixed economy is already becoming and must be viewed in its ecclesiastical and cultural horizon. the transfer possibilities must in themselves be contextual and culturally sensitive. an example of this transfer becomes visible when using the terminology for the programme. in the netherlands, for example, the mixed economy is translated with the term pioneering places (protestantse kerk 2017), in germany both mixed economy and regional church development (herbst and pompe 2017) are used as terminology, and in switzerland the programmatic approach is described with the metaphor of ecclesial biodiversity (müller 2015). the example of the adapted names in the different countries alone shows that the reception and practical implications vary. as different as the names for the mixed economy are, as diverse is their history in each country. however, it is clear that the mixed economy is not a concept that can be adopted oneto-one at a structural level. rather, it is exemplarily demonstrated in the different names and approaches that the mixed economy is a term that describes an ecclesial attitude which in turn must be contextually located and adapted. the mixed economy is a helpful frame of thought precisely because it can be thought of contextually and adapted. but at the same time, this framework helps in the search for answers to how to deal with new, contextual forms of expression of church. in the example countries mentioned it is evident that new forms of expression of church are increasing and that the mixed economy is a theoretical framework with which the chance of a peaceful coexistence can be shown. in addition, the mixed economy is increasingly bringing the ecumenical perspective into focus. while at the beginning the programmatic e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 46 approach described above all “unity in diversity” within a single denomination, more recent developments set ecumenical accents. given many experiences in switzerland, germany, great britain, the netherlands, north america, and south africa, the issue of an ecumenical horizon is extremely important and would be worth further research and certainly another article. the topic is increasingly being taken up by universities. this not only in articles and research reports, but also, for example, in a joint seminar on church theory between practical theology in göttingen, greifswald, and zurich. reflection the beginning of the mixed economy as a programmatic approach can already be seen in the work of preul. he sees a characteristic of volkskirche (people’s church) precisely in the fact that it is not necessary for the true unity of the church that everywhere the same human traditions or rites or ceremonies established by human beings are found. this gives room for new experiments and ideas, but also makes it possible to hold on to traditions that have become dear (preul 1997, 191; cf. melanchthon 1530, art. 5). in this sense, mixed-economy thinking is not radically new or different, but for the first time it found a more or less consistent implementation in the church of england. although the situation in the various churches in europe varies (for example, with regard to the financial situation and the relationship between church and state) through historical developments and contextual circumstances, they are all fundamentally challenged by demographic change, religious diversification and pluralisation. this refers to both its institutional form and concrete manifestation of ecclesiastical life and its role as church in society (cf. schlag 2012, 11ff). institutional hierarchies, church ordinances and law or staff employed full-time by the church will no longer be in a position to determine the future shape of the church alone in its present form or function. in order to pursue the vision of a living, plural, sabrina müller—towards the acceptance of diversity 47 and open church, which deals with its tradition in such a way that it at the same time deals courageously and constructively with the challenges of the present (see hauschildt and pohl-patalong 2013, 438), it is obvious that new and complementary forms of church life are necessary. this explains the interest for and the dynamics around the mixed economy, since it makes visible changes in traditional (national) churches in theory and practice (see herbst 2018, 24:158–68). however, it is necessary, both in practical theological research and in church practice, to analyze and interpret changes related to this programmatic approach in detail so that conclusions can be drawn about future church-theoretical processes and the formation of church staff and so that new church initiatives can be promoted. although the implementation of the mixed economy is tantamount to a balancing act, it is a helpful idea with which the prosperity of different ecclesiastical communities can be promoted and people’s church offers and traditional structures are also preserved. with its “one as well as the other principle,” the mixed economy is not a radical concept, but one that seeks to strike a balance between tradition and innovation, between local communities and new ecclesial communities. whether this programme is sufficiently radical to bring about real changes in traditional state and national churches remains to be seen, but it is meant to preserve old things and to create new things. in a church that tries to live the idea of a mixed economy, the question arises where the unitas ecclesiae becomes recognizable. the challenging programming of the mixed economy in particular can provide at least some answers to the question of the una ecclesia. for at both regional and national levels, a mixed economy strengthens the sense of togetherness, since within the framework of a mixed economy local congregations, new ecclesial communities and the various dioceses can no longer see themselves as individual entities. the entire programme aims at network-like cooperation across parochial and diocesan borders. it is precisely here that the una ecclesia becomes apparent, because ecclesiastical e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 48 identity is no longer determined by the place, but by belonging to an ecclesial whole. bibliography avis, paul. 2000. the anglican understanding of the church—an introduction. london: spck. bauer, walter, et al. 1988. wörterbuch zum neuen testament griechischdeutsches wörterbuch zu den schriften des neuen testaments und der frühchristlichen literatur. berlin: de gruyter. booty, john, et al, eds. 1998. the study of anglicanism. 2nd ed. london: spck. butler, perry. 1998. “from the early eighteenth century to the present day.” in the study of anglicanism, edited by john booty et al., 30–51. 2nd ed. london: spck. chapman, mark. 2006. anglicanism. very short introduction. oxford: oxford university press. church of england. 2019. “bishops’ mission orders.” online. https://www. churchofengland.org/more/parish-reorganisation-and-closed-churchbuildings/bishops-mission-orders. ———. 2016. “a vision for renewal and reform.” online. https://www. churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2017-11/gs_2038_-_a_vision_ for_renewal_and_reform.pdf cray, graham, et al. 2004. mission-shaped church: church planting and fresh expressions of church in a changing context. london: church house. croft, steven. 2006a. “conclusion.” in the future of the parish system: shaping the church of england in the twenty-first century, edited by steven croft, 178–82. 2nd ed. london: church house. croft, steven, ed. 2006b. the future of the parish system: shaping the church of england in the twenty-first century. 2nd ed. london: church house. diocese of liverpool. n.d. “diocesan profile.” online. http://www.liverpool. anglican.org/diocesan-profile. community of protestant churches in europe (cpce). 2018. “8. vollversammlung der gemeinschaft evangelischer kirchen in europa (geke) in basel, schweiz, 13–18 september 2018.” online. https://cpceassembly.eu/dokumente. harris, patrick, et al. 1994. breaking new ground: church planting in the church of england: a report commissioned by the house of bishops of the general synod of the church of england. london: church house. hatchett, marion. 1998. “prayer books.” in the study of anglicanism, edited by john booty et al., 131–43. 2nd ed. london: spck. hauschildt, eberhard, and uta pohl-patalong. 2013. kirche. gütersloh: gütersloher verlags-haus. sabrina müller—towards the acceptance of diversity 49 herbst, michael. 2018. aufbruch im umbruch: beiträge zu aktuellen fragen der kirchentheorie. beiträge zu evangelisation und gemeindeentwicklung 24. göttingen: vandenhoeck & ruprecht. herbst, michael, and hans-hermann pompe. 2017. regiolokale kirchenentwicklung: wie gemeinden vom nebeneinander zum miteinander kommen können. dortmund: zmir:klartext. lings, george. 2016. the day of small things: an analysis of fresh expressions of church in twenty-one dioceses of the church of england. sheffield: church army. online. https://www.churcharmy.org/publisher/file. aspx?id=204265. ———. 2012. “a history of fresh expressions and church planting in the church of england.” in church growth in britain: 1980 to the present, edited by david goodhew, 161–78. farnham: ashgate. liverpool cathedral. n.d. “worship here.” online. http://www. liverpoolcathedral.org.uk/home/worship-here.aspx. melanchthon, philip. 1530. “das augsburger bekenntnis.” online. https:// www.velkd.de/theologie/augsburger-bekenntnis.php. moynagh, michael. 2012. church for every context: an introduction to theology and practice. london: scm. müller, sabrina. 2016. fresh expressions of church—beobachtungen und interpretationen einer neuen kirchlichen bewegung. zürich: theologischer verlag. ———. 2019. gelebte theologie—impulse für eine pastoraltheologie des empowerments. theologische studien. zürich: theologischer verlag. ———. 2015. “mixed economy of church: chancen und risiken kirchlicher biodiversität.” in volkskirche und kirchenvolk: ein zwischenhalt, edited by matthias krieg and claudia kohli reichenbach, 99–107. zürich: theologischer verlag. preul, reiner. 1997. kirchentheorie. berlin: de gruyter. protestantse kerk. 2017. fingers crossed: developments, lessons learnt, and challenges after eight years of pioneering. utrecht: dienstencentrum protestantse kerk. online. https://www.lerenpionieren.nl/wp-content/ uploads/2017/01/fingers-crossed-fresh-expressions-in-the-netherlands. pdf. schlag, thomas. 2012. öffentliche kirche: grunddimensionen einer praktischtheologischen kirchentheorie. zürich: theologischer verlag. smith, alan, et al. 2012. fresh expressions in the mission of the church: report of an anglican-methodist working party. london: church house. toney, peter. 2004. a measure for measures: in mission and ministry: report of the review of the dioceses, pastoral, and related measures. london: church house. rooms.indb 50 stories that shape an understanding of god’s mission in the world: visionary leadership in the elca kristine stache interim president and associate professor of missional leadership at wartburg theological seminary, dubuque, ia kstache@wartburgseminary.edu abstract stories collected through interviews with thirty visionary leaders in the elca give us a glimpse at how leaders understand god at work in the communities they serve and the way they lead. through these stories, a theological claim is heard loud and clear: god is up to something in the world and we are called to participate in god’s mission in some form as faithful, hopeful ministry leaders. these sacred stories, filled with faith and doubt, hope and fear, courage and vulnerability push and pull the leaders interviewed into a life with christ to be a transformative presence to and with others. these voices describe a different picture of church than much of the current data showing a decline in denominational adherence. findings from two of the themes explored in this project will be share in this article: community and leadership. kristine stache—stories that shape an understanding 51 introduction over the last several decades, data measuring denominational adherence and attendance has shown a consistent and rapid decline. trends toward no religious affiliation, a declining commitment to church membership, generational differences, and denominational preferences are all contributing factors (see jones 2019). these trends are even more sobering in my own denomination, the evangelical lutheran church of america (elca). the elca formed in 1988 through a merger between the american lutheran church, the association of evangelical lutheran churches, and the lutheran church in america. with 5,251,534 baptized members at the time of the merger, elca numbers dropped to 3,668,034 by 2015 (research and evaluation 2017). if the current rate of decline stays constant, the elca will be obsolete in thirty-five years. when looking at the same trends around church attendance, the statistics are even more sobering. at the current rate of decline the number of those attending worship services in the elca will cross the zero marker in twentythree years (research and evaluation 2017). our capacity to produce leaders is not promising either. a few years ago, a report predicted that by 2019, the elca would have just over 9,000 congregations, 6,800 of which could afford a full-time pastor. with only 5,800 pastors to fill those pulpits, over 1,000 pulpits with the capability to pay a full-time salary would be left open. that figure does not include open pulpits needing part-time or shared calls, which would add another 2,000 pulpits (dehoek and inskeep, 2016). is the church dying? this data would leave us to believe it is. however maybe it isn’t the church that is dying, but the structures and forms that we measure are dying. perhaps a more accurate claim is that the church is changing, and god is up to something new. statistics such as these need to be put in conversation with other stories to more fully understand what god is up to in and through these ever-changing communities we call congregations. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 52 the project in early 2018, villanova university’s center for church management granted this researcher a fellowship to explore the stories, metaphors, and texts that shape a ministry leader’s understanding and practice of visionary leadership in the elca. the intent of this project was to use storytelling to get to the heart of how these leaders understand their call, their leadership, and the communities they lead. and, more specifically, how they talked and reflected on the presence and activity of god in and through these stories. key leaders in the elca were contacted later that fall, including bishops, faculty and leaders of seminaries, synods, and churchwide officials. each key leader was invited to nominate one or more rostered1 leader in the elca that they would categorize as a visionary leader. the invitation intentionally did not define what a visionary looked or acted like. instead, nominators were asked to articulate in a few sentences the rationale behind their nomination. nearly fifty nominations were received. thirty leaders were interviewed. interviewees were contacted and invited to participate in a ninety-minute interview. in addition to the interview, each participant was asked to complete a ten-question online survey to gather demographic data. interviewees represent a variety of backgrounds, including but not limited to years in ministry,2 geographical locations of organizations currently serving,3 and types of communities served.4 1. the elca currently maintains two official rosters: pastors, set apart through ordination for public ministry of word and sacrament, and deacons, set apart through ordination for public ministry of word and service. 2. approximately 14 percent of those interviewed have been in ministry less than five years, 14 percent five to ten years, 38 percent eleven to twenty years, and 34 percent more than twenty years. 3. interviewees represent eleven different us states from four regions: east coast, west coast, the gulf, and the midwest. 4. approximately 14 percent of those interviewed described the context of their organization as rural, 35 percent as urban, 31 percent as suburban, and 20 percent as other. kristine stache—stories that shape an understanding 53 this project and its methodology serve as an experiment in practical theology, starting in “human experience and its desire to reflect theologically on such experience,” with the ultimate goal “to increase our knowledge of god and to enable us to live more loving and faith-filled lives” (swinton and mowat 2016, xi–xiii), in particular faith-filled lives as visionary ministry leaders for the sake of the world. the role of this researcher is more than to serve as a collector and curator of stories. through these stories and reflections, this researcher hoped to discover new ways of understanding and interpreting the missio dei, and even perhaps affirm long held instincts about a disconnect felt far too often between those who believe god is present and acting in the world, and those that lead in a way that shows they believe god is active and present in the world: “what people say, what people do, and what people say about what they do are entirely different things” (swinton and mowat 2016, 5). interviews were convened through a mix of face-to-face meetings and zoom live conferencing. a set series of questions were asked of each interviewee, inviting them to draw on personal experience, sacred texts, images, and metaphors. the practice of inviting them to reflect through stories “itself enacts and names theology” (campbell-reed and scharen 2013, 241). of the thirty people interviewed, sixteen identified as female, fourteen as male. over a quarter of those interviewed self-identified as a person of color, a percentage higher than that of the elca (bullock and peru, 2018). twenty-nine of the participants are rostered. seven of the thirty provide leadership in a noncongregational, but elca related settings (i.e., synods academic, or nonprofit organizations). of those in congregational settings, some are part of a multi-staff congregations, some lead multi-point parishes, and others lead mission development or other ministries uniquely designated by elca nomenclature.5 all leaders inter5. the church vitality unit of the elca has established vocabulary to describe non-traditional ministry settings, terms which were used by leaders interviewed in the project to describe the structure of their worshipping communities. communities were labeled as mission development (new church communities), redevelopment (a church that is in an intentional ministry to e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 54 viewed have at a minimum an mdiv or other related theological graduate degree. the data gathered through these interviews are holy stories. participants shared moments of loss and hope, success and failure, uncertainty and clarity. in their vulnerability they showed enthusiasm and an openness to share their thoughts, along with an eagerness to learn from others in the study. in fact, this researcher was surprised by the overwhelming positive response to invitations to be interviewed and their generosity in opening up. each interview was recorded, transcribed, and manually coded looking for themes in three areas. the interview question protocols were created and organized around those three areas: call, community, and leadership. findings from community and leadership are shared in this article. community the word community is ambiguous and keeping its use undefined in this project was intentional. with each interview, participants were invited to define community in the way it is understood with regards to their current leadership role. each leader talked about community from the vantage point of one’s own position and responsibilities. leaders used the word community to describe things like congregations, synods, or ministry organizations. in addition, they also spoke of the communities they serve as broader than the organization paying their salary. for these leaders, community didn’t stop at the walls of the office or worship space, it included neighborhoods near and far. membership language was rarely used to describe the people they lead, neither were categories such as baptized members or worship attendance. participants was a more commonly used word, but even then, it was more often used to distinguish a person’s particular commitment to ministry reimage their identity in a particular context), a restart (a second go around of a mission development site), and a new wine ministry (a new worshipping community that was formed by a group breaking away from another elca church). kristine stache—stories that shape an understanding 55 related to the church or organization. people were more often identified through touch points and relationships. visionary leaders in this study consistently articulated the belief that god is active and present in the communities and neighborhoods they lead. one synodical leader put it this way, “god is at work daily . . . changing lives . . . extending life, healing, restoring, so i see the community as vibrant. god is opening us up to new possibilities.” there is a pervasive expectation that god will not only show up, but god was there ahead of them all along. one participant, our only non-rostered leader in the study, has spent extensive time interviewing people in the community she was asked to serve. she explains that experience this way: so, it wasn’t even until like in the third year that i began to see what was really happening in the patterns. the listening takes depth and time and repetition before the themes emerge. you begin to have an understanding of where god is in the midst of something.  .  . i’ve prayed about that. i wrestled with that a lot. i feel like it is primarily about leaning into god, leaning into the spirit noticing where the spirit is. because when we’re in a confidence space we don’t have that need. but when we’re not sure where we are, we’re on our knees. one mission developer, after serving the community for more than ten years, exemplified the passion that many of the leaders showed when talking about god’s mission in the world: and i get that not everybody is called into full-time ministry, but i think all of us are called into living as followers of jesus. let’s believe that god is a living god. let’s believe that the kingdom is here now and not yet. and let’s believe that god’s at work in this and god is crazy. god [will] work through us to accomplish what god wants to accomplish. i think we just don’t lift that up enough, that we have a role in what god is doing and that gives us purpose. god breaks down silos separating church from its neighborhood and calls all people together into a ministry of mutual relationships. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 56 leaders interviewed in this study do not distinguish between their work in the church and their work in the community. community leadership is ministry leadership. a second career mission developer shared a story of how he found himself serving on a community council even though he was a pastor of a currently forming local christian community-all other council members were business leaders in the community. his new role on the council helped focus the priorities of the ministries he leads in a way that better serves the immediate needs of the local neighborhood. another leader just starting a new call talks about her role in facilitating mutual relationships this way, “i think my job is to get out the way. it’s to make it available and then to help people connect the dots as to why this matters in their lives. and to [help them] find their story mixed with god’s story.” there is a distinction made in the stories of these leaders between doing things for a community and doing things with a community. leadership then is about inviting, encouraging and supporting those who do identify as part of the regular worshipping community to connect and engage with people in the community, through both intentional touch points and in their day to day lives. participating in what god is already doing is about connecting the church to and within the community for the sake of the community. these visionary leaders didn’t separate this from being a pastor or synod leader or diaconal minister. one seasoned pastor with nearly twenty years leading a congregation in an urban context explains it this way: all of the world is god’s beloved community, but the whole world doesn’t get treated that way. and so the work of the church, my work, is to proclaim the kingdom of godthat’s god’s beloved community-especially to those who have not received that message so that they might experience god’s beloved community. there are those who are called to be the proclaimers of that message. and so when you talk about the community i serve, [sometimes] they’re suburban partner congregations, what we do helps to liberate them to see the kingdom of kristine stache—stories that shape an understanding 57 god . . . in those places that they see on the news as . . . of no value, of fear, and all those things. hospitality is the primary focus for a new wine start worshipping community in rural midwest to engage with its small town. “our core value here is radical hospitality. . . . our official slogan is being great neighbors in [town name] . . . some of our best ministry is with our neighbors across our fence.” neighbor for them is an operating metaphor that shapes how they prioritize ministry and resources. “we just want to love people,” he claims. another leader talks about that same kind of expectation this way, “and once you’ve come to faith and you’re living in that faith it’s not about you it’s about the next person.” one new young leader, serving a rural multi-point parish in a diverse rural area uses this kind of language to describe the relationship between her congregations and the community, “i feel like it’s a mission field god is calling us in, to surround ourselves with people who think differently and try and learn and grow from that and find ways forward. and so i feel really passionate about doing ministry in that way.” the third theme in the area of community is god is at work in and through communities changing lives. ministry leadership was ultimately about making a difference in the everyday lives of the people these leaders encounter. it wasn’t measured through programs or church attendance. changed lives don’t show up in parish reporting structures. it is ultimately about the transformation of individuals and communities, which includes all lives. it begins at a very basic level, conversation. one leader with more than two decades of ministry experience serving as the senior pastor of a large historic church in the midwest shares this story to illustrate the importance of starting with conversation. “you know just going beneath the surface in that conversation is where god happens and it’s usually in sharing our foibles or what we would consider weaknesses that we opened the door for someone to share their weakness and in that god meets us. i try to help people do that in lots of different ways. we try to do that as a congregation.” e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 58 living and leading in a way that shows you believe that the grace and mercy that christ offers is available for all directs many of the choices these leaders and their communities make. one leader, during the first year of her current call, had a tragic murder take place in her congregation’s neighborhood that made the national news. a couple of friends of the victim who were part of her congregation asked her to step in and help the family with the victim’s three young children. together with the congregation, they led a vigil in the neighborhood walking the block, reclaiming the home where the woman had been murdered. “we kind of reclaimed this as a place of love and safety for these families and these kids because they all went to school together.” her church literally showed up. over three hundred attended the vigil. they raised over $40,000 for the family and in response to an invitation from the victim’s family, this leader took point in leading a celebration of the victim’s life. through this experience, her congregation helped her realize that she was called to the neighborhood. “i didn’t realize my pastoring was much more than just a small little church. .  .  . when did i see you hungry, when did i see you thirsty.” matthew 25:17 informs the identity of this church within their neighborhood. “that’s been a beautiful shift to move toward mutuality and accompaniment.” one leader, who had recently ended her time leading a ministry for individuals transitioning from incarceration to a new life outside of prison spoke to this idea of changed lives using these words, “we really help people to see their potential and that we help them to understand that they are loved and they have worth and that there’s nothing that they have done or will ever do that will take the love of god away from them.” she goes on to tell this story of one particular individual that illustrates this commitment: “so to see him come from not being able to look you in the eye just to answer the simplest of questions to being able to stand up and be on camera and talk about his experience coming out of prison and the support that he received from the ministry was just wonderful.” kristine stache—stories that shape an understanding 59 ultimately, changed lives is about mutual relationships. one second career leader with previous experience as a teacher operates out of the philosophy that we are called to make a friend before we make a convert. “it is easier to quit on a denomination than it is to quit on a friend.” the emmaus story was a common text that shaped many of these leaders’ imaginations around the kinds of relationships taking place in and through their communities. one leader tells it as the story of two friends beaten down and broken. and jesus was there. the world had changed as they knew it. and jesus was there. they couldn’t recognize him. but jesus was there. the importance of this text shaping her community’s understanding of discipleship is shared here: the whole seven miles jesus is walking with them. they’ve just experienced the heartache of watching their savior be tortured to death on a cross and they’re so overwhelmed with what they’ve seen with their eyes that now they’ve been blinded to the resurrection walking with them which is an event, right. i think about that text and that sometimes even speaking to the rationale won’t open your eyes to who god is, sometimes you need to experience god as an event, a jesus event to be inspired and motivated to run back and tell everyone he’s alive because that’s what they do; they recognize their eyes are open to the event of the risen christ and they run back to tell everyone-the women were right! another leader, when describing the suburban community he has been serving for nearly three years as faithful, audacious, and courageous, claimed the emmaus story as the community’s primary and guiding biblical story. through this story, “they really believe in walking the road of faith and discovering christ in the stranger and in the breaking of the bread and that is primary.” one interviewee, a self-identified restart pastor in an urban context is drawn to acts 2, where they were “breaking bread together and praying together and gathering in each other’s homes and just sharing their lives together.” this breaking of the bread e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 60 theme so shapes their identity as a community that they gather as a dinner church. the eating and fellowship that occurs over the table creates a shared identity centered in christ. it should be no surprise that this same leader was drawn to story of the last supper in the gospels: jesus in that final dinner with his friends and followers said as often as often as you drink of this cup and eat this bread is anytime you’re sharing food together. you know i’m there, remember me, remember what it is that this is all about that is made full in your sharing and being together for me. it’s all connected to that sense of god being in and among and active. . . . this is a central piece to who we are, right? that we gather around a meal . . . that meal reflects who are. one synodical leader, who describes his community as multigeographic, sums up what god is up to in and through these relationships of mutuality, being in community and changed through community with these words: i’m in love with what god is doing here. the ability to see communities change and transform and be a part of that including building redevelopment and seeing people read what the gospel is in those communities and change like that just excites me so i exhaust myself by going to meetings and engaging community leaders and engaging our mission developers who i’m encouraging and coaching to do the same and to grow these faith communities. i’m seeing the gospel of jesus christ reach areas and places that it never would. and i believe that we as lutherans have the best theology in the world. it’s affirming. it’s loving. it’s caring, and it breaks down. it’s almost like our theology is a medicine that can help the church to reshape itself to what i consider being what the gospel of jesus was intended for us to be. these three themes, god is active and present in the communities and neighborhoods they lead; god breaks down silos separating church from its neighborhood and call all people together into a ministry of mutual relationships; and god is at work in and through kristine stache—stories that shape an understanding 61 communities changing lives, give purpose and direction to the ministries these leaders are called to, in and with the communities they find themselves. insight into how they lead in that way can be found in our next area. leadership the titles and roles of each of these participants vary as much as the communities they serve. some are solo pastors of multi-point parishes, some are executive pastors of multi-staff churches. some are leading newer worshipping communities in store fronts, art galleries, or elementary schools, while others gather in 150-yearold historic churches. this diversity of roles also includes leaders of synods, non-profits, and even a few leaders in transition between roles.6 how do they, their varied roles with their varied responsibilities understand themselves as a visionary leader? and, more importantly, how do they articulate what god is up to in and through their leadership? three prominent themes emerged in the stories around this area of leadership. first of all, none of these leaders see themselves as long rangers. god is at work in and through these leaders, their co-leaders, and the raising up of new leaders. while visionary leaders take their authority and responsibilities seriously, they lead in, and on behalf of, community. mentors, mentoring, partnerships, identifying and raising leaders drive much of the time and intention of these leaders. one midwest mission developer employs coaching as a metaphor for the way he leads ministry with others: there’s also a willingness to let the coach shape the program. and i think there’s a lot of good in that idea 6. among the thirty interviewees, there were thirteen different job titles listed in the survey data. seven of the titles contained the word pastor, which represented twenty-three of the interviewees. twenty-nine of those interviewed are rostered leaders in the elca, in “word and sacrament” or “word and service” ministry. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 62 especially as we talk about decentralized leadership or you know permission giving leadership. the other image i’ve got isn’t an image or a metaphor exactly but it’s a framework, it’s the idea that lay ministry really is ministry. . . . we don’t try to put people in leadership positions on the basis of what the church needs, we try to do it on the basis of the gifts that god has sent to us. so, you know a phrase i learned from my coach was one person, one passion, one position. not only does this leader implement strategies for identifying leaders and coaching them, he is also being coached in the process. this idea of the leader being coached, or mentored, isn’t unique to him. one pastor of a congregation in a small town shared how pivotal it was when she experienced seeing a woman leading a church for the first time. “i really think the holy spirit was putting the right people in my path along the way to just say yes, see this is here, or hey-look here’s just a little piece of hope.” another leader of an historic church on the verge of living into a new identity was not only coached by others but considers it a part of her call to raise up and coach other leaders for ministry: i’ve been really sitting with the story of pentecost in acts. the church is getting its start and the people are giving up all they had to those in need. i think as a leader right now i’m really leaning into that, not just like physically of what i have, but of what i have in the way of my gifts and what god’s entrusted to me and how i am being invited to share those. but then more than that, how i am calling up others to do the same? like when i think about my passions in ministry, one of my big ones is raising up leaders. it took me a just a month here and i can already say i think that person could be a pastor. guided by luke 10:1–12, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few, another leader, who started worshipping with a congregation because of a passion for mentoring young men, explains the distinctiveness of his pastoral leadership of the same congregation through the apprenticeship model. “duplication of leadership is our dna”: kristine stache—stories that shape an understanding 63 once we establish a ministry, once we are clear that there’s a need, before we are able to go on to other places, we have to publicly identify an apprentice. typically, we lead in two-year intervals, though you can repeat. but i think what people talk about is the apprentice model that there are no questions in ministry about who’s leading and who’s next. . . . so just so you know we have one year of class time, two hours a month. we meet with a cohort of people discerning a leadership role. typically, those cohorts are anywhere from three to six people. secondly, visionary leaders see leadership as a process of discernment, communal and individual. god speaks to god’s people and guides them in their ministry. discernment here is more about listening for god’s voice than it is decision-making. communal discernment looks different for each community. for some it focuses on regular practices like prayer and lectio divina. others take more structured approaches. discernment within one mission developer’s non-traditional community happens in what they call clarity circles. four to five leaders of this community gather weekly to “huddle” and listen for god’s voice. through this process they were able to discern that they were not being called primarily to the place they had started. as a result, they started exploring alternative forms of sustainability that would foster christian community at the same time .  .  . “we are very careful” this leader explained, “to bring everything we do into conversation with scripture and with our lutheran understanding of how god works in the world.” another of the interviewees, the lead pastor of a large suburban congregation talked about the necessity of communal discernment with her staff: i think that a person can do crazy things if they think god is speaking directly only to them. but it’s the community of faithful people who walk with you that you have the ability to test ideas and wonderment with. while i carry a title there is no question that the work that we do is a “we.” it’s this entire staff that works together. on the crappy days the buck stops at my office. but what i’ve e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 64 always sensed ministry as a group of people together trying to figure out where god is calling us. part of communal discernment is creating an expectation with additional ministry leaders that god will show up. one of the participants asks the same two questions whenever meeting in small groups, “what did you find interesting in scripture this week?” and “what have you heard from god in your listening prayer?” these questions have helped shape an expectation that god actually speaks to us in prayer and has contributed to their ongoing practice of listening for god’s voice. leaders also stress the importance of time in silence, whether in prayer or retreat, to listen to god speak. visionary leaders in this study are intentional about setting aside time in solitude. where and for how long varied across the interviewees. one participant shared an experience of spending time “doing the hermitage”: you’re in a little teeny cabin all by yourself . . . and you don’t see anyone at all. you don’t have any common meal. you are just away with god. they had a beautiful window in a teeny little room . . . very primitive but comfortable. you’re instructed to take your watch off and to sleep when you need sleep wake up when you need to wake up and at the beginning of your time to just write a letter to god and kind of pour out everything that you are in need of, your angst or whatever, and then to just rest with god. i found myself. i was never bored. i was never lonely. i felt full. i ended up reading just one book, but i would just sit and stare out the window for like an hour or two and it was phenomenal. i felt i would sing songs to god. it was sacred and intimate. i didn’t realize that one of the spiritual disciplines i need is solitude until that time. another leader describes this time in her life as a pilgrimage. her first pilgrimage was right before entering her call as a restart pastor. “because i knew first call was gonna be crazy . . . so i wanted to know that i could still hear god’s voice, that i was ready to hear god’s voice.” this practice of pilgrimage continues for this leader, kristine stache—stories that shape an understanding 65 but never to the same place. “i haven’t ever been to the same one twice because i think there’s also something about the newness and freshness of an experience. i think if i went to the same place twice, i would have at least unconscious expectations to experience god as i had before in that place or in that journey. and it has been my experience that that is not how god and i work.” one seasoned synodical leader goes on a pilgrimage to the same place each year, to the garden of gethsemane in the holy land: i’m there once a year doing some things with groups there. the garden of gethsemane overlooks the city and that to me is like jesus is for real. not just that jesus is something spiritual and mental for me, but jesus is a physical presence for me when i’m there because it’s almost like i’m standing with him in the garden . . . literally the same trees that were there when he was alive, they’re like they’re trees that are over two thousand years old, or you know are seedlings of them . . . it’s almost like i have to go there to be recharged or re-engaged in my mission for the next year. another visionary leader in this study sets aside an entire month each year to spend in discernment and listen deeply for direction as to how god is calling the community he leads to move in the upcoming year. just prior to leaving for the month, he spends time with the leadership looking at plans for the upcoming year. when he returns at the end of the month, he is ready to engage them in the upcoming year’s theme and priorities: meditation and prayer and connecting and hearing from god and learning god’s voice and learning the way that i see god and experience god is very key and important to me. so that has been a consistent factor in helping me to make decisions, helping me to see and speak life into other people and helping people to kind of manage their own lives. it is having a strong connection to what the spirit is saying, and it’s always confirmed. god never speaks in isolation. god’s word for me has always been e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 66 kind of consistently confirmed over and over again. so that’s how i know it’s god. these experiences are but a few examples of spiritual practices that are a part of the rhythm of the way these leaders lead and of their lives-time set aside for the sole purpose of listening for god’s voice. these times of reconnecting with god are crucial for their own sustainability as leader, but more importantly it centers them in god’s work in the world and how they are called to lead in their respective places and times. the final theme in this area on leadership focuses on planning, vision casting, and effectiveness. god creates a vision for god’s people. creating any vision for our leaders is deeply dependent on the ongoing practice of listening for god’s voice. stressing the necessity of the communal nature of this work, a bishop in the study articulates it in this way. “i think in some ways i would say i am more of a vision caster. i know that i don’t do this work alone and that if we’re going to have impact, we need to have the involvement of a whole lot of folks. that’s helping people see a larger picture and helping them begin to wonder and pray how they might be involved in it.” the sower of the seeds parable from the gospel of mark provides a great image to understand how he frames visioning. “a sower went out to sow. our call is to be continually planting seeds and god’s going do what god’s going to do with them. . . . people’s ability to always recognize that or to see the incredible possibilities that god is laying in front of them sometimes is really difficult to see.” “so for me,” shares another synodical leader, “it’s a team effort and it’s a communal task to cast vision and then once i have all that information, my expectation and goal, and the method i’m trying to lay out, i’m going to glean from the people that i trust and respect the most. . . . it’s a communal task.” when asked how she casts a vision, a senior pastor of a large suburban congregation shares, “as vulnerable as this seems for me, i don’t have it figured out. the vision is god’s vision that comes specifically. i know my gifts are called to cast that vision and give kristine stache—stories that shape an understanding 67 theological framework to it and proclaim and extend grace, but i am just part of a bigger sense of what this is. i think people trust me because i think my presence is authentic. and i show up.” this leader is also fond of the sower and the seed parable, likening her role as vision caster to that of a gardener, always tilling and planting, but ultimately is it god that grows the garden. another leader talks of visioning this way, “anybody can have a dream but to quantify that vision it has to be rooted in scripture and prayer. and i think that’s one thing i would say. vision rooted in scripture and prayer is a vision, other than becoming just a dream or a nightmare.” these three themes, god is at work in and through these leaders, their co-leaders, and the raising up of new leaders; god speaks to god’s people and guides them in their ministry; and god creates a vision for god’s people, speak to the primacy of the presence and activity of god in how these leaders lead. they give us a glimpse into transparent and prophetic approach to leadership while showing the dependence they have on god’s leading the way in in their ministry. conclusion and next steps the stories shared through this study do not provide answers to a problem of declining church. instead they help us reframe how we think about church and how we understand how god might be restoring and healing the world through the church and through changing lives. churches have a future, despite the data presented at the onset of this paper, because this is christ’s church. our call is to listen closely to this movement of the spirit, as these leaders do, to discern communally how god is calling us into god’s future in new ways. this is the beauty of stories. they provide layers upon layers of meaning, metaphors, and theology-both explicit and implicit-as a way to enter into god’s unfolding story for the world. the beauty and distinctiveness of learnings thus far speak to the inability of any of these leaders to separate their understanding of leadership e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 68 and the communities they lead from how they understand and seek to further discover god’s work in changing the lives of all people in and through the ministries they lead. this article serves not as a conclusion and summary of findings, but an invitation for further exploration into how these themes, and others themes shape our understanding of how god works in the world and how god’s work in the world shapes our varied calls to lead communities and walk with one. our task as leaders, is to listen deeply to ways it is changing in our own communities. our work together has just begun. bibliography bullock, m. wyvetta, and cheryl stewart peru. 2018. “called and chosen.” living lutheran, march 9, 2018. online. https://www.livinglutheran. org/2018/03/called-and-chosen. campbell-reed, eileen r., and christian batalden scharen. 2013. “ethnography on holy ground: how qualitative interviewing is practical theological work.” international journal of practical theology 17(2): 232–59.  dehoek, adam, and kenneth inskeep. 2016. the supply of and demand for clergy in the elca. chicago: evangelical lutheran church in america (elca). jones, jeffrey m. 2019. “us church membership down sharply in past two decades.” gallup, april 28, 2019. online. https://news.gallup.com/ poll/248837/church-membership-down-sharply-past-two-decades. aspx?version=print. research and evaluation, elca office of the presiding bishop. 2017. “summary of congregational statistics, 1988–2015.” elca, february 28, 2017. online. http://download.elca.org/elca%20resource%20repository/ elca_membership_1988_2010.pdf. swinton, john, and harriet mowat. 2016. practical theology and qualitative research. second. london: scm. ef2-2.indb 11 missional hospitality towards healing a narrative approach in missiology1 bokyoung park bokyoung park has been teaching missiology at presbyterian university and theological seminary since 2002. she currently serves as the vice-president of iams (international association of mission studies) and an active member of amri (alliance of mission researchers and institutions). she founded korea iams fellowship to mentor korean young scholars to enhance their international scholarly activities. contact: parkbokyoung718@gmail.com abstract the entire world is suffering through the covid-19 pandemic. in this age of anguish, churches must work on the ministry of 1. this article was originally published in korean as “ch’iyurŭl chihyanghanŭn hwandaeŭi sŏn’gyohakŭl wihan shironr iyagishing chŏpkŭnŭl chungshimŭro. 치유를 지향하는 환대’의 선교학을 위한 시론: 이야기식 접 근을 중심으로 [essay on the missiology of ‘hospitality towards healing’: focusing on narrative approach]” sŏn’gyoshinhak [mission theology] 61 (2021) 114–43. the author wants to recognize special gratitude to dr. rebekah lee, who translated this article. following translation, it was revised and peer reviewed for publication in ecclesial futures. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 12 hospitality that leads to healing as part of god’s mission. this article employs a narrative approach in articulating a missional hospitality. it draws on two stories of the writer’s personal experience to describe how pain was healed through an experience of hospitality. the sharing of personal stories demonstrates how experiences of hospitality can be converted into missional practice for others which becomes a locus of healing. as the conclusion, the study provides three implications. first, churches need to provide the space of hospitality for others experiencing pain and grief. second, theology plays a role in providing a community-based collective interpretation of the pain. third, the role of mission is to replicate the missional dimension of healing hospitality to the wounded. introduction the covid-19 pandemic is afflicting countless people over the world. as social distancing continued for months on end in south korea, a “pandemic fatigue” settled among the general public (badre, 2021). there were no safe havens, and face-to-face meetings with friends and family were to be avoided if at all possible. while korea has conducted efficient testing, tracing, and treatment regimens and consistent information was provided to the public, the experience resulted in targeted blame toward certain individuals and groups. there is a persistent fear that anyone may unwittingly brush by an asymptomatic patient and become targeted for ostracization from our communities and workplaces. those identified as positive cases tend to feel both guilt and resentment toward those who avoid them over something that was beyond their control. beneath the daily reporting of the number of dead by the pandemic are stories of our neighbors who have had to accept sudden and heart-wrenching loss. for some this loss manifests in grief over losing a loved one, and for others despair over financial ruin. others have been stigmatized as super-spreaders in contagion clusters and suffered irrevocable communal ostracization. many continue to suffer from exhaustion and depression resulting from the prolonged strict social distancing regime (s. y. bokyoung park—missional hospitality towards healing 13 yun 2020). indeed, the entire world is suffering through the covid-19 pandemic. in these circumstances of suffering, the church has the responsibility to practice the missional hospitality that leads to healing. the world is in need of the people of god to participate in such a mission today. this ministry must be taken up by the entire faith community, and at the same time must be manifest in individual christians as they encounter other broken individuals in daily life. such is the mission of the church for today’s broken world. missional hospitality in a wounded world: personal stories the following stories are personal stories of my own. they show how i became the wounded one, then grew to accept woundedness as an existential experience of death and resurrection in christ. with this experience of acceptance and healing, i was then able to extend missional hospitality that facilitated healing for others. first story november 25, 2016, is the day i want to erase from memory. that was the day my husband was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer. at age fifty-three my husband became terminally ill. my personal spirituality and ministry entered an entirely new stage from that point on. for three months, until the day of my husband’s death on february 12, 2017, my family despaired together, wept together, raged together, and pleaded with god together. as the moment of encounter with death approached, its shadow completely engulfed our entire family. my husband was facing the end of his life, something unimaginably fearsome and threatening. our children and i trembled at the fearful prospect of being left alone with our grief and our task of accepting this sudden parting. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 14 death shattered our existence to pieces. devasted, we had no choice but to wait for christ’s healing and restoration. after my husband’s death, i could not wade out of deep despair. i was racked with guilt. i was angry and bitter against god, asking if this was the paltry reward i got for following my calling. how could god let this happen? but precisely in that darkest moment, the seed of healing, restoration, and hope blossomed. i learned that as finite humans i cannot hold back death, the most painful reality. slowly i started on the journey of discovering the true meaning of death and what it means for us as christians to encounter death. healing and restoration started in an unexpected place. our family was attending a small, ten-member church of korean immigrants which my husband was pastoring in the united states. many of them had been rejected by their family and community and were physically or emotionally unwell. this community was wrestling with the shock and grief of losing their pastor, but they also embraced our family into their space of hospitality. this small community of ten, marginalized and ignored by the society, brought our family into its fold and we were able to start on the path of healing. the hospitality was mutual. the church members were living through their dismal reality of having depended on their pastor as their rock. his death was a traumatic loss. so our family also extended hospitality by providing meals after services each sunday. this mutual hospitality led to mutual healing. death made us all despair yet healing slowly progressed. on the first easter sunday after the death of my husband, i shared a message at this church. it was the first time i had stood behind the pulpit since his death. as one still in the process of passing through the tunnel of mourning, i proclaimed christ’s death and resurrection, and now our own experience of death and the hope of resurrection. as i preached with trembling voice, the congregation wept. after the sermon, an elderly woman leader of the church personally approached me and gave me words of divine encouragement. these comforted me on an entirely new and mystical level. this was for me the clearest experience of healing in the bokyoung park—missional hospitality towards healing 15 midst of deepest grief which occurred within this hospitable faith community. thanks to this experience i rediscovered the truth that the essence of christian faith is to give an answer to the existential question of death. the experience allowed me to see how christian healing and restoration are possible even in the depths of brokenness and despair as one is embraced by a hospitable community. second story exactly three years passed from the first story until the time when a new strand of covid-19 hit daegu, a city in south korea. in february 2020, i was present, concerned about the health of my elderly mother in her nineties. a day after i arrived in my hometown of daegu, massive transmission clusters were identified. each day we were flooded with news of positive cases and building closures. i saw the city shutting down before my eyes. it was so sudden that the medical system was in ruins. countless patients had to wait in their homes and were admitted to the hospital only when their symptoms got worse. then i heard that my older sister, who had been suffering from the flu for a few days, was feeling worse. she took the covid-19 test just to be sure, and the result came back positive. because hospitals were overwhelmed by the sudden outbreak, she had to wait at home until a space was available. we called the pandemic response authorities countless times each day to check if there was a bed, but they could only tell us to wait. the symptoms of pneumonia grew worse. she was unable to consume a meal for a week as she wavered in and out of consciousness. we called an ambulance, but they had to return my sister back home because the hospital had no space. after calling several more times an ambulance came again, and they decided to try and look for any available space. the emergency workers connected my sister to the respirator in the ambulance and waited in front of a hospital until a bed was ready. a bed finally did open up and she was admitted. but the hospital called not long after. the doctor told us that the illness e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 16 was too advanced. there was nothing they could do and the family needed to decide on end-of-life care. my family was devastated. less than a week after hearing that our sister was sick with the flu we were hit with this shocking news. my older sister’s family had no idea what to do at such a sudden turn of events. my brotherin-law in his eighties was in a state of shock. as the moment of death approached, i had to help my family face death. we bought a phone for a nurse to take into the isolation room and hold up to my sister, whose consciousness was slipping, and we said our goodbyes. my sister’s surviving family had to face shock and grief at such an absurd end. for my brother-in-law, who lost his lifelong partner, this was shock he could not easily process. the suddenness of it, along with his powerlessness to do anything to save his wife, left him feeling guilty and with a deep sense of futility. this was exactly the moment when he needed god’s healing through someone’s hospitality. at this point own experience of loss could be converted in a new way to become a missional act. based on my own experience of despair, i was able to extend hospitality. the small church community in the us had stayed with me at my moments of grief. now i was passing on the same hospitality at another place of mourning. practically, such hospitality meant simply to stand by the ones in pain, to grieve together, and to share little acts of kindness. because of my own experience of losing a spouse, i could extend kindness and comfort to my brother-in-law. as i also recalled the existential lesson and the true meaning of christian faith i myself had learned, i was able to provide hospitality in the hope of resurrection. in the spring of 2020, my experience of grief and restoration three years ago became a source of empathy and comfort for my other family members in their moment of grief. as a “wounded healer” (nouwen 1972) in this new place of grief, i could practice hospitality that leads to the path of healing. bokyoung park—missional hospitality towards healing 17 a narrative approach in missiological studies in this section, i turn my attention to the power of stories in theological discussion. in the 1970s the narrative approach began to receive more attention as a theological methodology. narrative theology is a creative approach, using stories to communicate about god—how god intervenes in humanity, the events that are shaped by human agents, and how the humans in those events transition and grow from despair to hope (fackre 1983, 343). according to fackre (1983, 347), “the quest for spontaneity and self-expression leads to a search for the immediacies and intimacies of experience.” advocacy theologians pay great attention to narratives, seeing their potential to give “voice to the voiceless, or affirming the plural and the protean” (fackre 1983, 347). the desire for self-expression and the need to heed the voices of the voiceless are even greater today. in missiology the significance of stories has long been acknowledged through missionary biographies. more recently, narrative theology has been employed to provide deeper missiological reflections. nancy thomas asserts that narratives play an important role in missiological reflections, and that stories are the “footprints of god” in which are found the mission of god. to follow in the footsteps of god means to enter into the stories, write the stories, tell the stories, learn the stories, and live the stories. for thomas (1999, 226–27), narratives are what motivate us to participate in the mission of god. frances adeney also emphasizes the significance of biographies, a form of narrative, in missiology. she asserts that studying the narratives of real individuals in their social and historical context contributes to missiology by giving a more accurate understanding of how christian mission occurs in a certain time and place (adeney 2009, 157). it is true that participation in the mission of god is not a practice of academic reflection through metaphysical propositions. instead it is something that occurs in relationship with actual people and within specific sociopolitical e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 18 and historical conditions. because theology has traditionally overlooked real-life contexts of actual persons involved in the mission of god, the narrative approach is all the more significant for missiology today. the narrative approach has the potential to overcome the limits of traditionally abstract and propositional approaches to communicating about god, the world, and human destiny. traditional theology with propositional declarations and abstract concepts is too removed from actual daily lives. yet, narrative breathes “life, joy, and vitality to the process of thinking theologically in mission” and “connects missiology to the real-world context it belongs to” (thomas 1999, 233). narratives are by nature holistic and integrated with daily life; they can be communicated in ways familiar to the lives and contexts of the listeners. narratives allow us to “translate the grace and forgiveness and transforming work of god” in exactly these real-life contexts. in that sense, the narrative approach does not express the mission of god propositionally but rather as “mission on the way” and in process (thomas 1999, 230). stories are even better able to communicate in times of suffering and pain in the church’s missionary practice. in theology, pain and suffering are something humans as holistic and finite beings must embrace and accept rather than logically understand and explain away. such theology must be able to hold all of one’s whole self, including emotions of joy and grief, despair and hope. especially for those in deep suffering, the emotional dimension is front and center. logical explanations lack persuasion. the logical explanations of job’s suffering expounded by job’s friends—though they may have been the noblest pieces of wisdom in their age— were of little consolation to job. instead they provoked intense anger and despair. yet stories have the power to empathize in moments of pain and suffering, and thus are especially appropriate as a missionary practice in contexts of suffering. moreover, narratives invite the listeners to share in the experience of the storyteller. a shared story resonates with yet another story in a listener. this process creates an interconnected space of empathy and communication. stories have transformative bokyoung park—missional hospitality towards healing 19 power, but the power is manifest in much less direct ways than propositional statements. stories do not invade into the thoughts of others. rather, they invite others to see from new perspectives, thereby generating change in more roundabout ways. stories, especially biblical stories, are especially useful for motivating us to participate in the mission of god. the great stories of god’s mission resonate with and give meaning to our own smaller stories. we learn that our suffering, struggles, and griefs are materials for the mission of god (thomas 1999, 227). our own stories also motivate us toward mission. in every individual’s unique stories, and in the stories of communities to which we belong, we discover the call to mission (thomas 1999, 228). the stories of the world also stir us toward mission. as we see pain, grief, suffering, and despair, as well as hope in the stories of people around the world, we see their need for christ’s salvation and are moved to enter into mission (thomas 1999, 229). in sum, the narrative approach to missiology overcomes the limitations of traditional propositional approach, enables missiology to make connections with real people, makes possible holistic communication of the gospel in the midst of suffering, and is invitational rather than coercive in the communication process. the narrative approach also consistently motivates participation in mission. it enables deeper missiological reflections in today’s context of suffering. the meaning of hospitality towards healing how might hospitality lead to healing? hospitality is an act of providing physical comfort and safety to facilitate restoration. hospitality is related to a certain space or refuge for emotional and psychological recovery. the term is often accompanied by descriptors such as “generous,” “kind,” or “gracious” (koenig 1985, 17–18). joshua jipp defines hospitality as “the act or process whereby the identity of the stranger is transformed into that of guest” (2017, 2). hospitality provides a “safe and welcoming place where a stranger can be converted into a friend” (jipp 2017, 2). e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 20 among those who developed the concept of hospitality in the field of theology is feminist theologian letty russell. russell (2009, 82) defines hospitality as “a form of partnership with the ones we call ‘others’” and asserts the need to reframe hospitality. hospitality is an act of recognizing the stranger’s common humanity (pohl 1999, 6). hospitality triggers a small but significant change in the recipients. the experience of being recognized and received enhances one’s self-esteem. hospitality enables a socially invisible person to become visible (pohl 1999, 62). true hospitality is only possible when there is a relationship of respect. respect and recognition are expressed by paying one’s full attention to the other, thereby proving their worth (pohl 1999, 70–71). because people share common humanity as individuals made in the image of god, it is possible to offer hospitality through respect and recognition. for pohl, hospitality is more than a simple act of service; it involves the sharing of life. hospitality takes place where there is sharing of life and resources resulting in mutual blessing. at the site of hospitality, respect and communication are shared by the guest and the host; it is a “two-way street” (pohl 1999, 72). in this sense, true hospitality is impossible without friendship, and such hospitable friendship is best expressed in table fellowship. pohl beautifully explains that the moment of gathering for a meal is an egalitarian experience for all participants. this is the moment when one can truly recognize one another—a moment one can be with others instead of for others. in hospitality, “respect and appreciation, presence and friendship are indispensable parts of the affirmation of human personhood” (pohl 1999, 84). healing is one dimension of hospitality. healing happens in the “unexpected divine presence” within the space of hospitality (russell 2009, 82–84). henry nouwen emphasized that hospitality has the power to heal. healing requires providing a space of rest as well as concentration and community for the welcomed guest (nouwen 1972, 96). in the space of hospitality, the stranger who needs healing requires a full and concentrated gaze. such concentration requires the host to set aside one’s needs, concerns, and anxieties and to humbly open up their space. the one practicing bokyoung park—missional hospitality towards healing 21 hospitality must be able to keep a distance from one’s own problems. true hospitality is expressed by giving one’s attention to the stranger (nouwen 1972, 97). the host, as healer, must be able to listen and acknowledge the guest’s stories of joy and sadness, hope and grief, successes and failures. such attentive listening through being fully present is the highest form of hospitality (nouwen 1972, 95). hospitality can lead to healing when the host can dwell in their own wounded-ness. by remembering the vulnerability and dependency we ourselves experienced at that place of pain, we can enable healing in others (pohl 1999, 65). however, the fact that there is healing in the hospitable space does not mean that the pain is diminished. it only means that the wound is redefined as an opportunity toward a new vision of hope in christ. so when members of the community profess their wounds and share their weaknesses, healing takes place and their hope grows stronger (nouwen 1972, 100). jesus showed god’s hospitality through his actions, but he also received hospitality from others (yong 2008, 101). jesus’ life was full of such stories. at the table fellowship with the disciples on the road to emmaus the resurrected jesus was both the guest and the host. the table was an expression of communal hospitality in which healing occurred. leslie hay points out that the presence of the resurrected christ was revealed at this table of hospitality. in this sense, the meal was the “sacrament of hospitality” (hay 2006, 46). the parable of the good samaritan shows god’s hospitality to the one who is deeply wounded. hospitality is a key message in the story of the woman who broke an alabaster jar of perfume for jesus. the nameless and uninvited woman was the one who was truly hospitable to jesus, who came as a guest (hay 2006, 45). from the moment jesus was born of mary, through to his burial in the tomb of joseph of arimathea, jesus depended on others’ hospitality. by being on the receiving end of hospitality, by being a guest, jesus showed god’s saving hospitality (yong 2008, 102). furthermore, hospitality has a missional dimension. the one who has experienced hospitality can in turn be hospitable to e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 22 others. hospitality can be a missional calling, given that hospitality is above all an act of god before it is a human act. to extend hospitality is to participate in god’s own hospitality. just has humans participate in the mission of god, we participate in the hospitality of god. as ones who have first experienced god’s hospitality, christians have a missional calling to extend hospitality to others (kim 2017, 165–66) for nouwen (1975, 93), all christians are called to be healers. this means that hospitality that facilitates healing is the missional calling for all christians. jipp (2017, 92) states that “the mission of the church is to participate in god’s hospitality, whereby jesus extends life and redemption to humans who are alienated from god and each other.” jean vanier (1995, 9) writes that hospitality is a way of life that resists today’s competitive and hierarchical social order that marginalizes the weak. therefore, hospitality is the essence of the church’s identity and calling, and an indispensable element of christian faith (vanier 1995, 2). in sum, hospitality is more than simply an act of generosity or helping a stranger with material needs. it is an act of true recognition and respect for the other. true hospitality is impossible without friendship. such hospitality has a dimension of healing. healing is made possible when we provide a space for others to enter and as we dwell with them in their place of pain. hospitality that leads to healing, therefore, also has a missional dimension. when one experiences healing by being received by a hospitable host, the guest can recognize one’s own missional calling, and in turn practice hospitality to yet more others. missional hospitality that leads to healing: implications of the covid-19 pandemic healing hospitality is based on the ministry of jesus christ. christ incarnate entered the world as a weak and vulnerable human being, and personally practiced the mission of the wounded healer by way of the cross. the mission of the church is to continue in this mission of jesus christ. in a world full of brokenness and grief, bokyoung park—missional hospitality towards healing 23 the church must make the ministry of hospitality a priority. such hospitality by the church should not be practiced as an act of charity from the center to the margins or from a position of power to the powerless, but by the church itself becoming the weak and the marginalized, following in the steps of jesus christ. only then can healing occur and become missional. in this section i will reflect on implications for church, theology, and missional hospitality. the role of the church: providing a space of hospitality the church must prioritize providing a space of hospitality to the grieving in today’s broken world. the church has a role in offering an emotional and physical space to hold the stories of pain. this is a hospitable space where people can share their grief. above, i described how my experience of grief was held within the space of hospitality provided by a small immigrant church community. for me this community was a space in which i was physically and emotionally welcomed to share my story of pain and to cry and laugh together with others. it was a space of empathy. the community had already experienced brokenness and alienation and were on the margins of the margins. as broken people, they were generous in welcoming me and my family. my family also reciprocated that hospitality by inviting them to table fellowship. in this practice of mutual hospitality, we could share our grief. as mentioned later, narratives are especially powerful in moments of profound grief. they help us understand that the depths of human suffering, the enormity of life and death, and surviving through chronic pain without losing one’s humanity are all possible within a space of empathetic hospitality. by sharing stories in this hospitable space, we invite others’ stories of pain and make possible the experience of true community. the community is then able to bear the weight of suffering together. the covid-19 pandemic hit us unaware and has changed our lives to the core. the pandemic has revealed the degree of human vulnerability. it is affecting our society’s psychological, economic, and political dimensions. as our close friends and family e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 24 passed away, the cruel situation that barred us from being present at their moment of death nor able to gather freely at their funerals to share in grief threw us all into deeper anguish. in korea, when the death of an individual is relegated to the private realm, it becomes difficult to care for people mourning their dead. the number of deaths each day remain mere numbers; there is a loss of empathy amid the fear and loneliness of the dying (m. s. ahn 2020, 232). across all societies, we seem to be losing our humanity during this time of pandemic. ahn myung-sook (2020, 227–30) listed some of the social psychological phenomena that have resulted from the covid-19 pandemic. these include heightened guardedness, an aggression based on fear, loneliness, and increased isolation due to the lack of human contact. as isolation, loneliness, and fear cause people to raise their defenses and react in violence, churches’ mission is to provide space for the world to share their grief. for neighbors faced with sudden grief, churches must open up a space of hospitality and provide a ministry of comfort for them to experience divine healing. the role of theology: interpreting stories of pain a process of community-based scripture interpretation is necessary in order for the stories shared in the space of hospitality to result in healing. this is the role of theology. the stories shared are reframed through the community’s interpretation of the scripture. kim (2007, 163–64) demonstrates how hans frei identifies community-based scripture interpretation as its key characteristic. the revisiting of pain within a hospitable community enables the sharing of grief and the making of meaning from suffering. the painful stories are reframed through community-based interpretation. a whole new terrain of understanding opens up on the trinitarian ministry of love and helps people see an even wider kingdom of god. moreover, this space offers an experience of divine healing through the presence of compassio dei, the god who is with us in our brokenness (sauer 2010, 60–65; hyun 2019, 444). bokyoung park—missional hospitality towards healing 25 hence theology allows us to enter to the new horizon of healing hospitality. by the time i was asked to preach the easter sermon in april of 2017, two months after my husband’s death, i could finally emerge out of despair. preparing for the message required theological reflection on life and death. it was then that i could freshly interpret how the core christian tenet of the cross and the resurrection gives hope to mortal humans doomed to finite existence. in the sermon i gave to the church community, i professed my human weakness, the vanity of human existence and the sudden approach of life and death. then i shared the hope of resurrection to experience new connection and solidarity. this was a moment when my surface-level knowledge of life and death, encounter and farewell, pain and suffering were deepened through communitybased scripture interpretation. in the time of pandemic, for churches to offer healing to the world, scriptural interpretation within a hospitable community is necessary. churches in anguish must offer theological reflection on the anguish experienced by the rest of the world. only then can a new space of hospitality for healing be offered. churches must be reminded that they are essentially missional communities, and therefore exist on behalf of the world. just as jesus christ came to save the world, the church must also exist on behalf of the salvation of the world. but today the church is so broken that it does not have eyes to see the suffering of others. the sudden circumstances of the pandemic which made gatherings impossible left the local churches in korea feeling robbed of their communal identity. while churches have reluctantly accepted government limits on gatherings, sustaining this state of affairs has been painful. yet, rather than regarding these virus prevention measures as oppression, the korean church must shift their perspective to accept the situation as an act of sharing in society’s burden. they must recover their missional identity as healer of the nations. this shift in perspective is possible through theology that prepares the church to listen to the suffering of the world. therefore, through theological e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 26 reflection on today’s situation, churches can consistently provide answers to questions of life and death and the relationship between humanity and the natural world. the world may seem unwilling to listen, but they are actually searching desperately for answers to these existential questions. the role of mission: practicing hospitality that leads to healing once our own wound is healed in the space of hospitality, this experience makes possible the ministry of hospitality. here the role of mission emerges. once a wound is healed by experiencing hospitality, it does not stay a wound. instead, the experience becomes a divine resource for mission. of course, this is only possible through the “unexpected divine presence” of god within the hospitable community (russell 2009, 82; langmead 2014, 46). we realize that our pain can be a resource to be used for others’ healing. we become wounded healers as we practice hospitality for the healing of others. here, hospitality moves beyond a missional calling to a missional act. in the spring of 2020, when my sister suddenly passed away, i was able to extend the hospitality that i also had earlier received. the hospitality and healing i had experienced in the immigrant church community was now rebirthed into a missional hospitality at this new site of grief. however, the healing hospitality my family and i first experienced blessed that church as well. since 2017 my relationship with the church and its members has developed in new ways. all the church members matured in new ways to become healers in their own places of life, just as i in korea in 2020 could offer healing hospitality for my extended family. the community that had experienced healing went on to offer healing hospitality to wider spheres of their network. but we must remember a point of caution. true missional hospitality carries the scars of pain and loss. if hospitality is offered from the center to the margins, it may be a momentary act of kindness, but it cannot facilitate healing. an act of generosity from bokyoung park—missional hospitality towards healing 27 the center of power to the marginalized powerless may at worst become an imposition and at best an act of charity. when mission objectifies the other, it can become another act of violence. but for hospitality to facilitate true divine healing, the host must have the experience of becoming marginal and broken. missional hospitality must be based on the experience of the margins, which then enables the welcoming of yet another person on the margins. this process is beautifully illustrated in jesus christ’s own hospitality. jesus was the model of hospitality for the wounded. the cross of jesus christ is above all a divine act of hospitality. at the center of the cross is the god who welcomes all through the act of creation, including the fallen and estranged. the hospitality of the cross is not only the essential vocation of christ but also the essential vocation of christians (boersma 2006, 18; kim 2020, 72). therefore, as the church recognizes itself as wounded, it is able to encounter the wounded world. the church should conduct theological reflections to provide missional hospitality based on self-understanding as being on the margins. according to susan hope, what we need is not mission of the powerful but mission through weakness, vulnerability, and ordinariness. we therefore need not regret our powerlessness in mission but rather celebrate it (hope 2010, 91–92). enduring grief and powerlessness is an important part of missionary spirituality that enables us to draw near and deeply embrace the broken and lost world. the korean protestant church today is despised by the rest of society as an antisocial group. the negative image of the korean protestant church has been building in recent years, but in the pandemic, this perception has increased dramatically, perhaps to the point of no recovery. every day the media is reporting on churches identified as transmission clusters and super-spreading events because they pushed on with on-site gatherings, against government directives. this wound that the church is now sustaining has become entangled in a complex web of preexisting church corruption, social anxiety, and the harsh critique of the media. the result is that christians are regarded by some as a hate group. yet this very experience of pain and suffering now offered e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 28 to churches means they may experience pain that might enable them to finally empathize with others. this will facilitate healing by offering hospitality to those who had been similarly wounded. this is the very moment that the korean church is truly ready to practice healing and missional hospitality. conclusion as covid-19 sweeps through the world, people are suffering not only physical but social and economic wounds. missiology today must be able to empathize with those in pain and fully resonate with their grief. dry propositional approaches are limited in their ability to offer empathetic and appropriate responses to those in pain. the narrative approach is the way to approach today’s context. in today’s world, the church as the body of christ is called to become a healing community to participate in the mission of the god who empathizes with those in pain. to participate in this mission of god, churches must become spaces in which stories of pain and grief can be openly shared. theology must provide fresh interpretations of the stories of pains through community-based collective interpretations. the role of mission is to recognize the missional dimension of healing hospitality, that is, for the church to provide another hospitable space for others to heal. may the hospitable god who treats and heals our wounds continue to heal our church and the world! bibliography adeney, frances s. “why biography? contributions of narrative studies to mission theology and mission theory.” mission studies 26.2 (2009) 153– 72. ahn, myung-sook. “chaenan shidae wigi sogesŏŭi in’gansŏng sangshilgwa kyohoeŭi wirosayŏk 재난 시대 위기 속에서의 인간성 상실과 교회의 위로사역 [loss of humanity in the crisis of disaster and the church’s ministry of comfort].” in chaenanshidaerŭl kŭkpok’anŭn han’gukkyohoe bokyoung park—missional hospitality towards healing 29 재난시대를 극복하는 한국교회 [korean church overcoming disaster], edited by the presbyterian church of korea. seoul: k’ingdŏmbuksŭ, 2020. badre, david. “how we can 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saved by faith and hospitality. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2017. kim, ah-young. “shipchagaŭi hwandaeŭi kwanjŏmesŏ pon kungnae musŭllim nanmin sayŏk 십자가의 환대의 관점에서 본 국내 무슬림 난민 사역 [muslim refugee ministry in korea from the perspective of the hospitality of the cross].” sŏn’gyoshinhak 58 (2020) 42–78. kim, dong kun. “hansŭ p’ŭrai shinhagŭi t’ŭkching: sŏsawa ŏnŏ 한스 프라이 신학의 특징: 서사와 언어 [several features of hans frei’s theology: narrative and language].” shinhakkwa mok’oe [theology and ministry] 28 (2007) 155–86. kim, eui-huck. “puk’anijujuminŭl hyanghan hwandaeŭi sŏn’gyo 북한이주주민을 향한 환대의 선교 [toward a mission of hospitality for north korean migrants].” sŏn’gyoshinhak [mission theology] 47 (2017) 146–73. koenig, john. new testament hospitality: partnership with strangers as promise and mission. eugene, or: wipf & stock, 1985. langmead, ross. 2014. “refugees as guests and hosts: towards a theology of mission among refugees and asylum seekers.” exchange 43.1 (2014) 29–47. nouwen, henri. the 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day. new york: crossroad, 1995. yong, amos. 2008. hospitality and the other: pentecost, christian practices and the neighbor. maryknoll, ny: orbis, 2008. yun, sin-yeong, “k’orona19 sat’ae 8kaewŏl . . . chŏkshinho k’yŏjin ‘shilloesahoe,’ ssain ‘p’iro’ 코로나19 사태 8개월 . . . 적신호 켜진 ‘신뢰사회,' 쌓인 ‘ 피로’ [eight months into covid-19 . . . warning signs in ‘trust society,’ accumulated ‘fatigue’].” donga science. 2020. http://dongascience.donga. com/news.php?idx=39630. rooms.indb 75 the missio dei embodied in local community ministry in scotland rev. dr. steve taylor principal, knox centre for ministry and leadership senior lecturer, department of theology, flinders university principal@knoxcentre.ac.nz rev. dr. mark johnston pastoral studies tutor, department of theology and religious studies, university of glasgow; formerly ministry formation coordinator, knox centre for ministry and leadership; formerly associate minister ncd, church of scotland mark.johnston.2@glasgow.ac.uk abstract this paper examines missio dei in a local community context, interpreting the blue horizon youth charity, aberdeen, scotland, in light of a missiology of listening, diagnosing, and discerning. john 5:9 is read in conversation with terese okure to clarify an e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 76 abiding in mission. luke 10:1–11 is read in conversation with alan roxburgh to develop a contextual particularity in the naming of god’s activity in the world. a local missional ecclesiology is developed with the missio dei understood as practices of neighborhood listening, diagnosing local narratives, and discerning god and the gospel. the result is a theology of local community ministry as action-reflection on what the father is doing by paying attention to vulnerable voices, particularly of youth in the community and so partnering with non-church actors in ways inclusive and gospel affirming. missiology is returned to the local church as the missio dei is embodied in the practices of local community mission. introduction an examination of missiology in the west requires an interrogation of local church ministry praxis. historic understanding of mission suggest that mission occurs at distance, “over there,” in exotic locations. certain individuals, uniquely called and gifted are sent. local church involvement is reduced to activities like prayer, financial giving and sending care packages (complete with used tea bags!). when mission is entwined with colonization, attitudes of racial superiority suggest missionaries are givers to “native” peoples. these historic attitudes risk distorting how the contemporary church might inhabit local mission. in reality, the practice of mission in the west today needs to begin with the conversion of attitudes within the local church. in theory, the missio dei provides conceptual frames to enable these conversions. god is understood as a missionary god at work in the world. mission is viewed as having a concrete form, as neither program nor abstraction but as living history, “the active knowledge of jesus christ [being and becoming] established in the world” (flett 2010, 293). however, the shape of local church participation remains problematic, both in theory and practice. some applications of missio dei have sought to exclude the church, considering that god can articulate godself without the need for missionary activity (bosch 1991, 392). at other times, missio dei mark johnston and steve taylor—the missio dei embodied 77 language has been accused of being abstract and generalized, an intellectual preoccupation of the “seminary” class. this paper seeks to ground the missio dei in the local context of community ministry and teaching of ministry agents, both lay and ordinands. the birthing of a local community context, the blue horizon youth charity in aberdeen, scotland, is examined. in seeking to rightly locate the local church in relation to the missio dei, we apply three frames—neighborhood listening, diagnosing local narratives and discerning god, and the gospel—to a case study of the development of a local community ministry. the result is tools and practices, interpreted missiologically, for the local church. missio dei introduced our paper works with the assumption that the missio dei is axiomatic for missional ecclesiology. missio dei understands god as a missionary god at work in the world. missio dei is considered one of the most essential theological (re-)discoveries of the twentieth century. emerging in the post-war traumas of europe, missio dei has found “widespread acceptance in east and west among most churches and international networks” (kim 2007, 52). arising from the international missionary conference in willingen, germany, mission was affirmed as sourced and located not with the church, but with god. missio dei has been examined in relation to western society, in particular through the missional church conversation. a starting point was the challenges presented by missionary leslie newbigin, returning to england, who diagnosed a post-christian society.1 missio dei reshapes the trajectories of churches within western european culture (guder 1998, 4). mission is god’s good news for the world. as a result of god’s initiative, the church becomes a missionary church in its own western societies, the cultures in which it finds itself. western church theologies and structures are 1. in particular, newbigin 1995. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 78 revealed as shaped by the legacy of christendom. the church is challenged to see itself as an instrument and witness to the gospel, not the endpoint of the gospel. hence the church is not static, provincial, or bureaucratic. instead, through the intentional cultivation of ecclesial practices, a community of people is called forth to participate in the new creation (guder 1998, 152–53). these practices are listed as baptism, breaking bread, reconciliation, discernment, and hospitality. the result is not “one mission theology, but many, with all these theologies serving to equip the saints in all their cultural settings for the common missionary vocation” (guder 2015, 43). at the same time, missio dei has undergone critique. some scholars note how missio dei emerged from minds formed by western worldviews and who were engaged with mission as enacted during colonial expansion (kim 2007, 52). for rodriguez (2018, 33), these authors worked within enlightenment critiques of revealed religion and perpetuated “a modernist foundationalist epistemology.” carmen rae lansdowne laments the capture of missio dei by worldviews and theological perspectives of american and european theologians. however, rather than dismiss missio dei, she argues from an indigenous perspective that missio dei needs to be understood as “grounded in right action—towards the earth, towards each other, towards our histories, stories, cultures and values” (lansdowne 2016, 220). for wieland, this is a “valuable corrective” (wieland 2020, 104) and invites further research not into theology and polity but into analysis of actions and practices as enacted among local churches. a focus on actions and practices generates a set of tensions. first, a tension of agency: if missio dei understands god as missionary, then what does it mean to locate mission primarily in god rather than in local church activity. this has particular tensions in the west, where local churches often face decline and embrace mission as a program to raise attendance. second, a tension of revelation: if missio dei locates mission not in the church’s activity but the being and nature of god, then how might mission exist as spiritual practices? can christian ways of being in the world mark johnston and steve taylor—the missio dei embodied 79 embody patterns of listening and discerning god’s acting and revealing? third, a tension of particularity: what does it mean to talk of missio dei not in generalized principles, but local contexts, in ways that assert that god is active in particular times and places? can the assertion that god is active be not only a universal affirmation but a local embodiment? tensions can be generative. this paper embraces these tensions, examining tools and practices of listening, diagnosing, and discerning in the local. our interest is in one particular stream, scottish presbyterian mission theology, historically exported to aotearoa, now seeking expression in an interplay between contemporary scotland and aotearoa new zealand. this stream has historically demonstrated many of these tensions, shaped by the scottish enlightenment and values of rational, intellectual and civilizing activity. listening, diagnosing, and discerning in seeking to understand what it might mean to embody god’s mission locally, we find two biblical texts instructive. in this section, we read john 5:19 in conversation with a missiologist from the majority world (teresa okure). we then read luke 10:1–11 in conversation with a missiologist from the western world (alan roxburgh).2 teresa okure argues that mission has historically tended to focus on commission. the result is “a complacency on the part of first-world christians, a complacency that has led in many cases to the loss of faith itself among christians in this first world” (2003, 314). this becomes a challenge to local churches in the west, who need to understand their local communities in relation to missiological practices. okure examines john’s gospel, arguing that mission is primarily about abiding not sending. for okure (1988, 140), john 4:34 is a central verse, significant for the entire gospel. 2. sadly, the literature on missional hermeneutics is dominated by white male voices (dewerse and hine 2020). in response to this significant weakness, we have structured our literature review as a dialogue with an african female and a white male. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 80 the father is the “the owner and initiator of the mission” (1988, 142), actively present in the unfolding of the mission. jesus abides in this divine mission, participating in the father’s active presence. this is a profoundly relational and participatory understanding of mission, centered in god, the trinity as “the real laborers at work in the missionary enterprise” (okure 1988, 286). the church abides as a participant: “if jesus himself is sent, is dependent, and does not own the mission, then neither do the disciples” (okure 1988, 143). human agency is necessary but as a derivative agency resulting from abiding in god. this suggests that every local church can participate in god’s mission, able to abide by listening for what god is initiating and discerning what the father is completing through human participation.3 mission as abiding is evident not only in jesus’ encounter with the samaritan woman in john 4 but also in mary’s postresurrection encounter with jesus. jesus uses the greek word zetien (intense search) to question mary in john 20:15. it is the same word used for the search of the two disciples for jesus in john 1:38 and how god seeks humanity in john 4:23–24. okure considers this divine search for relationships as the “evangelistic sense in the gospel” (2003, 316). for okure, the “my father and your father, my god and your god” formulation of john 20:17 fulfils john 1:12–13, in which children find themselves in parental relationships (2003, 318). mission is an intense seeking to abide like a child in christ, who is like a child abiding in god. for okure, mary is the first apostle, entrusted with a unique message about the significance of jesus’ resurrection—“their common parenthood in and brotherhood/sisterhood in christ” (2003, 321). this 3. more recently, michael gorman (2018) has engaged with teresa okure, drawing on her monograph (2003) multiple times. gorman affirms her argument that “the true missionary is jesus, and the disciples are instruments for effecting that mission” (gorman 2018, 186). like us, although in a more limited way, gorman turns to embodiment, engaging with specific local communities (191–99) as “part of the process of participating in, discerning, and further participating in the missio dei” (189). we believe we are extending gorman, by focusing in depth on one particular community in order to enact missional hermeneutics of embrace and self-involvement. mark johnston and steve taylor—the missio dei embodied 81 helps us locate practices of listening, diagnosing, and discerning as part of the intense search to abide in what god is completing through us in our local communities. further, given the “my father and your father, my god and your god” formulation, these missional practices configure all disciples as children abiding in god. this provides a way to understand how the relationship between ordained and lay leadership can be understood in mission as a common brotherhood/sisterhood in christ. missional practices that enable the formation of leaders and the participation of the whole people of god as abiding listeners in local community mission are needed. we draw on these insights from okure as we read john 5:19. god is the primary agent, and the son can only do what the father does. this requires a set of practices to cultivate attention. where is the father actively abiding, where is jesus uniquely participating, where is the spirit breathing peace? mission is listening, diagnosing, and discerning. being is work, a participating in god’s activity. turning from john to luke, from teresa okure to alan roxburgh, in luke 10:1–11, jesus sends the disciples. listening and discernment in local “towns and villages” are essential to mission, evident as the disciples witness acts of healing and, in response, name the particularity of the kingdom. in reaching a new generation, alan roxburgh examined contextualization in western cultures. roxburgh defined contextualization as understanding “the particularity of specific contexts so that the gospel might be addressed into the situation” (1993, 68). hence roxburgh reflected on his local ministry, pastoring a growing church and witnessing the launch of a health-food store (the carrot common in downtown toronto). “the contextualizing congregation must learn to “listen” and “see” where god is at work in the midst of secularism, pluralism and technological transformation . . . a dynamic interaction in which both sides are changed through dialogue” (roxburgh 1993, 69). four theological moves are present. first, divine agency (“god is at work”). second, a gaze directed toward culture (“secularism, pluralism and technological transformation”). third, the e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 82 conversion of the church (“dynamic interaction”). fourth, listening with perseverance and commitment. contextualization cannot be used as simply another of the latest trends in evangelism, to be warn like a coat and discarded when the next trend arrives. it is an ongoing process, a spiraling dialogue requiring a commitment to change and constant rereading of scripture. congregations willing to risk such a life will be at the forefront of mission in the midst of our culture. (roxburgh 1993, 73) for roxburgh (1993, 70), context can include the broad, macrocontext, for example, “the secularized pluralism of modernity.” it can also include specific contexts, for example the carrot common. roxburgh diagrams “an evangelism that listens” (1993, 72), listening to the popularity of this health-food cooperative, discerning a gospel in dialogue with ecology, community, and the experiential. this diagram appears again in roxburgh’s introducing the missional church. jesus is presented as a contextual theologian, located in neighborhood stories (roxburgh and boren 2009, 94–95). again, there is listening that attends to the value and meanings that underlie the neighborhood’s surface activities (roxburgh and boren 2009, 89–90). this is shaped by a theology of missio dei (roxburgh and boren 2009, 91–100), asking what is god up to in this neighborhood? for roxburgh (2011, 147), luke 10:1–12 is a “critical” text for this listening in mission and understanding what god is up to in the world. missional practices emerge. these include the locating of conversations not in the church but in the neighborhood (entering houses), at the table of others (eating and drinking what is placed before us), and in personal human dialogue (the church in the public square). it comes through speaking peace and announcing the kingdom of god (2011, 133–62). this suggests that every local church is participating in the mission of god, seeking to abide by listening for what god is initiating and discerning where the father is inviting us to participate in the completing work of the new creation. mark johnston and steve taylor—the missio dei embodied 83 our research considers what this might look like in a local scottish housing estate. it seeks to clarify missio dei  in the development of a local community ministry by applying three frames—neighborhood listening, diagnosing local narratives, and discerning god and the gospel. • neighborhood listening—are we intentionally present and listening in the neighborhood, what is going on here, what are we noticing? the reference is to luke 10:7, in particular, go into every town and place, remain, eat. • diagnosing local narratives—what is going on behind what we notice and see and hear happening here? the reference is to luke 10:5, 8, in particular what kind of town and home is this, what is going on in the people here? • discerning god and the gospel—where is god coming through? what is good news for this place and time? the reference is to luke 10:9, in particular, where is the kingdom coming near, what healing is needed here? listening, diagnosing, and discerning in local ministry formation to be consistent with okure’s abiding and roxburgh’s localizing, we seek to ground missio dei in local community ministry and the teaching of ministry agents, including ordinands and congregational members. this emerged from our location, as faculty at knox centre for ministry and leadership, which exists to deepen ministry and grow leadership in the presbyterian church of aotearoa new zealand. together we co-taught mission in communities, a paper intended to prepare ordinands for leading local churches in mission. we need ways to engage missio dei not in the abstract but the local. our faculty roles required us to develop grassroots resources that took the local church context seriously. it also expected us to help ordinands understand how the relationship between ordained and non-ordained leadership was e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 84 outworked in mission, as the participation of the whole people of god in local community mission. both of us have been involved in missional church planting, mark in scotland, and steve in aotearoa new zealand. blue horizon: listening, diagnosing, and discerning local our teaching began with local, drawing on the birthing of the blue horizon youth charity in aberdeen, scotland, as a grassroots mission experience. in 2003, mark began work with a church of scotland church plant in cove, aberdeen. one of his tasks was to engage with the locality and consider ways the new nascent church community might respond to the spirit’s leading in the ordinary and everyday circumstances of these neighborhoods. what would be “good news” for this particular part of the city, and how might this be heard and known? the local story of the birthing of the blue horizon  youth  charity involved developing ongoing relationships with schools, community workers, residents’ associations, and local police. partnering with a neighboring established parish and minister with deeply embedded relationships in the area catalyzed a listening and diagnostic process. together mark and his colleague spent months listening to local residents, school teachers, local business and industry, interviewing council and police workers, and relating to teenagers in the street and local parks. at the same time, they were both living as local residents in their respective neighborhoods. they listened intently and wondered as they walked the streets each day, bumped into parents, talked with people in their front gardens, met community leaders, and conducted school chaplaincy roles. a shared high school catchment across the church plant area and the neighboring parish spoke to a common thread as stories emerged. teenage issues and anti-social behavior troubled the community and had done for some time. schools, parents, and residents felt helpless to turn the situation around. hard drugs, gang fights, pre-teen drinking, self-harm behaviors, and desperate responses raised alarm bells. mark johnston and steve taylor—the missio dei embodied 85 a group of people invested in diagnosing these learnings began to talk about what they were hearing. some suggested similar solutions to those of some residents and community leaders. tighten policing, get the worst teenagers off the street, and bring back the church youth group. open up a church hall and run games. however, mark and his colleague could see these approaches would attend to outcomes and visible behaviours, rather than prior causes. amidst the stories being heard, something else emerged. this involved discerning the unraveling social fabric in families as men served offshore on oil rigs for months on end. their extended absences disrupted households. parents and schools lost belief in young people’s potential and struggled with a lack of social support and overwhelming behavioral issues. at the same time, listening to young people suggested they felt abandoned, treated as pariahs, ignored, or criminalized and propelled out of sight. this caused a pause. mark and those listening drew an iceberg. this helped them name stories and issues above and below the waterline. another drawing, of a bridge over a river, allowed a naming of the “debris” flowing beneath, but then a reflection on what was upstream, what might be breaking apart or washing away. this brought to mind the estranged and frustrated young people, and what they were saying, how they had become objects, defined as problems, and not fitting into their community. the result was a realization that there was more than one set of stories in this community. mission required listening to all the stories and seeking to discern more in-depth perspectives. so began blue horizon focusing on teenage potential and coaching parents. mark and his colleague never got to run a “youth group” as such. there was too much else happening. embedded in this story of mission practice are important insights regarding missio dei in the local church. hence this case study from scotland has been utilized in seeking to form local church leaders in mission in aotearoa. we now turn to explore this, paying attention to mission practices evident in the scotland case study, in light of okure’s abiding and roxburgh’s localizing. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 86 “listening in mission” “listening in mission” began as part of an existing course taught at kcml to presbyterian ordinands. the class was titled mission in communities and invited participants to work on missio dei in their local context. this included the use of video conferencing to enable participants to think about mission, not in the context of a classroom, but in their local contexts. the online course was then made available to the broader church. participants, usually ordained clergy, were given tools, equipped with readings and invited to invite others in their local church community to go on a journey with them of listening and discerning for the spirit of god in their neighborhoods. leaders met (online) for five sessions with the kcml faculty to experience the tools. during this time, local leaders gathered their own group (face-to-face) to listen and discern locally. the five kcml led sessions encouraged action, facilitated reflection, and offered just-in-time learning as local leaders shared stories and discussed missiologically with peers. one of the five sessions focused on integrating the learning in a concrete local context. the blue horizon project provided useful because it was grounded in real life, yet removed in geography and time. in preparation, participants were asked to bring to this session colored highlighters, of three different colors. a one-page description of the blue horizon initiative was provided (similar to what is outlined in the previous section). participants asked clarifying questions and then critically reflected on the case study, using the three highlighter colors to consider the three frames of neighborhood listening, diagnosing local narratives and discerning god and the gospel. neighborhood listening is evident in an activating presence that sought immersive relationships of curiosity and proximity. these behaviours were evident in several places in the blue horizon case study. mark and his colleague “met with many community leaders” in the first six months of establishing the project. they bump “into parents outside the church gate” and talk “with mark johnston and steve taylor—the missio dei embodied 87 people in their front gardens.” these activities locate listening beyond the church, made possible through their deliberate actions of connecting with local schools and walking the streets of the community. alongside the randomness of walking, there was deliberate listening in the meeting with the community leaders (residents association, school teachers, local business, community groups, police, and council workers). listening was also evident, as mark and others “listened to young people.” this breadth of listening resulted in the realization of the value of hearing “something else.” listening is followed by diagnosing. this is a process requiring the participation of lay and ordained, evident as “a group of people began to talk about what we were hearing.” words like “common thread” suggest the search for synthesis. diagnosing is enhanced by the visual metaphors of icebergs and bridges. these make visible the stories and issues “below the waterline” and “upstream.” listening and diagnosing a community risk being a mirror, reflecting what those listening want to hear. in this case study, existing perceptions are challenged through the use of visual metaphors and the engaging of diverse voices, particularly “the estranged and frustrated young people.” discerning god and the gospel is evident in the formation of blue horizon, focused “on teenage potential and coaching parents.” this is the most challenging part of the process, both to enact as a local church in mission and to teach in ways that form the whole people of god around abiding and localizing. first, it involved the laying aside of preconceptions. as the case study notes, “we never got to run a youth group as such. there was too much else happening.” solutions that stay on the surface and resemble something already familiar—in this case, “youth group and the church hall opened up for youth activities again”—can hamper the diagnosing and discerning. second, it required, following roxburgh, a localizing of the gospel. as the missio dei moves into the particularity of the neighborhood, what is the unique work that the son is seeing the father doing? to develop the missional practice of discerning god and the gospel, we have focused on the dynamics in luke 10:1–11 around e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 88 the naming of the kingdom near. we provide a set of “jesus action” cards. a range of actions by jesus in the gospels is distilled and presented in the form of a deck of cards. for example • jesus is the compassionate, good shepherd who seeks and embraces the lost, least and the last (matt 9:5–38; luke 15:1–7; john 10:11–16; ezek 34:11–31) • jesus refuses to achieve ends through wielding worldly authority, power and might (mark 14:60–65; 15:29–32; luke 4:1–13) • jesus loves enemies, resists revenge, and the cycle of violence (matt 5:8–48; 26:51–56; luke 23:32–43) • jesus creates a new reconciling, healing and diverse community (luke 5:27–32; 6:12–16) • jesus meets needs from god’s abundance, rather than our story of scarcity (matt 14:13–21) • jesus exposes evil and exploitation (matt 12:33–37; luke 19:45–48) • jesus gives life in all its fullness (john 10:10; 20:31) • jesus challenges and redefines one’s neighbor (matt 5:43–48; luke 10:25–37).4 people are invited to assign cards alongside what has been diagnosed. invariably, new possibilities are triggered. what random act of kindness might embody jesus’ abundance in this community? what is the evil that needs to be resisted, not by violence but through love of enemy? the diagnosing of god and the gospel in the particularity of the local invites a new imagination. note what is happening, both in local leadership and in abiding and localizing missiology. concerning leadership, the skills required include taking time (many months), multiple conversations (community leaders, parents, residents), ensuring diverse voices (particularly young people), the skilled use of visual metaphors (icebergs and bridges), and particularity (this time and place). 4. for a complete set of twenty-six actions, contact the authors. mark johnston and steve taylor—the missio dei embodied 89 an imagination which prioritizes the activity of god is cultivated. god is not brought to a local neighborhood. rather, god’s future is being imagined within a particular time and place. concerning missiology, the actions of diagnosing and discerning are located in the local and amongst the whole people of god. leaders are theologically educated for mission, learning through the “jesus action” cards how to discern god and gospel. the result is a local contextualization (diagnosing as per roxburgh), located in abiding (listening and discerning as per okure). this all occurs in the context of the local church, not the seminary classroom. interpreting blue horizon: discerning local shape to christ patterned action the blue horizon case study is illustrative, both for ministry participants and for this paper. discerning the kingdom of god as near and the local shape of christ patterned action is clarified through two “jesus actions.” one is jesus, the compassionate, good shepherd who seeks and embraces the lost and least. another is jesus who gives life in all its fullness these jesus’ actions were discerned in conversation with reflections on youth development by rowan williams (pers. comm). “what concerns me most is the feeling that for teenagers, there is a pressure to live in a rather small world. the world of the next exam, the next party, the next what-ever: and keeping the horizon open, the whole big world in front of people is quite a challenge.” given these insights about the fragmenting of intergenerational relationships between teenagers, their parents and a local community, the actions of jesus as the good shepherd, seeking the wellbeing of this local community (john 10:11–16) are good news. god’s action in being a shepherd who seeks out those feeling lost provide a “horizon” and an invitation to life to the full beyond “the next what-ever.” hence blue horizon articulated values that connected the diagnosing of (youth) culture with local christ e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 90 patterned actions.5 four values are particularly relevant, those of seeing worth, building confidence, expanding horizons and realizing potential. if jesus sought all people, then young people had worth and needed to be listened to. given the shepherd cared, so extra care needed to be invested in those who might lack the initial confidence to speak. as jesus sought the lost and least, so every young person had potential to be more than “the next whatever.” if christ offered life to the full, then young people should not be reduced the confines of the social horizons of their upbringing but instead invited to experience expanding horizons. the connecting of local diagnosis and discerning christ patterned actions was evident in the way blue horizon, as a registered british charity, was established. it had five aims. the first was that christian beliefs shape what is done and said.6 it was important from the outset that the local mission leaders and churches owned the process they were invested in and acknowledged their christian imagination and motivations. at the same time, blue horizon sought to locate itself beyond church-centric and bureaucratic solutions to social issues and instead innovate through a mix of community, commercial, and church investment. this meant articulating the distinctive ethos of blue horizon and how christian beliefs informed the actions and words of the project in secular spaces. in other words, how this community ministry was faith-based. community ministry was empowered by discerning the missio dei in this specific local context. these aspirational statements, shaped by the “jesus actions,” were embodied in blue horizon’s distinct beliefs and values. the beliefs included the worth of selfhonesty, transformation, and hope. the values included; naming christ’s model of compassion and acting consistently with the values and practices of christian faith—hospitality, sacrificial service, 5. based on blue horizon documents, which outline the ethos, beliefs, values, and practices. these are available from the authors. 6. the other four are that adolescent young people are not a problem to be solved but persons with the potential to be released; a focus on prevention; that volunteers matter and the strategic worth of partnership with other agencies and groups. mark johnston and steve taylor—the missio dei embodied 91 unconditional regard, perseverance, forgiveness and reconciliation, social justice, and life-affirming moral standards. difficult realities could be approached through the power of christian faith. church involvement contributed to the social capital of communities. relationships and resources could be shared in common for the flourishing of the wider community. this gave voice to the reality, as agents of mission, that whatever responses blue horizon developed would involve god’s good news for this particular community. hence the kingdom of god was coming near, grounded in the particularity of good news. in luke 10:9, the sick are healed. only then is the kingdom of god named in proclamation. we interpret these healings as specific, unique to the towns and particular homes which the seventy-two entered. hence the proclamation of the kingdom of god is a response to the particularity of every healing. hence community ministry is an engagement in the particularity of what god is doing (john 5:19), not in general terms, but as participation in jesus patterned acts in local settings. blue horizon was abiding in the local neighborhood, through participating in spiritual practices of listening and discerning. this was a long way from the pre-existing imagination of “a youth group and the church hall opened up for youth activities.” neverthless, it was a participation in the missio dei for this oil economy-enriched, socially fragmenting local community in this particular period. different times and places will offer different discerning and diagnosis. such is the particularity of missio dei in every community. local mission learnings our concern is to rightly locate the local church in relation to the missio dei. we have used the blue horizon case study, first to articulate a local theology of what missio dei looks like in a local community ministry. second, to examine how leaders, called to western european cultures, might be formed in the missio dei freed from christendom legacies. what are the implications for the e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 92 tensions around god’s agency in contexts of ecclesial decline, mission as being here rather than doing there, and local embodiment? practices of listening, diagnosing and discerning, locate mission firmly in the agency of god. doing what the father does pays attention to vulnerable voices in the community and enable partnerships with non-church actors in ways that are inclusive while affirming gospel values. in the context of church decline, programs that worked in another church are often presented as “silver-bullet” solutions. however, listening demands a different imagination. if god does not speak, then listening is in vain. if the kingdom of god is not coming, then discerning remains a human activity. if god is not abiding with local agents, then this discernment is not possible. in contrast to approaches from secular agencies, the discernment of the actions of god provides distinctly god-filled ethos, beliefs, values, and practices. this is consistent with newbigin’s (1989, 227) belief that in a post-christian west, “the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it.” practices of listening, diagnosing and discerning ensure individual embodiment and provide local color. the focus is the local community (“the estranged and frustrated young people and what they had said, and how they had become objects, defined as problems and not fitting into their community”). practices of listening and discerning honor the particularity of god’s activity in every local context. action is being, and being is action. this is consistent with mission ad-intra, an inward mission that involves “rethinking things and rereading the bible and tradition to cultivate coherence between speaking and doing” (tamez 2017, 87). formation of the whole people of god occurs as abiding in the local is foregrounded. finally, practices of listening, diagnosing and discerning understand god as active in particular times and places amongst specific people. the blue horizon case study was removed geographically and in time from the “listening in mission” courses in aotearoa new zealand. this reduced the temptation to photocopy a program. mission cannot be replicated. instead, formation of mark johnston and steve taylor—the missio dei embodied 93 leaders requires their own listening, diagnosing and discerning. further, the practices undertaken are indeed the work of the whole people of god, evident both in blue horizon and the structuring of the kcml “listening in mission” course. what results is consistent with bevans understanding of the church as “the community of the converted .  .  . a place where conversion is developed and fostered” (2018, 142–43). such are the possibilities for missio dei when through neighborhood listening, diagnosing local narratives and discerning god and the gospel, it is located in the local church. conclusion this paper has examined missio dei in a local community context. an understanding of the missio dei has been developed, first as abiding by reading john 5:19 in conversation with terese okure, second as local by reading luke 10:1–11 in conversation with alan roxburgh. missiology is returned to the local church through practices of neighborhood listening, diagnosing local narratives, and discerning god and the gospel. this is evident in blue horizon and as a “listening in mission” case study with ordinands at knox centre for mission and leadership and among local congregations. listening involves activating presence and seeking immersive relationships of curiosity and proximity. diagnosing occurs through visual tools, utilizing metaphors of icebergs and bridges. diagnosing enables discerning “jesus actions” in the particularity of specific contexts. these become practices by which local peoples of god might abide in the missio dei, experiencing their own conversion through abiding and localizing. bibliography bevans, steve. 2018. essays in contextual theology. leiden: brill. bosch, david. 1991. transforming mission: paradigm shifts in theology of mission. maryknoll, ny: orbis. dewerse, rosemary, and cathy hine. 2020. “reading from worlds under the text: oceanic women in the missio dei.” mission studies 37 (1): 29–51. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 94 flett, john g. 2010. the witness of god: the trinity, missio dei, karl barth, and the nature of christian community. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. gorman, michael j. 2018. abide and go: missional theosis in the gospel of john. eugene, or: cascade. guder, darrell l. 1998. the missional church: a vision for the sending of the church in north america. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. ———. 2015. called to witness: doing missional theology. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. kim, kirsteen. 2007. the holy spirit in the world: a global conversation. maryknoll, ny: orbis. lansdowne, carmen rae. 2016. “bearing witness: wearing a broken indigene heart on the sleeve of the missio dei.” phd diss., graduate theological union, berkeley, ca. newbigin, lesslie. 1989. the gospel in a pluralist society. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. ———. 1995. the open secret: an introduction to the theology of mission. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. okure, teresa. 1988. the johannine approach to mission. tubingen: mohr. ———. 2003. “jesus and mary magdalene.” in feminism and theology, edited by j. soskice and d. lipton, 312–26. oxford: oxford university press. rodriguez, rubén rosario. 2018. dogmatics after babel: beyond the theologies of word and culture. louisville, ky: westminster john knox. roxburgh, alan j. 1993. reaching a new generation: strategies for tomorrow’s church. downers grove, il: intervarsity. ———. 2011. missional: joining god in the neighborhood. ada, mi: baker. roxburgh, alan j., and m. scott boren, eds. 2009. introducing the missional church: what it is, why it matters, how to become one. ada, mi: baker. tamez, elsa. 2017. “letter from james to the general assembly in seoul of the international association for mission studies.” mission studies 34 (1): 78–91. wieland, george m. 2020. “discerning the missio dei in a local church’s engagement with its community.” mission studies 37 (1): 101–18. rooms.indb 50 out with the old, in with the new? an introduction to the phenomenon of new churches in glasgow, scotland sheila akomiah-conteh sheila akomiah-conteh is a researcher at brendan research, a christian research organisation based in edinburgh.  she also teaches religious education in scottish secondary schools. she holds a phd in divinity from the university of aberdeen in scotland. contact: sheila.akomiah@brendanresearch.com abstract the prospects of the church in britain have been defined by an enduring narrative of regression for many decades, but something new is happening. the presence and influence of old and established institutions are waning, but many new groups are emerging to keep the heritage of the church alive. this quantitative and qualitative study presents the new changes which have occurred in the christian landscape of the city of glasgow in scotland in recent years, which are often hidden from other forms of research such as national church surveys. it reports the formation of 110 new churches in glasgow between 2000–2016, and the key characteristics and impact of these groups on christianity in the city. the sheila akomiah-conteh—out with the old, in with the new? 51 presence and effect of new churches in glasgow indicate seismic changes and presents new challenges in the spiritual landscape of this post-christian city, not least around the homogeneity of the majority of them. introduction the outlook of the church in britain has been defined by an enduring narrative of decline for over fifty decades (brown, 2001; bruce, 2002), but something new is happening. the landscape of christianity in post-christendom british society is undergoing a transformation. the presence and influence of old and established christian institutions are undoubtedly waning, but many new and innovative groups are emerging to keep the heritage of the church alive. against the receding tide of faith and practice, new patterns of growth and revitalization are beginning to emerge. using empirical research methods, this article investigates the phenomenon of new churches in the city of glasgow in scotland, to add to the growing body of knowledge on this emerging trend in contemporary british christianity. in the first part of this paper, i will establish the background and rationale for implementing this kind of study in the chosen context. this will be followed by a detailed explanation of the chosen methodology and how data was collected and used in this study. this then lays the foundation for understanding the reporting and analysis of key findings which follow, and the conclusions drawn from them. background a renewed theological and academic interest in church growth in contemporary britain is generating some unanticipated results. they reveal upsurges in both the variety and size of congregations in many parts of the country (gwanmesia, 2009; goodhew, 2012; brierley, 2014; rogers, 2013). this development has been largely e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 52 attributed to the formation of various new churches and christian groups, although some historic institutions, such as the church of england and the roman catholic church, have also shown significant gains in attendance and membership in recent times, particularly those located in major cities (goodhew 2012; brierley 2014; goodhew and cooper 2018). new churches simply refer to recently founded congregations. the specific criteria for definition as a new church in this article will be discussed in detail later on, but generally, new churches can represent new christian denominations, individual groups, new “plants” by existing denominations, re-foundations of declining or previously closed churches and various innovative groups widely known as “fresh expressions” and “emerging’”churches (cray, 2009; moynagh, 2012). novel sociocultural occurrences, experiences and changes in the social order in recent years, have led to the creation of many such congregations across britain. these new groups usually attract a highly diverse demographic of followers and may have little or no connections with existing or historic church institutions. the majority of studies that exist so far on the phenomenon of new churches in britain have been focused on and conducted in the context of the southern half of the country, particularly in england (goodhew, 2012; osgood, 2012; walker, 2014; goodhew and symmons 2015; paas, 2016). there is currently very limited research on the question of the presence and scope of the phenomenon in other areas of the united kingdom, especially in scotland. current and localised research is vital to any attempts to perceive and map the true nature of growth or decline in congregational life. accordingly, this paper investigates the presence and nature of new churches in scotland by studying recent changes in the city of glasgow in the years 2000 to 2016. why scotland? no study of this nature has yet been conducted anywhere in scotland. the scottish region has consistently reported some of sheila akomiah-conteh—out with the old, in with the new? 53 the lowest statistics in christian belief and church attendance in the united kingdom in the past and in recent times (brierley, 2017). various polls and surveys conducted over the years have all pointed to the fact that scotland’s “historical reputation as a particularly religious nation” is rapidly fading (field, 2001). findings from the most recent national census in 2011 reinforced this recurrent theme. for the first time since census figures begun, the proportion of people describing themselves as having ‘no religion’ in scotland (37 percent of the population), overtook the kirk (as the established church, the church of scotland is known) as the most popular national “religious” stance. in this census, just 32 percent of scots identified with the historic church of scotland (scotland’s census 2011). a comparison with the preceding 2001 census indicated a loss of nearly half a million church of scotland (cofs) adherents, and experts predict this downward trend is set to continue (brierley, 2011). undeniable, wide-scale regression over many years, therefore, sets the scene for christianity in scotland, but it is important to question whether such decline remains the dominant issue of interest in congregational life in modern-day scotland. this article sets out to capture a purposefully concise and substantially current glimpse of the present situation in scotland to contribute to the ongoing discourse about the status and future direction of christianity in britain as a whole. why glasgow? the city of glasgow has certain features which make it particularly suitable for the present investigation. these are its christian heritage, its commercial capabilities, and its cosmopolitan nature. glasgow is a city located in the central belt of scotland along the river clyde in the country’s west central lowlands. its christian heritage is believed to have started in the sixth century, when the conurbation was founded by the christian missionary, saint mungo (hale, 1989). in the following years, the town blossomed as a e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 54 religious centre and later grew to become one of the key economic centres of the united kingdom. currently, it is scotland’s biggest city and the fourth largest in the united kingdom by population (population uk statistics 2018). it is also the most ethnically diverse and remains the principal commercial and industrial hub of scotland, enclosing major trade and transport routes. these are all qualities which goodhew and symmons (2015) found to be key to the location of new churches in britain. glasgow has one further advantage for the purposes of the present study the city was crucial to studying the impact of urbanisation on the scottish religious system in the past (brown, 1981). as callum brown described in his study on the effects of urbanisation on religious development in scotland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in few other countries did any one city affect so greatly the outlook and distribution of the resources of “national” churches. in the scottish churches as in other spheres of civil life, glasgow became synonymous with industrialisation and urbanisation. ecclesiastical responses to the development of scottish urban society were increasingly drawn from glasgow’s experience as the industrial revolution proceeded. in the city of glasgow, therefore, the progress of religious development and secularisation can be illuminated not only by local reactions but also by the national responses to the growth of a city that acutely affected the social and economic life of the country. (1981: 7). glasgow continues to have economic, demographic and other influences over the rest of scotland in the twenty-first century. since developments in the city defined the religious landscape of the whole country in the pre-christendom and christendom eras, studies of current events in its spiritual sphere, especially in the post-christendom age, can similarly have key implications for the church in wider scottish society. sheila akomiah-conteh—out with the old, in with the new? 55 why 2000–2016? key texts which discuss the subject of new churches in britain usually cover its chronology in the uk from the 1980s (goodhew, 2012). this enquiry, however, strictly focuses on and evaluates the twenty-first-century trends in the development of new churches by studying churches founded in or after the year 2000 and up till 2016. this serves to present a very fresh and current glimpse of the phenomenon in this unresearched region. much more importantly, the chosen timeframe, 2000 to 2016, covers periods of key statistical significance and points of reference for the study. these are the two most recent national population censuses in scotland in 2001 and 2011, and also, the most recent national church surveys held in the area in 2002 and 2016. referrals to these crucial data pools will appear in ensuing discussions for comparative and analytical purposes. this time frame is also long enough for any recent changes in the christian landscape to be noticeable and compact enough to be practicably manageable by a solo researcher working within a limited timeframe. consequently, the study is limited in scope and scale. nonetheless, it contributes to the data and dialogue about contemporary ecclesiological trends in post-christendom societies. methodology and methods the overarching aim of this research is to study the phenomenon of new churches in the city of glasgow in the years 2000–2016. specifically, it seeks to investigate the scale of occurrence and the characteristics of new churches which have appeared in the area during the period under review. because it is a novel and developing phenomenon, existing research about new churches are usually exploratory and descriptive in nature, seeking to unearth information about their operations, nature, and ethos, and subsequently to postulate about the significance of these findings (goodhew 2012; goodhew and symmons 2015). this study aims to apply a variety e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 56 of procedures including the exploration of original views and experiences in its evaluation of new churches; thus a quantitative and qualitative research design was adopted. in his study of new churches in seattle, james (2018) employed a similar approach to “counting” the number of churches which had been founded in the city between 2001–2014 and going further to study in-depth their characteristics using qualitative methods. data collection locating new churches a significant aspect of this research, and one of my key research enquiries, involved locating and counting the number of new churches established in glasgow in the years 2000–2016. this exercise relied significantly on exploring several public data sources such as websites and social media pages. using the search terms “church glasgow” and “new church glasgow” interchangeably on web and social media sites, i generated a list of potential new churches for further investigation. i then extensively researched and studied their facebook pages and other online accounts, such as websites and blogs, for clues on when they were established, their meeting times and venues, the contact details of their leaders and even pictures and videos of their meetings where available. the church websites usually also provided extensive histories of the churches, their activities and their core theological beliefs among others. using this information, i started to build a database of the churches which would meet the criteria of the study. one of the most important secondary resources i consulted to locate new churches was the database of the office of the scottish charity regulator (oscr). according to the charities and trustee investments (scotland) act 2005, all charitable organisations in scotland, including churches, are legally required to register their presence with the establishment. applying the search terms “church,” and “church glasgow” on the oscr database, sheila akomiah-conteh—out with the old, in with the new? 57 several results were generated. i then paid attention to groups registered from the year 2000 onwards, and to their postcodes to ensure that they fell within the ambits of my geographical study area. this database also sometimes provided contact details, website addresses and a description of the key activities of the registered churches. this process was highly productive and contributed the largest number of entries (about 50 percent) onto my working list of new churches. beside these methods, i also conducted on-the-ground field investigations by visiting various ethnic and international shops and reviewing the flyers, posters and various other advertising materials being distributed or displayed on their notice boards. i discovered that many new churches, especially the ethnic minority ones, used this means to solicit new members or invite people to special church events. this method also helped to detect and confirm the presence of many new churches in glasgow. empirical research was also implemented extensively in this enquiry for the purposes of discovering, studying and verifying information about the demography, activities, experiences, and practices which define new churches. a questionnaire survey was the principal empirical tool implemented in this study. its main aim was to obtain comprehensive and characteristic information about the new churches discovered in glasgow. the survey was divided into four parts and sought data about the churches and their leadership, the demography and size of their congregations, their meeting and attendance statistics and their theological and missional practices. a thirty-item, online survey instrument was developed and distributed to an overall population of 110 churches and obtained a response rate of 54.5 percent (sixty responses out of 110). the questionnaire also had a completion rate of 91 percent. additionally, for the qualitative element of the research, i conducted in-depth interviews with nine new church leaders and practiced participant observation in the worship meetings of another nine churches over several weeks. these additional methods served as supplementary resources. for instance, the interview questions were developed after a careful consideration of all the e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 58 information gathered from the survey and participant observation exercises. the interviews were then implemented to fill in any gaps in knowledge and for clarifications, whilst also obtaining additional perspectives on any essential issues. the participant observation studies were used to verify some of the findings of the survey, particularly those pertaining to statistical and demographic information about the congregations; this helped to check the problem of self-inflated data, which can sometimes be encountered in self-reported church questionnaires (goodhew and symmons, 2015). furthermore, i paid random visits to more than half of the new churches discovered, including some of those which did not participate in the survey. these visits also enabled me to verify the authenticity of more survey data, as well as obtain new information about the non-surveyed groups through general observation and informal conversations. it is important to highlight that, although writing in 2021, the data presented in this study was collected and analysed between 2016– 2018 as part of a phd study, and must therefore be considered with this caveat in mind1 defining new churches to qualify as a new church for the purposes of this study, the christian group in question must: 1. have been founded or created during or after the year 2000 and up to and including 2016, in the glasgow city council area 2. be trinitarian 3. meet regularly for worship, at least, once a week (not necessarily on a sunday) 1. akomiah-conteh., s., (2018): the changing landscape of the church in scotland: new churches in glasgow 2000–2016 is the phd thesis which presents a full and more extensive review of new churches in glasgow. it can be retrieved from the thesis archives of the university of aberdeen, scotland. sheila akomiah-conteh—out with the old, in with the new? 59 4. have five or more people in attendance at meetings 5. observe the sacraments of baptism and holy communion 6. have a clear, new identity (not a rebranding of a formerly existing church) 7. self-identify as a church and be the main expression of church for the majority of its members (for instance not a cell group of another main church). this seven-point criterion was adapted from the measures implemented by goodhew and symmons (2015) in their focused study of new churches in the north east of england, however, they considered new churches founded from 1980 onwards. the ‘definition’ of a new church for the purposes of this research was intentionally strict to ensure that the total number of churches identified as such were in no danger of being an overcount. this, however, means that several innovative activities, churches and christian groups in glasgow which did not fully meet the set criteria were excluded in this study. had the criterion been more relaxed, the scale of new church foundation in glasgow between 2000 and 2016 may have been larger than reported in this study. for instance, new churches established in glasgow before the year 2000 were not included in this thesis. however, it can be cautiously estimated that at least fifty new churches may have been founded in glasgow between 1980 and 1999. the characteristics of these churches would, however, have been different from the churches established from the year 2000 onwards, particularly with regards to their ethnic diversity. these “pre-2000” church plants would have been significantly white scottish or white british in membership. i know from the current data that at least 99 percent of the ethnic minority church denominations captured in this study did not have any presence in glasgow pre-2000. several fresh expressions of church such as “messy church” and “community cafes,” among others, which engage primarily with the unchurched in different communities, were also excluded. a fresh expression is defined as “a form of church for our changing culture, established primarily for the benefit of people who are e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 60 not yet members of any church,” (goodhew, roberts and volland, 2012: 75). much ambiguity and scepticism surround the definition of what it means to be a “church” for many fresh expressions (church army 2019: 15), and paas (2016) admits that some fresh expressions cannot even be considered as church plants. this is because they normally begin as neutral groups with the potential to develop into mature expressions of church over time. some, however, do not grow to the stage of becoming a church at all in their lifetime. as a result, the majority of these groups also do not practice traditional church rituals such as the administration of the sacraments of communion and baptism as part of their normal practice. these are some of the qualities which disqualified many fresh expression groups in glasgow from inclusion in my study. nonetheless, more than 250 church of scotland congregations across scotland are reported to run messy church groups (church army report 2019). consequently, the inclusion of some of these innovative missional groups and activities in this research would have resulted in a much more significant quantity of new church activity in glasgow. findings and analysis accordingly, this study discovered that a total of 110 new churches were founded in glasgow between 2000 and 2016. this suggests an average church planting rate of seven new groups per annum. sheila akomiah-conteh—out with the old, in with the new? 61 figure 1: when were the new churches founded? collectively, the new groups are nearly as many as all church of scotland congregations currently operating in the same area (there are currently 127 churches in the church of scotland’s presbytery of glasgow). if they were a single denomination, the new churches in glasgow would also largely outnumber the number of roman catholic (65), episcopal (14), methodist (9), united free church (10) and salvation army (9) congregations in the city. th e 2016 scottish church census reported that there were 361 christian congregations in glasgow in total (brierley 2018, section 12.15). my research, however, discovered that new churches were sometimes largely missed and undercounted in large scale, mainstream statistics. th e 2016 scottish church census was hailed to be a comprehensive survey of “all denominations and every local church in scotland” (according to the census information leafl et). its organisers contacted over 3000 local congregations across scotland with self-completion, postal questionnaires and achieved a response rate of 40 percent (brierley, 2017: 11). eight weeks after the scottish national church census, i also implemented my e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 62 questionnaire survey of the new churches in glasgow. this was purposely planned to prevent any confusion or clash of the two surveys, although mine was on a much smaller scale. i also wanted to test the level of participation of new churches in national activities. therefore, my survey asked the question, “did your church take part in the recent scottish church survey held on the 8th of may 2016? if no, why could you not participate?” approximately 90 percent of my respondents in glasgow did not participate in the 2016 scottish national church census. the most popular reason given for their non-participation was “not being contacted by the organisers and therefore not being aware of the activity.” only six out of sixty churches noted that they had received information about the census. of these, however, two forgot to respond and four participated fully. therefore, brierley’s report of 361 congregations in glasgow in the 2016 national church census is an undercount and may not include many new churches, especially those discovered in my study. this once again underscores the importance of small-scale localised research in congregational studies. broad sweeping surveys and overviews of church growth and decline may be important for painting the picture of general developments, but they do not always tell the whole story. with regards to congregational numbers, data obtained from my questionnaire survey revealed that approximately 5,178 people attended the sixty churches which participated in the survey. this indicates an average new church congregation size of 86, comprising of men, women and children (the survey asked the question, “what is the current, total number of your congregation including men, women and children?”). brierley’s 2016 census did not collate church membership numbers for the different council areas. however, it measured sunday church attendance by denomination and council area. according to its findings, 60,890 people overall attended church in glasgow on any usual sunday in 2016. this data suggests that at least 10 percent of the city’s inhabitants go to church on sundays. it must be borne in mind, however, that contemporary trends in churchgoing indicate that many new christian groups also hold sheila akomiah-conteh—out with the old, in with the new? 63 various weekday meetings and for some their main weekly meeting may not take place on sundays. the popularity of online church activity exacerbated by the extremities of the current covid-19 pandemic may also have an impact on the systems of measurement and collation of church attendance statistics in the future. nonetheless, of the 60,890 people attending church in glasgow weekly (on sundays) in 2016, 38,570 went to roman catholic churches, 12,870 went to the church of scotland and 2,310 were baptists. the remainder were from a mixture of other smaller denominations and churches. we now know that the current statistics do not include many new churches in glasgow. therefore, the inclusion of an additional 5000 new church members will definitely add a substantial boost to church attendance in glasgow. if we were to stretch this further by estimating the total potential membership of all the 110 new churches discovered in glasgow using the survey sample as representative, we will end up with a potential sum of 9,178 more church attendants. this was calculated by rounding down the average congregation size of the surveyed churches, which is 86.3, to 80 (rounding down instead of up guards against overestimation, and in this case it is better to underestimate than to overestimate). the membership size of the fifty non-participating new congregations is therefore projected as 4000. all of this illustrates that church attendance figures in glasgow may be higher than has been officially reported, and that new churches may be contributing to christianity in many other ways that are not recognised. types of new churches in glasgow upon studying all the demographic data gathered about new churches in glasgow, a clear pattern began to emerge. the new churches in glasgow all seemed to fall distinctively into three main ethnic groups. these were african, white scottish and asian. a fourth small category which i named “other” contained a mixture of specific national churches. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 64 in a bid to discover how ethnically diverse new churches were, the survey asked respondents: “approximately how many of your congregation fall into the following ethnic groups?” the categories presented to them were white scottish/english/welsh/irish, other white, mixed, black african, black caribbean/black other, chinese/japanese/korean, indian/pakistani/bangladeshi, other asian, other non-white. these same categories were used in the 2016 scottish church census. using data obtained from the surveys, participant observation, church visits, and reviews of information available on church websites and social media pages including pictures and videos, i was able to locate each of the 110 churches discovered into one of these categories. i defined african churches as those groups in which 80 percent or more of the congregation were african, white scottish churches as those congregations where 80 percent or more of the membership were white scottish or white-british, for example, english, welsh or irish, and asian churches as churches with 80 percent or more of the congregation coming from asian backgrounds. “asian background” in this instance means, largely related to or coming from the asian continent. this includes people from pakistan, india, china, korea, japan, iran, syria and the philippines. going by this definition, 51 percent of all the new churches discovered in glasgow (56 out of 110) were african churches, 35 percent or 39 churches could be described as white scottish, and 9 percent or 10 churches could be described as asian churches. the final “other” category was primarily made up of five churches which were exclusively romanian (3) and russian (2). they accounted for 5 percent of new churches in glasgow. sheila akomiah-conteh—out with the old, in with the new? 65 figure 2: classifi cation of new churches in glasgow broadly speaking, a large proportion of the new churches founded in glasgow between 2000–2016 were ethnic minority churches. th e oxford dictionary defi nes ethnic minority as “a group within a community which has diff erent national or cultural traditions from the main population.” th is includes black and minority ethnic (bme), and “other white” communities. according to the uk institute of race relations, bme is the terminology normally used in the uk to describe all people of non-white descent. th e term “other white,” on the other hand, is a classifi cation of ethnicity in the united kingdom, referring to persons who consider themselves “white” but are neither british nor irish (offi ce of national statistics ethnicity data, 2013: 9). statistics gathered in the current study show that 65 percent of the new churches discovered in glasgow (a total of 71 churches) are ethnic minority churches. in these churches, at least 80 percent of the congregation were from bme backgrounds and the “other white” category. th e following pie chart illustrates the two broad types of new churches in glasgow. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 66 figure 3: broad category of new churches in glasgow within the ethnic minority group of new churches in glasgow, african churches make up 79 percent of the total, asian churches make up 14 percent and other white churches occupy 7 percent. african churches are therefore the fastest growing ethnic minority church in glasgow. figure 4: proportion of ethnic minority new churches in glasgow sheila akomiah-conteh—out with the old, in with the new? 67 another interesting discovery about the ethnic minority churches in glasgow is that they are all individually very homogenous. the various african churches in the city, for instance, are largely groups or denominations from specific african countries. it is therefore very easy to identify the ghanaian churches, nigerian churches, french-speaking congolese churches, zimbabwean churches, etc. on the other hand, the asian churches are grouped along linguistic lines. notably, whereas at least 95 percent of the african churches conduct their services in english, nearly all the asian churches hold their meetings in a local language. for example, the three asian churches i visited during my participant observation studies conducted their services in tamil, malayalam and punjabi respectively. in two of these churches i was assigned a personal (english) interpreter during the church service. as the data illustrates, the concept of new churches in glasgow is a distinctively ethnic phenomenon, expressed in three main varieties in the city. new churches in glasgow are either predominantly african, asian or white scottish. truly multi-cultural churches are very rare in glasgow and even among the groups which appear to be mixed, the proportion of people from different ethnicities is most likely to make up only about 10 to 15 percent of the entire group. homogenous churches therefore appear to be flourishing in glasgow. this manifestation has several implications for mission, ecumenical relations and social integration in glasgow and scotland as a whole. the subject of the homogeneous unit principle of church growth has triggered considerable debate among church practitioners and theologians about christian missionary endeavours in contemporary society for decades. this classical notion promoted by donald mcgavran, the pioneer of church growth philosophy states that, “people like to be christians without crossing racial, linguistic or class barriers” (mcgavran, 1970: 198). peter wagner, one of his key supporters also believed that evangelistic efforts were more effective when new converts were assimilated into churches of their own culture rather than into neutral ones where there was no “cultural match” (wagner, 1978). he argued that, e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 68 culturally homogeneous congregations, when they are formed voluntarily and when they are open to all others who wish to become members, possess an intrinsic integrity as christian community. therefore, rather than being denounced, they should be celebrated. rather than being perceived as the causes of racism and discrimination, they should be seen as one of the most viable institutions for healing such social ills. (wagner, 1978: 12) even in a place as culturally diverse as the united states, a national congregation study revealed that about 90 percent of american congregations are made up of at least 90 percent of people of the same race (emerson and smith 2000). although, recent commentators observe that the popularity of the homogeneous unit theory or “people group principle” is waning (schnabel, 2008: 405–406), my study and others show that homogeneous groups such as fresh expressions and ethnic minority christianity are currently thriving in britain. kwiyani (2020) nevertheless maintains that multicultural churches are the future of worldwide christianity, describing the increasing cultural diversity in contemporary british christianity as “the great new fact of our era, and a new normal that is here to stay.” he urges church planters and practitioners to embrace and explore the concept of a multicultural kingdom of god. indeed, racial and social unity is a theological ideal that should be manifested in the church depending on socio-cultural contexts. however, how to translate this model most effectively into the ordinary missionary and local church ministry practice of many contemporary churches remains elusive. therefore, when faced with the reality of the global church, it can be tempting to accept homogeneous churches as an inescapable element of the evangelical landscape. the theological background of new churches in glasgow new churches in glasgow predominantly describe themselves as pentecostal. more than half of the new churches in glasgow (56 sheila akomiah-conteh—out with the old, in with the new? 69 percent) described themselves as pentecostal when asked in the survey, “which of the following terms best describes your congregation?” with the following choices given: pentecostal, evangelical, baptist, roman catholic, church of scotland, episcopal, methodist, orthodox and other. th ose who describe themselves as evangelical are the second largest group of new churches; 29 percent described themselves as such. orthodox churches made up 5 percent of the new churches, while the baptist union accounted for 3 percent. th e free church of scotland church had 2 percent of the total share of new churches, and both the church of scotland and the reformed presbyterians had 1percent. none identifi ed as catholic, episcopal or methodist churches. african churches were the most likely to describe themselves as pentecostal. almost 88 percent of the new african churches in glasgow said they were pentecostal and just 5 percent categorized themselves as evangelical. in sharp contrast, white scottish churches largely classifi ed themselves as evangelical (69 percent), and 18 percent as pentecostal. on the hand, 60 percent of the asian churches also described themselves as pentecostal. figure 5: th eological background of new churches in glasgow th ese fi ndings are consistent with results from similar studies in other parts of britain where pentecostal churches, particularly e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 70 african pentecostals, are known to be spreading rapidly across the country (goodhew and symmons, 2015). similarly, the 2016 scottish church census related that the number of pentecostals in scotland has tripled since 1984, growing at a rate of 3.8 percent per annum. it also confirms that the most popular theological tradition for ethnic minority groups is the pentecostal category. a total of 32 percent of them attended pentecostal churches across scotland (brierley 2017). the following table shows how ethnic minority groups are distributed across some major denominations in scotland.2 table 1: ethnic minorities in scottish churches 2017 ethnicity church of scotland % episcopal church % roman catholic % pentecostal % baptist % white 98.1 96.2 88.4 68.1 92.7 black 0.6 1.8 2.8 20.9 3.3 mixed 0.7 0.5 1.2 3.8 0.8 i/p/b 0.2 0.6 3.4 4.0 0.6 c/k/j 0.2 0.7 0.6 1.3 1.1 other asian 0.1 0.2 2.0 1.0 1.1 other non-white 0.1 0.0 0.3 0.9 0.4 key: i/p/b (indian/pakistani/bangladeshi); c/k/j (chinese/korean/ japanese). church planting among historic denominations in glasgow only seven or 6 percent of the 110 new churches founded in glasgow in 2000–2016 were founded by four of the historic denominations in scotland. these were the church of scotland, the free church of scotland, the reformed presbyterian church and 2. adapted from table 4.7. in brierley (2017). sheila akomiah-conteh—out with the old, in with the new? 71 the baptist union of scotland. th e church of scotland established one new congregation in the whiteinch area of glasgow in 2000. th is remained its sole new church plant in glasgow in sixteen years.3 th e free church of scotland, on the other hand, launched one new church in govan in 2013, and started a new romanian congregation or “roma church” which is attached to its existing parish in govanhill. th e reformed presbyterian church of scotland also started one new congregation in the west end of glasgow in 2011, and the baptists planted three, one of which was the restart of a previously closed congregation in dennistoun. figure 6: church planting in historic churches in glasgow 2000 2016 evidently, the mainline or established scottish christian denominations started very few new churches in the period under review. consequently, 94 percent of the new churches presently in glasgow have no association with the historic denominations. th is fi nding further highlights emerging changes in the christian religious landscape in glasgow, scotland and britain as a whole. 3. th e church of scotland has established several “fresh expressions” groups operating across glasgow; however, none of them met the strict standard for inclusion in this study as a new church. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 72 conclusion this inquiry set out to explore the phenomenon of new churches in glasgow in the years 2000–2016, in a bid to contribute to the fast-developing discourse on this subject in britain. by pioneering a study of new church trends in the context of glasgow, the largest city in scotland, it investigated the scale, characteristics and impact of new churches which have appeared in the area during the period. this research adds to the growing body of empirical evidence which indicates that, while many churches across the country become empty and close every year, numerous new congregations are also being founded and are flourishing across various regions of modern-day britain. however, the incidence and contribution of these new groups are less documented or recognised in the national statistic because the old methods of enquiry alone are no longer sufficient to present a true and balanced picture of the current condition and rapidly transforming landscape of the church in britain. therefore, localised and grass root research such as this study conducted, is necessary to capture the true nature of growth and or decline in specific regions. the outcomes of this investigation have implications in three main areas of debate: first, homogeneity and the future of christian mission in glasgow and scotland as a whole, second, ecumenism and inclusive church partnerships, and thirdly, immigration and the wider social context. the proliferation and impact of new churches represent a seismic shift in the christian landscape of the city of glasgow and scotland as a whole. old forms of the church are giving way to new expressions, and a new diversity in the demography and theological character of the city. ethnic minorities and immigrant communities make diverse economic, social and spiritual contributions to their host communities. their agency and contribution to religious diversity, especially to british christianity, should particularly be welcomed, acknowledged and celebrated. notwithstanding, new churches have markedly altered the landscape of the church in glasgow in the last sixteen years. sheila akomiah-conteh—out with the old, in with the new? 73 bibliography brierley, p. “introduction: uk christianity 2005–2015.” faith survey church statistics. 2011. retrieved from https://faithsurvey.co.uk/download/ csintro.pdf. ———. capital growth what the london church census reveals. tonbridge: adbc, 2014. ———. growth amidst decline: what the 2016 scottish church census reveals. london: adbc, 2017. ———. uk church statistics no. 3, 2018 edition. london: adbc, 2018. brown, c.g. religion and the development of an urban society: glasgow 1780– 1914. unpublished phd thesis, 1981. ———. the death of christian britain: understanding secularisation 1800– 2000. oxon: routledge, 2001. bruce, s. god is dead: secularization in the west. oxford: blackwell, 2002. church army research unit. “the value of messy church.” church of scotland. 2019. retrieved from https://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/news_and_ events/news/2019/church_army_report_reveals_the_value_of_messy_ church. ———. “playfully serious. how messy churches create new space for faith.” church army. 2019. retrieved from https://churcharmy.org/ groups/319979/church_army/web/what_we_do/research_unit/ playfully_serious/playfully_serious.aspx. cray, g. mission-shaped church: church planting and fresh expressions of church in a changing context. london: church house, 2009. emerson, m. o. and c. smith. divided by faith. oxford: oxford university press, 2000. equality results from the 2011 census release 2. pg. 20. chart 2.7. government of scotland. 2011. http://www.gov.scot/publications/2014/03/7340/20 field, c. “the haemorrhage of faith? 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(ed.). church growth in britain: 1980 to the present. farnham: ashgate, 2012. goodhew, d. and a. p. cooper (eds). the desecularisation of the city: london’s churches, 1980 to the present. london: routledge, 2018. goodhew, d., a. roberts and m. volland. fresh! an introduction to fresh expressions of church and pioneer ministry. london: scm press, 2012. goodhew, d., and r. barward-symmons. “new churches in the north east.” durham university. 2015. retrieved from http://community. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 74 dur.ac.uk/churchgrowth.research/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ ncnereportfinal.pdf. green, b. “church growth in east london: a grassroots view.” the centre for theology and community. 2016. retrieved from http://www.theologycentre.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/church-growth-digital.pdf. gwanmesia, b. t.. blessings under pressure: the work of migrant churches in the city of rotterdam. rotterdam: skin, 2009. hale. r. b. the beloved st mungo, founder 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https://www.ons.gov.uk/methodology/classificationsandstandards/ measuringequality/ethnicgroupnationalidentityandreligion. osgood, h. “the rise of black churches.” in d. goodhew (ed.), church growth in britain: 1980 to the present. farnham: ashgate, 2012. paas., s. church planting in the secular west: learning from the european experience. grand rapids: eerdmans, 2016. rogers, a. being built together: a story of new black majority churches in the london borough of southwark. london: university of roehampton press, 2013. schnabel, e. j. paul the missionary: realities, strategies and methods. nottingham: apollos, 2008. wagner, c. p. “how ethical is the homogeneous unit principle?” occasional bulletin of missionary research 2(1), 12–19. 1978. walker., j. testing fresh expressions: identity and transformation. london: routledge, 2014. rooms.indb 117 roxburgh, alan j., and robinson martin. 2018. practices for the refounding of god’s people: the missional challenge of the west. new york: church publishing. isbn: 978-0-8192-3384-4 reviewed by christopher b. james university of dubuque theological seminary, dubuque, ia cjames@dbq.edu discovering the future of church in the west calls for a journey of refounding—not tinkering around with efforts at reformation, renewal or revitalization, or so alan roxburgh and martin robinson assert in their first co-authored book. roxburgh has been writing, speaking and consulting since he contributed to the seminal missional church in 1998. robinson is principal of formission college in birmingham, england. the two have been collaborating for several years as lead editors of the online journal of missional practice. this book offers a serious, fresh, and promising engagement with newbigin’s enduring question: can the west be converted? while answering “yes,” the book paints the situation as much more dire than the gloss typically found in ministry titles. warning e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 118 against the reflex to direct missional energies toward fixing the church to make it work in the world as it is, they invite readers to see the missional challenge as grappling with the unviable nature of the modern west. they propose the vocation of the church in the midst of the unraveling of the west is to join with god in the refounding of an unmoored society. roxburgh and robinson identify the heart of the problem as modernity’s wager—the bet that life and society could flourish without god. while modernity laudably yielded scientific progress and democracy, there is a growing awareness that the modern west is coming apart at all its seams—economically, culturally, socially, and politically. how did we get here? with an impressive range of citations from sociologists, economists, and philosophers, the first five chapters offer a retrospective. chapters 1 to 3 chart the emergence, ascent, and crisis of the modern west. contradicting the secularization thesis, these chapters insist that “the modern is not a radical rejection of the west’s christian past, but a transformation of the location of its meaning an identity . . . a migration of the sacred from christian structures into the state, the economy, and the self ” (30). with the elevation of the state and individual, the mediating institutions that constituted social life and made human flourishing possible withered. god, meanwhile, did not disappear but was rendered useful, an asset to the individual’s self-actualization and the nation-state’s legitimation. chapter 4 explores the signs of unrest and hope for transformation that bubbled up in the 1960s—but which were ultimately assimilated into a standard feature of west, the quest for selfactualization. chapter 5 asks “where were the churches?” during the twentieth century, concluding that in myriad ways the western church’s responses remained locked inside of modernity’s wager, anxiously searching for ways to fix the church and make them relevant within a world that had made god a useful tool for the self. in framing the nature of the challenge facing god’s people, chapter 6 exposes the historical break modernity represents in its formation of society apart from some sacred frame. individuals, christopher b. james—practices for the refounding of god’s people 119 the state and the market are now seen as the primary agents in the world. in chapter 7, lessons are drawn from the reflections of a leading occupy activist who concludes that real revolution requires divine intervention. this intuition of a transcendent other is widespread in the draw of spirituality, and it is among these people, drop-outs from formal churches, roxburgh and robinson suggest, that god’s people ought to attend to the possibility of refounding. chapter 8 critiques metaphors commonly used understand the church’s situation—exile, resident alien, diaspora—and proposes journey, like that unknown trek of abram and sarai, as a more fruitful source of imagination. in addition to unraveling— the primary metaphor they use to describe what is happening to the west—the book evocatively describes the evidence of god’s agency as fermenting and bubbling. these metaphors indicate that long before signs rose to the surface, a process began out of the public eye that is now bursting forth all over. chapters 9 and 10 offer a sense of a way forward, proposing that the “vocation of the euro-tribal churches is to fuel an insurrection against the dominant lie of modernity’s wager. they can live into that vocation to the extent that they create spaces wherein god’s people hear, practice, recapitulate and engage the invitation to awaken to god’s agency in the world” (131). while refusing the existence of a blueprint for any future other than the persistent remembering of god’s agency, the authors do highlight several practices for the refounding of god’s people. first, they propose a shift in language and practice from congregations to parishes. churches comprised of christians living in the same geographical neighborhood are, in their view, “the minimum requisite for refounding” (148). communal praying of the daily office is the second practice they propose as the grounding needed before discernment. third, they insist on stability, the willing commitment to reside and remain in a place. for stability “provides us a place from which to see, listen to, and dwell with the people around us” and thus rediscover “how to discern and respond to god’s agency” (153). the fourth practice calls on euro-tribal churches to surrender their comfortable positions of e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 120 “meeting needs” and instead enter into relationship with neighbors as guests rather than hosts, as god has done. to resist the privatization of christian life, roxburgh and robinson propose making eucharistic liturgies, common meals and hospitality key practices. finally, seeking the common good of all in the local is proposed as an eschatological way of embodying the hope of christ’s renewal of all things. chapter 11 celebrates the “blessed reflex” of missionaries coming to the west from africa, asia and latin america under the conviction that it will only be through a “humble readiness to become learners and guests among those other christians that god is bringing among us today—the migrant, the immigrant, the people who were in this land before the colonizations began” that the euro-tribal churches will find their way (169). chapter 12 briefly reflects on the role of church planting in refounding, noting that most efforts at innovation remain captive to the impulse to make the church work. those familiar with roxburgh’s joining god, remaking church, changing the world will find similarities but this is a much more sober and scholarly account. the former makes a great study in a church group as i can attest. i can also testify that this book makes for great discussion among masters and doctoral students as well as the precious pastor or denominational leader who is looking for relief from the monotony of mission technique publications. the gift of this book is its combination of unflinching sobriety about the gravity of the challenge facing god’s people and the hope that echoes in the conviction that the unraveling of our time is in fact not simply things falling apart, but the disruptive work of the spirit in which god is inviting the churches to “come to their senses and embrace this gospel call to join with god in the refounding, the reweaving, the remaking of social life in an emerging west” (5). roxburgh and robinson have given a serious diagnosis that i suspect will be widely welcomed. their prescription, however, is sure to disappoint those looking for a way to adapt their church for success. it is not that the practices they propose are themselves particularly onerous, it is that they are out of step christopher b. james—practices for the refounding of god’s people 121 with the world in which we live. that is, of course, the point. the practices are intended to prepare a people to join god in remaking the world, and in so doing to discover themselves refounded. rooms.indb 26 transforming discipleship missional church, discipleship and the discourse of transformation amongst the urban poor. daniel njuguna daniel njuguna is a church of england parish priest whose ministry began with ordination in the anglican church of kenya. he has worked amongst poorer communities in the urban context for over sixteen years. he is undertaking part-time professional doctorate research in practical theology at the university of chester. contact: daniel.njuguna@btinternet.com abstract bevans’ concept of transforming discipleship foregrounds a fundamental symbiotic relationship between discipleship and mission. the interplay between both practices is central to the wider debate of contemporary church social engagement under missio dei. he explains that the notion of baptism and theosis embedded in the idea of transforming discipleship points to a concrete transformation of the human experience and condition. this forms the premise of this article in exploring how christian practices of discipleship and mission articulate a process of human becoming daniel njuguna—transforming discipleship 27 and participation in the life and mission of god that centres on a critical engagement with lived reality. this understanding offers a consistent framework of fostering a mutual relationship between local churches and communities in the poorer urban context, which often face the twin challenge of church and social decline. it questions a simplistic binary correlation between the practices of discipleship and mission. such correlation often leads to a seeming dichotomy in christian practices, with mission being portrayed as a means of achieving a quantitative outcome and discipleship a qualitative one. instead, the focus of this article is to elucidate how discipleship and mission are interwoven, that both start with god and are integral to the actualisation of god’s salvific plan in the world. introduction this article adopts bevans’ (2016) notion of transforming discipleship in an attempt to address the apparent dichotomy that often emerges from the question about the relationship between mission and discipleship, and their objectives. the aim of this paper, therefore, is to demonstrate that both mission and discipleship are critical in the general flourishing of christian ministry. as such, both contribute to personal and social transformation, and the growth of church in numbers and depth of discipleship. the examination of the notions of baptism and theosis embedded in the idea of transforming discipleship offers a critical analysis of the process and participation of human beings in the life and mission of god, an actualization of salvation in the world. these notions underpin a transformation in the relationship between human beings and god and the transformative work of the god in the world, in and on believers individually and as a community, which is attuned to missio dei. by paying attention to urban ministry, theology and social theoretical frameworks in advancing transformation discourse amongst the urban poor, the article asserts the importance of an inductive approach to both practices of mission and discipleship e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 28 that is rooted in people’s experience and reality of the local context. importantly, the argument draws also on my experience as a church of england incumbent in this context. essentially, this forms the basis of the complex task of this work in seeking to demonstrate how church’s participation in missio dei requires paying attention to the diverse and multiple factors that give meaning to the experiences of communities in this context. overall, it is the hope of this work to make a critical contribution in rethinking missio dei amongst communities and individuals who are on the edge of hegemonic powers and discourses. conceptualization of the idea of transforming discipleship in the keynote address transformed discipleship: missiological reflections (2016) to the world council of churches, bevans makes a bold claim that the phrase “transforming discipleship” does not appear in the three major documents on mission that have appeared in this second decade of the twenty-first century . . . these two words, nevertheless, form a significant part of the vocabulary of the contemporary missiology across the churches . . . they offer a rich entrée into missiological thinking and practice today (75–76). bevans draws the idea of transforming discipleship from the seminal writing on missiology transforming mission: paradigm shifts in theology of mission (1991), by david bosch. he points out that discipleship underpins a transformation of an individual and of their lived experience, thus intimating an inherent relationship between mission and discipleship: discipleship, rooted in baptism is not something static, something that is not only focused on the transformation of personal holiness and personal relationship with the lord . . . in the same way that bosch speaks of mission, discipleship at its most profound level . . . is to transform reality around it (2016: 78–79). daniel njuguna—transforming discipleship 29 in summary, bosch’s notion of transforming mission charts the concrete changes (paradigm shift) in the understanding and practice of mission in christian mission history. a key aspect of his argument, the one that has influenced contemporary thinking and practice in mission is that christian mission is inherently god’s prior activity towards the world. the participation of the church in mission, therefore, transforms the church as well as the reality in the world. bosch emphasizes that the church must continually undergo transformation if it is to remain faithful to the call to join in the mission of the triune-god, missio dei (1991: 181–189). crucially, bevans uses the notion of transforming discipleship to unpack how both mission and discipleship are fundamentally interwoven and grounded in god’s prior activity towards the establishment of his reign in the world, within the economy of salvation. the following section explores how bevans draws on the notion of baptism and theosis to demonstrate that transformation both in discipleship and mission underpins a process of becoming and participation of human beings in the life and mission of god in the world. this provides a strong foundation for this work in addressing the apparent juxtaposition of the missional and discipleship commitments of the church. christian practices and activities of mission and discipleship express a process and concrete participation in the missio dei, “in ways both prior to and beyond the conventionally ecclesial or religious” (graham, 2018: 215). therefore, it is the argument of this work that such participation is enhanced by practices that are essentially rooted in the reality of human experience. the notion of baptism in transforming discipleship bevans states that baptism transforms “our understanding of discipleship, committing us to constant transformation as we continue to follow jesus” (2016: 80). he points out, further, that this transformation is rooted in the incarnation and attested in scripture (rom. 6.3; 2 cor. 5.17; jn 8.12; gal. 3.27-28). it is mediated e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 30 and articulated simultaneously in the baptism service with the help of different liturgical practices and cultural elements (2016: 79–81). therefore, baptism embodies a process of becoming and participation in the divine life that engages with the whole of human existence. the centrality of the christian rite of baptism in christian tradition has drawn great interest over the years, with emerging multiple perspectives that have significantly influenced contemporary discourse and practice. for instance, croft (2002) notes a fundamental shift that locates baptism as the foundation for the ministry of all god’s people: roman catholic and protestant churches have made enormous strides since the middle of the last century in recovering and developing [the] concept of ministry of the whole people of god linked with the recovery of a richer understanding of baptism. the development has vital implications for the ordering of the life of the church (88). i argue that this dominant perspective which places baptism as foundational for ministry and accessible to all god’s people has a significant influence on the understanding of the relationship between discipleship and mission and their objective. it underlines what happens when human beings are incorporated into the life of god by faith and form a community in which everyone’s gifts are set free to serve and actualize the realities of the kingdom of god in the world (williams, 2016: 68). zizioulas (2011) makes a key point that links the principle of transformation in baptism with the transformation of the world, as a kind of salvation. he argues that baptism as practiced by the church today “cannot be understood apart from a pre-existing baptismal reality in the mystery of salvation” (116). this reality comprises the historical and eschatological dimensions of salvation which are united in the person of christ. the historical factor is attested in the act of baptism with water, signifying the crossing of the red sea to freedom in the promised land. as for the eschatological dimension, he states that, “it is only by the virtue of the daniel njuguna—transforming discipleship 31 outpouring of the holy spirit that christian baptism could exist as the baptism of both water and the spirit” (2011: 116). the historical and eschatological dimensions therefore underpin baptism as a process of transformation that involves human beings’ participation in god’s salvation plan. it is fundamentally an incorporation of humans into “god’s prior initiative and action in effecting the work of reconciliation and redemption in the world” (graham, 2018: 215). zizioulas asserts, further, that the primary reality that grounds baptism in the church, “is a reality which does not depend on the belief or unbelief of the individual since it is the reality of christ himself ” (2011: 117). this point presupposes that practices of mission and discipleship by the baptised members of the church are essentially grounded in god’s prior initiative. both discipleship and mission, seen through the lens of baptism within the wider context of salvation history, offer the starting point in talking about the world and humanity not as wholly chaotic and in need of remedying. instead, as the locus of real and concrete transformation effected through the mysteries of the incarnation. this transformation involves an intimate sharing in the divine life and an ongoing participation in that life through faithful engagement with the daily realities of life. this engagement becomes the very means by which christian practices of discipleship and mission are continually transformed and informed. groome articulates this point lucidly: because the world is the arena of god’s saving activity, human history must be the primary locus, the point of both departure and arrival for rational discourse about god. this means that the praxis of god in history as it is co-constituted through human praxis is our primary text and context for doing theology [and ministry] (cited in stoddart, 2014: 24). the argument linking the transformation embodied in baptism to the concrete transformation of lived experience is critical in formulating a key argument of this work, as outlined later. it stresses how important it is for transformation discourse in the poorer urban context to adopt a contextual approach that e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 32 acknowledges local experience and lived reality as normative in shaping christian practices of discipleship and mission. the notion of theosis in transforming discipleship according to bevans, the idea of theosis (deification) offers “a helpful language to describe the reality of participation in the life and mission of god” (2016: 81). the notion of theosis is premised on the principle of the incarnation. it highlights the view that god in christ became human so that humans could become divine (bevans, 2016; zizioulas,1985; russell, 2004; morris, 2014; gorman, 2015). the scope of this work does not merit further investigation into the scholarly material around the study of theosis. the focus of our investigation is on the reality of the transformation of human beings articulated in the notion of theosis that is pertinent to the main thrust of the discussion about christian discipleship and mission. drawing on the work of russell (2009), bevans claims that the theological idea of theosis intimates an understanding of christian participation in the divine nature of god as a combination of personal transformation and the transformation of the world. russell argues that theosis rooted in the incarnation and embodied in christian baptism “is nothing less than our entering into partnership with god, our becoming fellow workers with him for the sake of bringing divine economy to its ultimate fulfilment” (2009: 36). accordingly, gorman (2005) posits that the idea of the call for christians to “live the gospel” in pauline writings is premised on the principle of transformation in theosis. this stresses the invitation to the church to participate in the life of god and his transforming mission in the world, and the engagement in mission and discipleship embodies the response (300). gorman’s latest work, abide and go: missional theosis in the gospel of john (2018), goes further and marks what could be a turning point in articulating how theosis and mission are interwoven through the lens of the fourth gospel. he delineates how participation and daniel njuguna—transforming discipleship 33 transformation in missio dei is embodied by life together with one another and a changed world, by dint of the spirit: participation in god’s mission effects transformation. however, this does not mean that human beings accomplish their own salvation or deification; participation means, at least for john (as for paul), a mutual indwelling of the triune god and believers that entails the empowering and transforming work of god, by the spirit, in and on believers individually and as a community (23). therefore, theosis provides a rich language and a useful conceptual framework to talk about how a believer’s incorporation into the life of god in baptism is lived out in practice. the transformation articulated in both baptism and theosis is linked to the transformation of the world within salvific history. this transformation does not suggest that human beings become part of god’s substance or nature, a fourth member of the trinity, but that they become god by being embraced evermore into the existence of god’s self (zizioulas, 1985). the incarnation is the ultimate fulfilment of the transformation and incorporation of human existence into the life of god. this is attested in the scripture, “for in christ all the fullness of the god lives in bodily form, and in christ [humanity] has been brought to fullness” (col. 2.9-10). this view is helpful in developing an understanding that presents practices of mission and discipleship as an embodied expression of the incarnation within the economy of salvation. in the following section, the article sets out the framing of transformation embedded in theosis and baptism from a soteriological perspective. but before this, it is important to highlight that the world council of churches’ conference on world mission and evangelism, moving in the spirit: called to transforming discipleship (2018) in arusha, assimilates bevans’ notion of transforming discipleship with its deep embeddedness in theosis and transformation: discipleship is both a gift and a calling to be active collaborators with god for the transforming of the world (1 thessalonians 3:2). in what the church’s early theologians e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 34 called “theosis” or deification, we share god’s grace by sharing god’s mission. this journey of discipleship leads us to share and live out god’s love in jesus christ by seeking justice and peace in ways that are different from the world’s (john 14:27) (jukko and keum, 2019: 2). this work does not seek further analysis of the report. however, this is recommended for critical examination of various perspectives emerging from the notion of transforming discipleship, which are shaping the church’s engagement in missio dei globally. transformation and salvation there are multiple perspectives on salvation and the attempt to distinguish them is complex (sobrino, 2008: 57). however, sobrino (2008) makes an important point that highlights the perspective that locates salvation in the concrete reality. he stresses that “this concreteness should be recalled in order to counter the danger of ‘universalizing’ in nonhistorical ways the concept of salvation and realities that accompany it” (57). morris (2014), accordingly, advances an argument that makes a significant contribution towards an understanding of the concreteness of salvation through the lens of theosis. he draws the distinction between the idea of being made in god’s image and growing into the likeness of god underpinned by the notion of imago dei: the starting point for talking about human beings is not that they are utterly wretched and lost, but that they were created in god’s image, to grow into god’s likeness and that, despite their capacity to sin, still reflect the beauty and goodness of their divine creator. the sin from which human beings need salvation is the sin that leads to the suffering and oppression of any human persons at the hands of others. it is real and concrete [salvation] (52). this argument underscores an important point on human transformation and participation in effecting salvation on the plane of history, embedded in the notion of baptism and theosis, daniel njuguna—transforming discipleship 35 and actualized in the incarnation and the proclamation of the message of the kingdom of god: jesus’ embodied life and ministry in particular, rather than his death, is where salvation can be discovered . . . it is also in his teaching and ministry, his praxis . . . he reveals an alternative understanding of salvation (morris, 2014: 55). vincent donovan in his writing on cross-cultural mission, christianity rediscovered (1978), similarly, explains that the basis of salvation is best envisaged in the role of israel’s messiah fulfilled in jesus to establish the shalom. he contests that, “shalom is much more than personal salvation. it is at once peace, integrity, community, harmony, and justice” (157). from this view, we can draw the conclusion that the salvation plan realised through the incarnation and encapsulated in the judeo-christian salvation history unfolds in the realities of human life and experience. therefore, the understanding of salvation from this perspective provides an essential framework that is helpful in the examination of how the incorporation of human beings into god’s initiative (missio dei) through baptism is lived out and practiced as expressed in theosis. the call for the church to participate in missio dei cannot, therefore, be reduced to a simplistic binary correlation between the mission and discipleship imperatives of the church. it is understandable that the attempt to examine the relationship between practices of mission and discipleship, including their theological bearings is a complex undertaking and requires sophisticated methods of enquiry and interpretation. however, the notion of transforming discipleship underpins the importance of an inductive approach to the church’s engagement in missio dei; that acknowledges lived experience and context as fundamental in shaping christian practice. this provides a fundamental critique to christian ministry in general. before turning our focus to ministry in the poorer urban context, the article first evaluates the juxtaposition of practices of mission and discipleship, which tends to polarize their relationship and objective. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 36 juxtaposition of mission and discipleship the church’s prolific literature and training resources on contemporary discipleship is replete with the view that discipleship provides a fundamental mechanism of engaging in the wider mission of the church. for instance, croft (2002) points out that the church has the crucial role of “providing context for growth in discipleship. . .where commitment can be encouraged nurtured and sustained and where ministry can grow” (89). davison and milbank (2010) however raise the question that “if everything is for the sake of mission, even worship and the church, then what is mission for?” (53). this view not only highlights the apparent tension in grappling with the question of the relationship between mission and discipleship but reveals a dominant view that tends to place mission as the outworking of christian discipleship. a recent research project by st peter’s saltley trust (2017) addressing the question about what helps christians grow explores the significance of social engagement in inspiring personal faith. the finding indicates that “christian mission work is best seen not as the fruit of discipleship, but as interwoven in discipleship” (jones, 2017: 5). this outcome, substantially, supports the argument in this article that mission and discipleship are complementary as far as the church’s participation in missio dei is concerned. however, the idea that ‘mission is interwoven in discipleship’ plays into the hands of the dominant view that sees discipleship as everything. overall, the report is symptomatic of a shift towards a richer understanding of how contemporary experience and situation are key in framing the question of the relationship between mission and discipleship. the acknowledgement that lived experiences and the realities of the local context are critical in shaping practices of mission and discipleship challenges their juxtaposition. this is well highlighted in the church of england recent report setting god’s people free (2017): we, ordained and lay, must teach and equip lay people to follow jesus confidently in every sphere of life in ways daniel njuguna—transforming discipleship 37 that show the difference the gospel makes . . . we need to enable every member of our congregations—lay and clergy alike—to follow jesus confidently wherever they are. several emerging discipleship and mission resources such as fruitfulness on the front line and frontline sundays by london institute of contemporary christianity (licc) are beginning to embody this shift. they are providing resources for worship, mission and discipleship that predominantly use an inductive approach rooted in people’s daily experience and shaped by the reality of their context. licc sees its role as equipping god’s people to see their mission field beyond church organised activities and to “create open, authentic, learning and praying communities that are focussed on growing whole-life disciples who live and share the gospel wherever they are” (london institute of contemporary christianity). the emerging inductive approach adopted by churches for their mission and discipleship initiatives affirms the central tenet of the idea of baptism and theosis, mapped earlier. the transformation underpinned in both ideas points to the possibility of human beings being able to participate more fully in the divine life in the concreteness of lived experience. moreover, it repudiates the view of baptism offered by the church as simply a means of transmitting christian belief. instead, baptism is presented as a church tradition that enhances the transformation of a believer who is already incorporated in the salvific plan embedded in missio dei and unfolds in the concreteness of life. in that case, the objective of christian engagement in practices of mission and discipleship has less to do with what the church does, and much more with their significance as an embodiment of god’s reign and activity in the world. this emphasizes the fact that lived experiences and realities of a local context are fundamental in shaping practices of mission and discipleship. they are essentially a response to and an expression of god’s initiative in bringing salvation to the world. pope francis (2013) points out how this understanding is important e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 38 especially among communities on the edge of hegemonic powers and discourses: we need to let the poor and marginalized evangelize us. through struggles in and for life, marginalized people are reservoirs of the active hope, collective resistance, and perseverance that are needed to remain faithful to the promised reign of god (198). description of ministry in the parish in this section, i set out the urban context where i practice as the incumbent before investigating and analysing the reality of ministry amongst the urban poor, broadly. the church of england parish statistics (church urban fund) indicate that the parish is ranked among the most deprived, 1382 out of 12,425. it has above average levels of child poverty, with 27 percent of primary school pupils receiving free school meals compared to 23 percent nationally. ethnically, the parish demographic shows, noticeably, little diversity with just over 16 percent of the population being nonwhite british. this contrasts significantly with the surrounding areas which are over 77 percent. in the past two decades the parish has experienced multiple new housing developments, which have attracted young families. in the past few years, the church has run multiple social projects aimed at the local community on a weekly basis and occasionally. these activities include parents and toddlers’ play session, community social forum (natter’s café), family summer camp and a collection centre for the local food bank. interestingly, in comparison to worship activities, these activities draw a wide range of members of the community from diverse backgrounds; economically, socially and culturally. the majority of those attending the social activities tend to be from the social housing and new housing estates. in activities such as parents and toddlers and summer camp, young families’ attendance is higher with an average of thirty families with children between 1–10 years old attending daniel njuguna—transforming discipleship 39 regularly compared to five in sunday worship. while less than 1 percent of people of non-white british background make up the regular worshipping congregation, social activities tend to attract a higher percentage of over 5 percent. although these projects are aimed at meeting some of the growing social needs of the local community, the church lacks a consistent framework of understanding the experiences of those who attend. this amounts to a missed opportunity of drawing on the experiences of the participants in shaping how the activities are run and understanding if they are meeting the intended objectives. importantly, while some of the social projects in the parish are mainly informed through the national church and diocesan mission initiatives, several others have been tried and failed. this presents a serious question on how the relevance of the projects to the reality of the local context is taken into account. this work, therefore, addresses a wider problem in church ministry and reveals how grassroots reality and experience is critical to the church’s social engagement and practices of mission and discipleship. in general, the idea to examine the relationship between mission, discipleship, and social engagement began to develop in 2013. i was in my second year in the post when a decision was made to close the church building in the neighboring parish, which had served the local town since the middle of the nineteenth century. two decades before, the parish had a thriving congregation attending church regularly and an important ministry to children and families through the local church of england primary school. however, the steady decline in church attendance meant that the existence of the parish was no longer viable. the church closed in september 2016, triggering the process of finding a new way of providing ministry to the local community with the help of neighboring parishes. i began to think about the future of my parish which despite facing similar challenges of numerical decline continues to be an integral part of community life through social engagement. in this work, i argue that the complex task of measuring church growth and the impact of ministry should take into account multiple e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 40 factors connected to both the reality of the local context and the changing shape of church life. in his reflection on the history and changes in the innercity and church life, in light of industry and globalization, brown (2018) emphasizes that the development of an ecclesiology and missiology adaptable to changing times remains critical (89). such development draws on an inductive approach to the practices of mission and discipleship and is premised on a dialogical framework that pays attention to people’s experience, christian tradition and doctrine. so far, the examination of bevans’ idea of transforming discipleship through the prism of the christian tradition of baptism and the doctrine of theosis, offers a critical framework of engaging with the tension inherent between the three dialogical poles. importantly, brown maintains that, “all discipleship, all mission, takes place in the theological interim, between pentecost and the parousia” (2018: 90). therefore, the task of the church is to work with this tension and embody the spirit of christ until god’s kingdom is finally revealed in fullness. as outlined in the following section on general analysis of ministry amongst the urban poor, this requires integrated theological and social perspectives that encourage seeing and thinking about mission and discipleship as complementary. as such, this supports a key premise of this article that seeks to articulate how discipleship, mission and social engagement are interwoven. indeed, they play a critical role in personal and social transformation, and congregational growth in numbers and depth of discipleship. a broader analysis of ministry in the poorer urban context ecclesiological studies and theological reflection in this context emphasize that it is critical for the church to pay attention to the social and cultural dynamics in engaging the local communities. this is particularly in response to new geographies of poverty and marginalization under global urban hegemony (atherton, 2000 daniel njuguna—transforming discipleship 41 & 2003; sheldrake, 2001; green, 2003; inge, 2003; lynch, 2005; baker, 2009; davey, 2010; shannahan, 2010). in the last two decades, urban social meaning and cultural identity have focussed on the impact of globalization and the effects on the social and cultural reality of the urban communities (atherton, 2000; castells, 2000 & 2010; baker, 2009; shannahan, 2010; davey, 2001 & 2010; baker and graham; 2018). significantly, andrew davey notes that “the urban population changes with social transition, migrancy and community tensions. new demands are made on urban settlements to accommodate a vast array of groups and minorities within a common space” (2001: 30). i draw on manuel castells’s work the rise of network society (2003) and the power of identity (2010) in which he links globalization with emerging patterns of social forms and cultural identity in the urban context, with significant impact on the experiences of local communities. he uses the concept of "network society" in arguing that in a globalised urban context, “the search for identity, collective, or individual, ascribed or constructed becomes the fundamental source of social meaning” (2003: 3). for castells, identity therefore is people’s source of meaning and is constructed “on the basis of a cultural attribute . . . that is given priority over other sources of meaning” (2010: 6). these identities and associated meaning stand in stark contrast to those traditionally “defined by norms structured by the institutions and organizations of society” (2010: 7). castells’s analysis charts key social and cultural processes in contemporary urban societies with cumulative effect on social and cultural experiences. his argument is fundamental in demonstrating how identities constructed on the basis of common experiences can generate shared meaning among heterogenous urban communities and galvanize them for social action and change. various theological studies draw on his work in examining the constantly changing social landscape in britain’s urban society, and the effects of emerging social meaning and cultural identity on the experiences of communities and christian ministry (gilroy, 2000; beckford, 2004; baker, 2009; davey, 2001 & 2010; shannahan, 2010). e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 42 urban ministry and theology there is evidence that models of ministry in urban communities that become normative often are formed in completely different social and geographical contexts, thus failing to take full account of experiences at the grassroots (davey, 2001 & 2010; green, 2003; vincent, 2003; shannahan, 2010; sheldrake, 2014). in the last few decades many communities in the deprived urban context have faced the “double whammy” of community and church decline (atherton, 2003: 94). nevertheless, the relationship between church and community in this context is explicit in social engagement (atherton,2003; baker and miles, 2010; baker and smith, 2010; charlesworth and williams, 2017; church urban report, 2014). however, despite the explicit positive links between churches and community in this context through social engagement, there is little impact on numerical growth reflected in church attendance. this situation is clearly reflected in my parish context, as already explained. while this reality places the future existence of the church in the balance, nonetheless, it provides an opportunity to explore new ways of engagement that will transform both the church and community and enhance their relationship. given that urban spaces are generally contested and fluid, there is real concern that the ministry of the anglican church, based predominantly on the parochial system with an entrenched idea of localism, may not have adequate flexibility in its ability to fully embrace the complexities of urban reality (baker, 2009). sheldrake (2014) notes the tension in the contemporary british urban context as the sense of identity embedded in a locality is de-emphasized in favour of one that relates to a wider framework of people (117–118); thus, underlining castells’s idea of network society as discussed above. shannahan calls for models of british urban theology that express the complex fluidity of the contemporary urban life and forge new cross-cultural theology for the contemporary globalized urban landscape by paying serious attention to migrants and diasporan communities (2010: 11–15). davey (2010) argues for a theological and ecclesial practice based daniel njuguna—transforming discipleship 43 on an inclusive and participative model of ministry. as an example, he cites ecumenical ministries in the urban context involving migrants who are equipped to contribute to life in their local communities primarily through engagement with the local church (29–33). from a practical theology perspective, the primacy of christian practice hinges not on the privileged position over theory or tradition but as the starting point in the attempt “to understand human action and thought and the meanings inherent in practice including their theological bearings . . . and requires sophisticated methods of enquiry and interpretation” (2017: 12). this is denoted by the term ‘praxis’ which “points towards something that is more reflexive, that is both value-directed and value-laden. it is the meanings we bring to practice, and the meaning-making associated with our actions” (12). the participation and focussed attention on the lived reality of urban communities in practices of mission and discipleship, therefore, has a significant role in orientating the practices of the church and shaping its overall ministry in this context. crucially, the theological reflection framework underpinned by praxis encompasses values and meanings beyond religious practices, which are constructed through social processes involving human interaction within a social context (ward, 2012: 4–5). this liberates the church to work in partnership with other social agencies in contributing to the common good without comprising its fundamental christian principles. the contribution of the church to the common good is generally referred to as faith-based social capital, which is a combination of religious capital and spiritual capital (baker and skinner, 2006; baker and miles-watson, 2010). i would recommend an in-depth exploration of faith-based social capital in relation to christian community engagement as a future undertaking. in the following section, the article draws further on examples of transformative ministry amongst the urban poor to articulate how the idea of transforming discipleship challenges the church to commit to a discipleship and mission that is attuned to life together e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 44 with the people in the concrete reality of their daily experiences. such commitment orientates church practices towards the world, which both the church and the community inhabit together. advancing transformation discourse amongst the urban poor there is strong evidence indicating that for local churches in the poorer urban setting, transformation discourse involves tackling poverty and other social challenges that tend to disproportionally affect their communities. this is seen as an actualization of salvation (atherton, 2003; church urban report, 2014; ruddick, 2014; eckley, ruddick and walker, 2016). for instance, in her qualitative research in manchester, ruddick engages with the transformation discourse in a poorer urban context by adopting an inductive approach to the practices of discipleship and mission. this is underlined by a fundamental shift in the team’s perception of mission: “we changed the language from ‘entering in to transform’ and replaced it with ‘joining in with god’s transforming activity’” (2014: 60). further investigation into the experiences of both team members and members of the local community suggests that transformation discourse from this perspective confronts the dominant understanding of salvation. it provides a language that aligns it with missio dei. it enables those involved to articulate concrete positive changes in the neighborhood as signs of hope and acknowledge profound changes in their lives and others. ruddick explains that these experiences embody the biblical models of salvation, mission and discipleship that are core to the team’s ministry (60–77). interestingly, a recent survey by british social attitudes (2019) suggests that 40 percent of people who go into a church building regularly do so not for worship but for a social or community activity. this resonates with the argument that contemporary urban ministry contributes “to social transformation through community activities rather than church-centric perspectives and practices” (ruddick, 2018: 143). daniel njuguna—transforming discipleship 45 according to barrett (2019), the challenge for the anglican parish church with its well-defined geographical boarders is on how it can fulfil its role of a “common space” for the socially and culturally diverse urban communities (30–33). his reflection is based on an examination of the emerging role and identity of his local parish church in a multi-ethnic urban parish context following the destruction of the church building in a fire incident. this has led the congregation to engage the local community through various social activities such as street parties held in the open spaces on the street corners, including multiple venues provided by the local schools. he notes that these events often draw participants from diverse social-economic and ethnic backgrounds who, otherwise, would not have any connection with the church. he draws a conclusion that while the role of the church as a “host” has dissolved with the loss of the building a new one has developed: “a place of interconnectedness, interdependent ‘common’ spaces serving many and diverse functions” (2019: 32). importantly, the analysis above illustrates how critical reflection on the relationship between church and community challenges the framing of the question about the relationship between mission and discipleship, and their expected outcome. the missiological idea underpinned by missio dei insists that the goal of church mission and discipleship must be understood “as less a matter of personal salvation or institutional church growth, so much as a participation with the triune god in the task of redeeming the whole of creation as a work of reconciliation” (graham, 2018: 215). this challenges the pervasive binary framing of the objectives of both mission and discipleship in terms of quantitative and qualitative outcomes. normally, mission tends to be presented as the means of achieving the former and discipleship the latter. however, the argument presented in this paper emphasizes that church practices and activities embody a kind of salvation in the world, encapsulated in missio dei. furthermore, it draws to the attention the fact that practices of mission and discipleship, through the agency of the baptised members of the church, are critical in contributing to numerical growth and depth of faith. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 46 a consistent theological reflection drawing on ecclesial and missional perspectives is therefore vital in affirming faith and activities that give meaning to christian belief at the personal and corporate levels. this is whilst facilitating a process of practical discernment that allows new perspectives to emerge as churches engage with the complex realties of lived experiences that define individuals and their local context. it is from this perspective that the anticipated research underlying this work, aims to develop a consistent method of inquiry and theological reflection that enables the church to draw on the realities of the local context in shaping its practices and overall ministry. to achieve this, the research seeks to use an ethnographic method of inquiry into the experiences of members of the local community who attend social activities provided by the church in the parish. conclusion if the logic of the notion of transforming discipleship discussed in this paper is assimilated and developed, then this means addressing, critically, the question about the way in which the relationship between churches and local communities is framed. first, it is understandable that speaking of mission and discipleship separately may be conceptually useful for churches in formulating their ministry action plan (map). however, the theological idea of missio dei underpinning the notion of transforming discipleship challenges a binary approach that polarizes personal and social transformation. this is inconsistent with the understanding of salvation explored in this paper. second, an attempt to frame the relationship between churches and their local communities requires paying serious attention to people’s experience and reality of the local context. this calls for an openness to diverse voices and even contradictory meanings arising from the experiences of members of the community from different backgrounds. as such, church’s participation in missio dei in the complex urban context requires paying attention daniel njuguna—transforming discipleship 47 to the diverse and multiple factors that give meaning to the experiences of communities: religious, historical, cultural, social and economic. bibliography archbishops’ council. setting god’s people free report. church of england. 2017. retrieved from https://www.churchofengland.org/media/3858033/ 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prophetic-utopian essays. new york: orbis, 2008. stoddart, e. advancing practical theology: critical discipleship for disturbing times. london: scm, 2014. swinton, j., and h. mowat. practical theology and qualitative research. london: scm, 2016. ward, p. perspectives on ecclesiology and ethnography. grand rapids: eerdmans, 2012. williams, r. being disciples: essentials of the christian life. london: sage, 2017. zizioulas, j. d. being as communion: studies in personhood and the church. new york: st vladimir’s seminary press, 1985. zizioulas, j. d., and l. b. tallon (ed.). the eucharistic communion and the world. new york: t&t clark, 2015. rooms.indb 6 community on mission in a world wounded by poverty a call to solidarity, vulnerability and liberation beatrice w. e. churu beatrice w. e. churu teaches in tangaza university college (tuc) in nairobi, kenya. her areas of interest and research are african culture, spirituality and family studies, church and mission, wellbeing and religion. she has published in these areas over the last 20 years.  she is currently serving as dean of the school of arts and social sciences in tuc.  contact: bchuru@tangaza.ac.ke mary n. getui mary n. getui teaches in the department of religious studies, the catholic university of eastern africa.  her areas of research interest in which she has published widely include religion, culture, gender, education, health peace and reconciliation.  contact: mngetui@yahoo.com beatrice w. e. churu & mary n. getui—community on mission 7 abstract this paper explores two faces of poverty—the poverty of the wretched of the earth, and that of the lords of poverty. both are bereft of dignity and humanity. illustrations from the african context are given. christian community on mission in a world choking on poverty is highlighted as modelled on the jesus event, the humanness of god—a paradox of vulnerability bringing breath and life. ubuntu, the african disposition to choose growth into fuller humanity, is proposed to aid a meaningful african christian engagement with the various forms of poverty. experiences of an encounter between the two faces of poverty at st martin’s catholic social apostolate in nyahururu demonstrate how the christ experience of openness to humanness—solidarity and vulnerability— can turn poverty into liberating grace. introduction this paper discusses the plight of people living in poverty. though there are many kinds of poverty, it places it in two broad categories. there are those who live the burden of deprivation of essential provisions in life. we have called these the “wretched of the earth” following a title that franz fanon (1963) gave to a book describing, almost in prophetic terms, destitution all the world over. the second category are those who, in the words entitling another book, we call “the lords of poverty” (hancock, 1989). these are the persons who control the structures that uphold the poverty of the wretched. controlling the sources and the exchange mechanisms, they ensure that they have a windfall, in good and in bad times. they too are poor; their poverty is in compassion. along with the covid-19 pandemic, the murder of george floyd and subsequent global reactions count as the most outstanding shared experiences of the year 2020. carried out in the view of the entire world, the drama of the exercise of brute power over the weak raised the question of poverty, powerlessness and exclusion to unprecedented, immediate shared attention. the image of e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 8 george floyd is representative of oppressed people everywhere, the “wretched of the earth” whose very life’s value is considered debatable by some. his executioner may, in a dramatized yet true sense, represent the oppressing forces—the lords of poverty. floyd’s dying words, “i cannot breathe,” re-echo today and resound into a human history blighted by oppression. indeed, the cry “i cannot breathe” resounds across ages, gender, race and religion, as the earth and humanity’s two types of the poor choke under the load of exploitation, brutality and ignorance. after discussing some expressions of the “poverties” in africa, the paper discusses the call of the gospel to mission amidst these poverties, taking lessons from the jesus event, the incarnational movement that models solidarity, vulnerability and liberation as a core christian message. for the african christian community, this is proposed as the way to live ubuntu. finally, a wonderful example of living ubuntu in a christian community on mission in the face of poverties within a kenyan setting is highlighted. it offers hope for every local reality blighted by various poverties. choking “the wretched of the earth” the poverty of the deprived has many faces, among them economic and financial, social, educational, health, spiritual and environmental. economic and financial poverty: according to compassion international (2020), economic and financial poverty propels people to choose lifestyles that lead them to isolation. this is often the fate of the urban poor in most african towns and cities, distanced from rural relatives and unable to raise the means to reconnect. this isolation is also suffered by the rural poor, especially the elderly. social and relational isolation is a pain-filled kind of poverty. african communities highly regard and safeguard relationships. horizontal relationships of the individual and peers within the family and the wider community are important, and can impact vertical relationships all the way to that of the individual and nature/ beatrice w. e. churu & mary n. getui—community on mission 9 cosmos. accordingly, the social isolation wrought by material impoverishment metastasizes into psycho-spiritual pain and poverty. social poverty: some community members are victims of poverty due to age—either too young or too old to fend for themselves. worse still is the abandonment of the elderly in semior nonfunctional settings while their children seek gainful employment in the cities. however, the very lack of employment opportunities casts the shadow of poverty across generational divides. loneliness and lack of basic provisions for many aged persons is coupled with powerlessness, guilt and cultural deracination for their progeny. the elderly lack the breath of joy of watching proudly over their grandchildren, the expected normal life trajectory. that the poor in africa are often destitute (theuri, 2003) remains persistently and pervasively true. gender differences, innately a gift and resource for collaboration, have also become a divide that fosters choking by exclusion and exploitation. physical and sexual violence across the gender divide at home, in the work place, in church and in the public arena are a scary reality in contemporary african communities. educational poverty: in most parts of africa, the poor cannot access educational opportunities. many african youth cannot compete nationally and internationally because the quality of education provided in formal public schools does not measure up to the pace and demands of the global economy; they cannot breathe in the economies of exclusion set up against them. africa’s cultural mainstay in education was value-rich, relevant to the context, practical, life-long, corrective and accommodating of all segments of the society (mosha, 2000). indigenous education has, however, been largely neglected in a bid to join the national and international educational race. while many african countries offer free basic education, the reality is that the facilities in public educational institutions are wanting, hence the springing up of private schools. modern education is therefore alienating while it is, ideally, aimed at integrating many african children into the world of today. many cannot achieve the goals e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 10 of twenty-first-century education; yet they lose the rich values of indigenous education, especially the identity formation that gave them the security of a strong sense of belonging. most african young people cannot breathe, neither in their cultural domicile nor in the liberal market economies of today’s world. health poverty: the wretched of the earth are unable to access health care services or ensure preventive health practices. home to tropical diseases such as malaria, africa is also battling emerging diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cancer. africa is the region most ravaged by hiv and aids and she has not been spared by covid-19 either. in the indigenous setup, there were health experts who treated various ailments (mbiti, 1969, 1991). colonialism and sometimes misguided christian missionaries, however, dealt a blow to these health institutions, labelling their experts as “evil witch doctors,” forbidding christians from seeking their services and effectively side-lining their knowledge. their skills have not been passed to younger generations because of this negativity. meanwhile, western-modelled medical care is choking the poor in africa—financially, psychologically, emotionally and even physically. spiritual poverty: spirituality is understood as that deep connection with oneself, with others and with the power(s) regarded as central in and to one’s being. african spirituality is predominantly rooted in connectedness with family and community, as mediums of connection with the ultimate spirit (mbiti). kinship is, in effect, the essence of life and it is especially expressed in ancestral relationships (magesa, 1997). africans who lack adequate social connection are also very likely to experience spiritual insignificance and death. across cultures, the touch of others is often a mediator for the openness to the spiritual wealth of each person. in africa, the vertical relationships between an individual and his/ her elders, ancestors and the creator, are considered to be critically important. however, the african poor are spiritually traumatized through social disconnection brought by active discouragement beatrice w. e. churu & mary n. getui—community on mission 11 of ancestral veneration in christian communities. without these, the markers of vivacious spirituality are absent from african lives. religion could assist towards appropriating spirituality. more often than not, however, religions are part of the mechanisms that generate spiritual impoverishment in africa. like education and health services, religion in africa is highly commercialised and is often truncated to manipulate the disadvantaged poor. this is the ethos driving the so-called “prosperity gospel,” a materialistic business arm of christianity in africa. the poor are turned into a laughingstock as they part with their meagre resources to pay for indignities that accompany the antics of prosperity evangelists. environmental poverty: the wretched of the earth bear the brunt of environmental degradation the world over. in laudato si, pope francis (2015) underscores the association of the fate of the poor with that of the exploited earth. in africa, one of the many examples is the cumulative reduction of food independence of the population, through suppression of natural seeds from subsistence farmers, with the aim of expanding markets for multinational companies that endeavour to monopolize seeds (shiva, 2016; shiva, 2013).  food shortages, drought, floods and diseases, all attributed to environmental challenges, are compounded by the abuse of the land through the use of fertilizers and unnatural seeds, eventually compromising sustainable productivity. the choking of the poor along with the choking of the earth advance at high speed. choked: the “lords of poverty” we now turn our attention to the poverty of the “lords of poverty.” there is an assumption that a lord cannot be poor. after all, a lord is expected to be bedecked with plenty: money; land, houses, vehicles and power. what then does the poverty of the lords entail? acquisition and accumulation: being too engrossed with acquisition and accumulation of material things, at the expense of sharing these to alleviate the suffering of the poor, is a dire form of e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 12 human poverty. this paradox is a reality in africa and in global economics. the obsession with acquisition regardless of its impact on others, perpetuating the poverty of the wretched by creating structures that sustain their poverty, is in fact a manifestation of inner poverty—wanting in humanness. the deficit mentality, obstruction and feigned ignorance: the “lord of poverty” is one who is in a position to influence decisions to address the structures that maintain poverty of the ‘wretched’ but deliberately chooses to promote avenues of maintaining the status quo, for his/her own benefit. the lords of poverty are those who generate obstruction of access to relief for the “wretched”; they ignore the plight and pain of the poor and are preoccupied with positions, consumption and power. maintaining situations or social structures that are unfavourable to the wellbeing of others only because it is in one’s favour is an expression of smallness, separateness and insecurity. it is the inability to associate others’ plight with one’s own. it is to participate in a deficit mentality where one feels that one can only win at the expense of others. not only is this mentality a poverty induced mind-set, but also poverty-generating, creating a vicious cycle of destitution and powerlessness. these lords of poverty cannot breathe the fresh air of compassion towards other human beings. they too are impoverished because of their lack of a sense of connection to humanity. the lords of poverty are often able to recruit the very “wretched” whom they exploit, getting them to buy into the notion that their situation is acceptable, is their lot and destiny. kanyandago (2005) rightly opined that the woes of societies are wired in the people’s imagination, so that even with regime changes, without questioning this imagination, such unfortunate situations become self-perpetuating, locking the poor into the arena of poverty, and compounding their wretchedness. a classic example is the situation often observed in the cycles of electoral politics in many african countries: the lords of poverty—the politicians—purchase the votes of the poor whose wretchedness has generated loss of vision of a different reality for themselves. beatrice w. e. churu & mary n. getui—community on mission 13 dehumanised: inasmuch as they have so much in material possessions, the lords are actually poor. their approach and attitude to the reality of the poor are witness to a dire experience of emptiness and fragility. to invest so much in the poverty industry manifests a fragility or inadequacy experienced by the lords of poverty at personal and corporate levels. their poverty is a bottomless pit which can only keep consuming in order to assure themselves of their own doubtful importance. feeling greater than others is essential to their sense of worth, leading to a sectionalized humanity, and desensitized to the suffering they wreak on others and on creation. though the final report of the millennium development goals project celebrated significant numbers of people pulled out of poverty (united nations, 2015), achievement was way below target. admirable efforts are made under the banner of sustainable development goals, yet the pace towards eradication of poverty has been decelerating since 2015, and the world is already off track to eradicate poverty by 2030 (united nations, 2020). with covid-19, the deceleration is accentuated and poverty is on the rise. by june 2020, already 70 million more people had been pushed into extreme poverty (united nations 2020). is this to confirm that the poor will always be with us (mk 14.7)? what can a christian community’s response be? christian mission as a nozzle of oxygen for a choking world the perspective of mission that this paper adopts is that in which the faith community observes god in mission and experiences its own meaning in joining god’s mission. mission is participation in the self-giving action of god (bosch, 1991). this disposition underscores a fundamental christian stance. god breathes into human conditions and they become life-giving. as in the creation story, god’s spirit enlightens the potentials hidden in the darkness wreaked by poverties (gen. 1.1-2). poverties raise the opportunity to design a new inclusive world order. the lie that poverty accords to the wretched of the earth, making e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 14 them believe in their own sub-humanity, and the lie that the lords of poverty live, making them believe that a dignity for themselves can only be at the cost of others, can be turned around by creative compassion. the story of christian redemption is embedded in the incarnation, a divine mission of solidarity. christian community is, therefore, invited to embrace this movement of solidarity in its mission. in genuine solidarity, the community and its members experience liberation from their various poverties and empowerment for ongoing mission. this section uses two sources for reflection on the meaning of christian mission vis-à-vis various poverties in africa. first is the jesus event, the life of one man imbued with the fullness of humanity. second is an african understanding of jesus—the one who has the fullness of utu (to use the kiswahili term)—humanity. african christian community can grow in understanding of jesus’ mission through reflection on the utu/ubuntu spirituality (ubuntu has the same meaning as utu in southern african bantu languages). these two sections will feed into the last part of the paper where a case of an african christian community response to both poverties and the liberating power of this human solidarity is highlighted. the jesus event—breath of life for mission in poverty the incarnation of jesus is the central event of christian meaning, enlightening all human experiences. jesus’ approach to human experience is the invitation to fullness of life (jn 10.10). the incarnation experience, as lived out by jesus, is a challenge for both kinds of the poor—the wretched of the earth and the lords of poverty. many times, he invites the poor to an active faith that breathes a fuller life: lift up your mat and walk (jn 5.8), stretch out your hand (mt. 12.13); recognising the validity of their aspirations to flourishing, as in the case of bartimaeus (mk 10.46-52). in the widow with a small offering, jesus recognises and praises the greatness of heart of some of the poor, even when their visible means seem small (lk. 21.2-4). he also invites the lords of poverty of his day to beatrice w. e. churu & mary n. getui—community on mission 15 put away the crutches of their positions, as in the story of levi (lk. 5.27-32), their preoccupation with appearances and to embrace the privilege of solidarity with the poor and the marginalised and so breathe in their own humanness (lk. 19.1). both levi and zacchaeus find new joy in following jesus, while the rich young man goes away sad (mk 10.22), unable to yield to the desire of his own yearning for eternal life, and staying a prisoner of his great wealth. in calling out every one of these poor people, jesus demonstrates the wisdom that grows ever so slowly in israel and in our mission communities, that while humans may be preoccupied with appearances, god looks at the heart (1 sam. 16.7; jer. 17.10). these encounters of various poor people with jesus also make explicit that while a person can be imprisoned by one form of poverty or another, lacking the breath of life, once freed, the person breathes in solidarity with other human beings. both types of formerly poor, like zacchaeus and bartimaeus, once freed of their shackles, follow the way of jesus (lk. 19.8-9; mk 10.52). in his mission, jesus holds strong convictions and accepts the consequences of his choices even when they are unattractive (mk 3.6). rendered vulnerable, he refuses to lean on crutches that compromise his congruence: “if you are the son of god . . . man shall not live by bread alone” (lk. 4.1-4). unwilling to abuse his power, he shows that the measure of the full human person is the willingness to accept the consequences of living his/her convictions. living authentically necessarily brings one face to face with his/her own vulnerability. the passion story from gethsemane through to good friday highlights how jesus lived his life in authenticity that rendered him vulnerable. hawkins (2007) has signalled how christian commentaries of the passion have tended to downplay the vulnerability of jesus in gethsemane. yet, the evangelist matthew twice mentions how jesus was in great turmoil in gethsemane (matt. 26.39), standing in need of the comfort and support of his disciples. jesus’ passion and death throw light on the paradigm of his whole life; all given for others, his life was a precursor to his death (rutledge, 2015). his solidarity with and liberation of the poor brings him into conflict with the imperial e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 16 forces of rome and their collaborators among the jews (luke 23.2). and his authenticity and vulnerability vis-à-vis all poverties lead to a revelation of who is on his side when god raises him (acts 2:24). following the insights of de la torres, vellem (2017) interprets the resurrection of jesus as a continuation of his insurrection against oppressive forces. in the new testament communities, the insurrection continues, building on the liberating encounter with the spirit of jesus. the cross, foolishness and weakness to the world, is the wisdom and strength of god (1 cor. 1) by which the post-resurrection communities disentangle their squabbles, their various poverties, and find the meaning of their presence/mission in the world. a christian community, led by the spirit of jesus, becomes itself a sign of a new counter-cultural economy of love (1 cor. 12–13). the new testament is a witness of christian communities, born of the death and resurrection of jesus, which struggle with the menace of various poverties as in 1 corinthians 11, where some members get drunk and others go hungry. but, the vulnerability of these early christian communities mediates illumination of community mission; the spirit of god is experienced to break through the barriers of these poverties and bring new breath, forging new communion. muntu—the african understanding of full humanity and breath of life contemporary africa occupies a place in global geo-economics and geo-politics that portrays her as the poorest continent. the levels of corruption on the continent seem emblematic of her people as the gaps between her rich and poor are splashed across world screens. yet africa suffers historical dehumanisation that has choked her ability to reach into the breath of life in her cultures. the poverty of the african people—demonstrated by both her wretched of the earth and her lords of poverty—has to be seen against the backdrop of extreme cultural deracination that has produced a people unable to appreciate the depth of their inner wealth and strength. beatrice w. e. churu & mary n. getui—community on mission 17 the church in africa needs to admit her share of responsibility, along with other agents, for the disrepute to which the african cultural heritage is put by her own people. many african christians are suspicious of their cultural heritage. a recent unpublished research study among urban african youth in nairobi shows that they are very suspicious of african cultural practices and regard african culture as no longer relevant in the contemporary world. indoctrinated to a point of self-negation and self-hate (kanyandago, 2014), how can a people who view their past as “worthless” and “bereft of god’s sacred action” have the confidence to seek god’s ways in the present, and partake of god’s mission? without value for one’s own culture, the people become anthropologically impoverished. many african christians do not conceive of african-ness or african cultural heritage as of any worth; many others conduct their christian life and their ordinary african cultural lives as parallel domains that do not interact (magesa, 2004). this is a natural outflow of the presentation of christ to africans almost exclusively in non-african symbols. the works of many african christian scholars, such as ela (1988) and magesa (2004) decry the tragedy that the proclamation of the gospel in africa has had little regard for african sentiments and experience. the exclusion, for example, of african symbols from african christian life and worship in favour of western ones candidly sends the message of the inadmissibility of african-ness into christian life (ela, 1980, 1988). such religiosity that continues to discourage african christians from associating african-ness with authentic christianity is part of the fabric of deracination and disintegration. it becomes a religiosity of hindrance, rather than aid, to the creation of a new and better world (sobrino, 2008). this alienates african christians in at least two ways: most cannot feel fully at home in a christian community, others find convenience in this “distance,” seeing that the demands of authentic christian living are rather removed from them. for them, it becomes enough to pay lip service to the gospel while placing their leaders on a pedestal. complacency thus becomes well-established; without rocking the status quo either e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 18 inside the christian community or in “secular” spaces. our two categories of the poor each ride in their lane. the opportunity is missed for religion, in this case christianity in africa, to be the bearer of mystery (sobrino, 2008), actively seeking and offering liberation from the changing shapes and expressions of poverty. how can the incarnation resuscitate an anthropologically impoverished community? kambanda (2016) recognises that the way to make sense of the gospel in africa is through her cultural resources. through these, african christians can find the wisdom to communicate the gospel in ways that reach their own hearts. this message is often recognised and quickly ignored. might we have “lords of poverty” even in christian communities who desire to keep the confidence of the christ encounter away from the “wretched of the earth” by locking it in categories outside of their cultural milieu? conversely, african spirituality can enlighten the way to propagate compassion for, solidarity with and liberation of the poor. a church of the poor and for the poor must be one in which the poor can recognise themselves, as pope francis has insisted in evangelii gaudium; one that speaks in symbols that are meaningful to them, as ela has strongly pleaded, where god’s selfrevelation, the mission of salvation and of liberation are intricately bound together (mayemba, 2015). this becomes the incarnational approach to poverty mediated through the african utu spirituality, rediscovering and reinterpreting the muntu (to use a related term from isizulu)—the christ of african spirituality. more efficacious images of the christ experience can help christian communities read the presence and salvific action of god in the poverties of africa. this is not least because the predominant images of christ in africa continue to be those that accompanied the initial missionary enterprise—a conquering christ image from european christendom, choking everything african, good or evil. there is still little in african christian discourse to affirm the possibility of being fully christian and fully african. this absence hampers the solidarity, vulnerability and liberation mission of christ in african christian community. to remedy this, we propose that the rampantly cherished notion of the muntu across beatrice w. e. churu & mary n. getui—community on mission 19 africa portrays an anthropological standpoint from which african people can appreciate deeply the presence and action of the cosmic christ, whose footprint far surpasses that of the historical jesus. muntu, the full stature spiritually initiated african person, is responsive to the challenge of life-long maturation. to be muntu—fully human in african philosophy—is the fullest human accomplishment (magesa, 1997; sibanda, 2014). the muntu is the carrier of the ntu, the spirit that humanizes (jahn, 1961). interestingly, the greatest manifestation of the muntu is his/her goodness, la joie de vivre, compassion, care and relational gifts (idoniboye-obu and whetho, 2013: 230). the incarnate word possessed by the spirit brings good news to the poor, freedom to captives and recovery of sight to the blind (cf. lk. 4.16–20). african christianity can well use the image of muntu to mediate an efficacious understanding of christian community on mission vis-à-vis poverties of all kinds. the african christian community can make active sense of the action of the holy spirit (rom. 8.14–17) in terms of the muntu—filled with goodness, possessed by the ntu; the person and community stop living in fear and timidity, as do many african christians, and become channels of breath for others—engaging in mission. as a manifestation of the ntu in the muntu, the african christian becomes a vehicle of the cosmic force (spirit) to perpetuate life-giving energies of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness and self-control (cf. gal. 5.22)—building a more reconciled universe across the poverty divide. the cosmic christ present in creation, enfleshed in muntu comes closer to the african poor—both “the wretched” and “the lords,” reaching into the realities of their african lives, touching their ancestry with blessing and healing, and calling them forth to integration. effectively, the muntu christ can generate an eloquent image of african christian maturity and communion—“i am because we are; and, since we are, therefore i am” (mbiti, 1969: 108–109)—crossing the racial, ethnic, gender, age and class divisions that wound the people. a discourse of christ as muntu can enlighten and mediate the engagement of solidarity between the e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 20 various poor, and a liberation that empowers the mission zeal of african christian communities responding to many poverties. both the wretched of the earth and the lords of poverty in africa can together find a path to authentic following of christ by returning to the invitation to live the ntu spirituality. the encounters experienced in st martin’s catholic social apostolate (csa) provide a model of how this togetherness of the different kinds of ‘the poor’ can bring wholeness for all. it demonstrates how the balm of healing the poverties becomes available in the encounter of solidarity which then yields liberation. the spirit of jesus here shows up in efficacious community, where the african soul, the muntu, is upheld and a new humanity emerges, healed and recreated in encounters of community in mission. vulnerability and communion in st martin’s catholic social apostolate—breathing together into new life st martin’s catholic social apostolate (csa) was founded on the experience of vulnerability. a priest encountered a mentally and physically disabled man, excluded from society in a community where such disability is highly stigmatized. he then gathered around himself a community that committed to walk with its members who lived with disabilities, to integrate them and restore to them the dignity that is theirs. while doing this, many individuals in the community rediscovered their own higher dignity and purpose. they are brought to their own wholeness through the privilege of ministering to the disabled and others whose life circumstances have otherwise put them into the lot of the “wretched of the earth.” many people have associated with st martin csa in an effort to reach out to the needy. the surprising yet repeated experience of these “helpers” is how, while they themselves were reaching out, they were in turn “broken open” to their own poverty and vulnerability, and brought to healing. they move from considering themselves to be helping the needy, to an understanding of being united beatrice w. e. churu & mary n. getui—community on mission 21 with the vulnerable; they become aware of their own woundedness and of their being healed through the loving encounter with other vulnerable people. many reader-friendly and heartwarming publications that come out of st martin csa bear witness to the multiple experiences of mutual edification when an able-bodied/ minded person reaches out to a “disabled” one and discovers his/ her own fragility. a woman who works in the centre as a health professional is on the verge of resigning from her job because she feels treated beneath her dignity. she encounters a young boy with serious disabilities and, with his sister, is deserted by his parents. the children not only greatly appreciate the visit of this health professional, but bear upon her to share the very little food they have obtained from a school feeding programme. as she shares in this strong moment of solidarity, the woman discovers the real meaning of her profession—a divine invitation to communion. she decides to stay on the job, to give up the higher salaries she might fetch elsewhere, to work on her relationship skills with her colleagues to enable her to continue participating in this mutually liberating ministry. the boy with disability and his sister are agents of a liberating experience that helps the health worker breathe new life into her career; she is a breath of life for them in visiting them and giving them not only the healthcare support but also the joy of being remembered as valued (l’arche kenya and st martin communities, 2014). in another episode, as a young man drives to work every day he notices a line of people with mental and physical disabilities, “the wretched of the earth,” struggling to their daily place of work. he experiences the pull to stop and speak with them but dreads the possible dependence on him that he imagines is sure to ensue from such an encounter. one day, however, he yields to the tug on his heart and dares to stop. from this first meeting, there ensues not dependency, but a transformative friendship with these people whom he earlier feared to be just a drag on his life. in his witness, he wonders who he would be without their friendship in which he is loved unconditionally. with them, he does not need to perform, to pretend to be or to have anything. he is loved for just e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 22 being there. this liberating friendship with the most unlikely has become his “life breath.” through it, he experiences his true worth (l’arche kenya and st martin communities, 2014). in these st martin’s experiences, the sense of giving and receiving is mutual and the exchange is deeply humanizing. each person brings their “poverty” along with their gifts. together, they experience solidarity, vulnerability and liberation. how so incarnational and mission-authentic these experiences are! they indicate the path of mission in the midst of the woundedness that is all around the world. mutual vulnerability opens up the possibility of experiencing and sharing in missio dei, irrespective of which side of the poverty divide one may be. because of st martin’s csa, a new understanding of the church and of mission has emerged in the town of nyahururu and its environs. it may not be the stated or formal ecclesiology, but all who have encountered the st martin’s csa approach know the church as a living community of love and mercy without borders, one on a hope-restoring mission. st martin’s csa stands out as a christian community on mission in today’s world. as an open community, it does not limit itself to people who profess the same faith. christian-inspired though it is, the apostolate encourages the local community residing in the neighborhood of a person in need—the family and the neighbors—to partake of the grace of walking together, contributing to finding solutions. by its openness to touch the various forms of vulnerability, increasing the breath of life through solidarity, and liberating communities and their members from debilitating poverty, they turn poverty into the breath of life. conclusion vulnerability is certainly the lot of the wretched of the earth, lacking as they do any cushion from the edges of adversity. whether in large-scale enterprises such as whole nations or in small ones such as domestic employment, the lords of poverty fight against vulnerability. vulnerability is feared by all. yet, is it likely that it is precisely beatrice w. e. churu & mary n. getui—community on mission 23 through openness to vulnerability that the light slips in and shines on the path to healing the world and bringing wholeness to individuals and communities in the likeness of the experience of the incarnated christ? in her tedtalk entitled “the gift and power of emotional courage,” susan david (2017) touches on the value of vulnerability, saying: “life’s beauty is inseparable from its fragility.” true, everyone seeks the beauty of life. the problem comes from the futile obsession with avoiding life’s fragility. the human spirit discerns true beauty in the healing compassion of vulnerable solidarity, and rejects the façade. in her highly appreciated research, dr brené brown (2012) has elaborated how openness to vulnerability brings not only pain and shame but also becomes the gateway to profound and lasting joy and peace. vulnerability is key to accessing the depths of humanness and building community. genuine community, in turn, is both empowering and liberating as it provides the security from which members can reach out in solidary that reverberates in liberation. the foregoing is patterned in the life, death and resurrection of jesus, the incarnate christ. it can be understood better in the african christian community through the prism of muntu. mission, for christian community, confronted with the detriments of poverty, can hope to address such ills through openness to the same path as the incarnate word. in faith, christian community can see potential wholeness in the face of poverty through the spirit, and discover the courage to breathe. bibliography bosch, d. j. transforming mission. maryknoll: orbis, 1991. brown, b. daring greatly: how the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent and lead. london: penguin uk, 2012. compassion international.“children and poverty: the types and characteristics of poverty.” compassion.com. 2020. retrieved from: https://www. compassion.com/poverty/types-of-poverty.htm david, s. “the gift and power of emotional courage.” tedwomen. 2017. retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/susan_david_the_gift_and_ power_of_emotional_courage?language=en#t-146844. ela, j. m. african cry. new york: orbis, 1980. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 24 ———. my faith as an african. new york: orbis, 1988. fanon, f. the wretched of the earth. new york: grove, 1963. idoniboye-obu, s., and a. whetho. “ubuntu: ‘you are because i am’ or ‘i am because you are.’” in alternation 20(1), 229–247. 2013. retrieved from http://alternation.ukzn.ac.za/files/docs/20.1/11%20ido.pdf. hancock, g.  lords of poverty: the power, prestige, and corruption of the international aid business. new york: atlantic monthly, 2019. hawkins, p. s. “he who hesitates is human: literary portrayals of the gethsemane ‘moment’.” in joynes, c. e. and n. macky (eds.), perspectives on the passion: encountering the bible through the arts. london: continuum, 2007. jahn, j. muntu: an outline of the new african culture. new york: grove, 1961. kambanda, a. “if you want cows, you must sleep like a cow: the bishop in the church of pope francis.” in a. e. orobator (ed.), the church we want: african catholics look to vatican iii. new york: orbis, 2016. kanyandago, p. “culture as the basis for promoting prosperity for all.” in j. n. k. mugambi and e. m. cornelli (eds.), endless quest: the vocation of an african christian theologian: essays in honour of laurenti magesa. nairobi: acton, 2014. ———. a future for africa: critical essays in christian social imagination. scranton: university of scranton press, 2005. l’arche kenya and st martin communities. beloved: transforming encounters. nairobi: paulines, 2014. magesa, l. african religion: the moral traditions of abundant life. new york: orbis, 1997. ———. anatomy of inculturation: transforming the church in africa. nairobi: paulines, 2004. mayemba, b. “reviving a church of the poor and for the poor and reclaiming faith doing justice and seeking liberation: convergence between pope francis and jean-marc ela.” in a. e. orobator (ed.), the church we want: foundations, theology and mission of the church in africa: conversations on ecclesiology. nairobi: paulines, 2015. mbiti, j. s. african religions and philosophy. nairobi: eaep, 1969. ———. introduction to african religion. nairobi: eaep, 2nd ed, 1991. mosha, r.s. the heartbeat of indigenous africa: a study of chagga educational system. new york: gorland, 2000. pope francis. “laudato si. on care for our common home.” the vatican. 2015. retrieved from http://www.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/ encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudatosi_en.pdf rutledge, r. the crucifixion: understanding the seath of jesus christ grand rapids: eerdmans, 2015. sibanda, p. “the dimensions of ‘huntu/ubuntu’(humanism in african sense): the zimbabwean conception.” in international organization of scientific beatrice w. e. churu & mary n. getui—community on mission 25 research, journal of engineering 4 (1), 26–29. 2014. retrieved from http:// www.iosrjen.org/papers/vol4_issue1%20%28part-4%29/e04142629.pdf. shiva, v. “seeds of suicide and slavery versus seeds of life and freedom.” al jazeera. 2013. retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/ opinions/2013/3/30/seeds-of-suicide-and-slavery-versus-seeds-of-lifeand-freedom/. ———. who really feeds the world? the failures of agribusiness and the promise of agroecology. berkeley: north atlantic, 2016. sobrino, j. “the theos/deity of the theo-logy of the world social forum.” in m. n. getui, l. c. susin and b. w. churu (eds.), spirituality for another possible world. nairobi: twaweza, 2008. theuri, m. “poverty in africa.” in m.n. getui and e. a. obeng (eds.), theology of reconstruction. exploratory essays. nairobi: acton, 2003. united nations. the millennium development goals report 2015. new york, 2015. ———. the sustainable development goals report 2020. new york, 2020. vellem, v. s. “iziko: insurrection and resurrection.” in v. vellem, p. sheerattanbisnauth, and p. v. peacock (eds.), bible and theology from the underside of empire. pawcatuck: sun press, 2017. world health organisation. “depression.” world health organization. 2020. retrieved from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ depression. 119 roxburgh, alan j. 2021. joining god in the great unraveling: where we are & what i’ve learned. eugene, oregon: cascade books. isbn: 978-17-2528-850-8 reviewed by steen olsen adelaide, south australia steen.olsen@lca.org.au the starting point of roxburgh’s latest book is “modernity’s great wager”, namely the “modern project”, the enlightenment and associated philosophical and cultural movements that have “bet the farm” on the proposition that life can be lived well without god. a second starting point is roxburgh’s observation that we are living through a time of great unraveling, both in what he calls our euro-tribal churches and in the west generally. he argues that euro-tribal churches have largely been colonized by modernity’s technocratic rationality, driven by professionalism, technique, management and control, in order to bend the world to our will, and so has little need for god’s agency. these churches have unwittingly swallowed modernity’s great wager and functionally operate on the basis of human agency. today e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 120 euro-tribal churches are churchand clergy-centred and obsessed with fixing the church and their own survival. their focus on getting people to come to the church is no longer effective. however, roxburgh notes that the holy spirit is already fermenting change. many church members understand that “business as usual” is no longer possible. change comes from the grass-roots in congregations and not from seminaries or wider church leadership. for the euro-tribal churches to join god in the neighbourhood, they need to embrace new ways of knowing, new metaphors and language worlds, postures and apprenticing, where god is the active subject and is essential to the outcomes. in writing this book, roxburgh is documenting his journey since writing joining god, remaking the church, changing the world in 2015. starting with the logic of lesslie newbigin’s understanding of “how we know and its relationship to forms of knowing in late modernity” (6), he proposes a reorientation of missional life. he notes that the word missional, rather than describing what god is doing in the world, has become an adjectival modifier of “church”. he says that in working with congregations and church systems over the past five years, he has discovered little sense of god’s agency in the “missional” activities of euro-tribal churches. the covid-19 pandemic has hastened this unraveling as the usual movement from professionals to “laity” based on programs and benchmarks set by national organizations is no longer possible. in this context the holy spirit is fermenting change that bubbles up from ordinary people in their congregations, in ways that are not susceptible to human management and control and cannot be captured by vision statements or strategic plans. roxburgh had already challenged many of the assumptions behind the strategic planning approach to church leadership in his 2010 book, missional map-making: skills for leading in times of transition. in documenting his journey, roxburgh notes that he has been influenced by a number of “conversation partners” that have assisted him in grappling with different metaphors of meaning. in particular, he mentions four, beginning with mary jo leddy, the catholic theologian and activist, who noted in the early 1980s that the religious communities of which she was part were becoming threadbare and needed reweaving with fresh threads. in doing this she draws on the ordinary christian practices of place, prayer and discernment. lauren e. oakes, a young phd student at stanford, researched the dieback of yellow cedar in southeast alaska in 2010–16. in reflecting on place and relationship she discovered how native women, who were weavers in the tradition of their people, used threads made from the bark of the tree, viewing steen olsen—joining god in the great unraveling 121 it not as a resource to be harvested but as part of the life-world they co-inhabited. leanne betasamosake simpson, a sociologist and scholar re-entered her indigenous north american context and submitted herself to elders, learning about resurgence in the face of dispossession. finally, simone weil (1909–43) a french intellectual who taught philosophy while working in a renault factory, reflected on the way technocratic elites controlled the way everyday life was lived in communist, fascist and capitalist societies. newbigin, like these four women in their different ways, is calling for a fundamental transformation of the imaginations of christians. roxburgh argues that, “far from being over, the missional conversation that newbigin shaped needs to be reimagined from outside the logic of anxiety, survival, or techniques of change” (2). therefore, to join in the spirit’s ferment we need to embrace another language with different symbols and metaphors, assume a posture that doesn’t prioritize professionalism and instead adopt a model that involves becoming apprentices to others as we journey onwards. leaders therefore need to ask different questions. roxburgh suggests a number such as, “how do i listen to the spirit’s presence among my people rather than push my own agendas?”, “how do i lay down my anxious need to fix, tell, and make things happen?”, and “how do i create spaces where i am attending to the stories of my people?” this is a practical little book (155 pages) that assists us in understanding the world in which we now live in the west. roxburgh makes practical suggestions for continuing the journey. in doing so, he brings a range of understandings and attitudes one doesn’t need to agree with in order to take seriously his central theses. overall he speaks of “elites” in a dismissive way, in spite of a sprinkling of statements that he doesn’t dismiss the value of theology, science, research, technology, serious study and western thought forms. he also uses emotive terms like the “clergy industry” and speaks of his role as a leader in the wider church and consultant as not being particularly helpful, even though that is still what he is doing in writing this book. he dismisses technocratic approaches, yet often uses highly technical jargon (god’s agency, ecclesiocentricity, relationality, christian praxis etc). roxburgh goes to great lengths to emphasise that going into the neighbourhood is not a new program for evangelism, providing help or studying a community. in doing so he is in danger of giving the impression that all we bring is a christian presence and we don’t bring any good news. i don’t think that is what he believes and i agree that we should not approach this as a program and look for a return on our investment. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 122 in this book it seems to me that roxburgh never really grapples with the question of how god works in the world. god is at work among non-christians preparing them to receive the good news that is jesus. we see that both biblically and in our present experience. an example of the former is the story of cornelius in acts 10. he sees an angel in a vision who tells him to send for peter. peter comes and tells him about jesus. the spirit falls and the rest, as they say, is history. likewise the ethiopian eunuch who was reading and questioning in acts 8. the spirit sent phillip to help him to make sense of it. examples of the latter include many muslims testifying to having dreamt that jesus was calling them to come to him, so they sought out some christians and came to faith. some clarification around this would have been helpful. roxburgh’s point about the technocratic controlling approach of the eurotribal churches is well made. therefore, roxburgh’s central emphasis that god is at work, or as he puts it god has agency, is very important. roxburgh’s emphasis on the need for the disruptive ferment of the spirit is vital. we need to embrace vulnerability, and not structure things in such a way that, if god were to depart from our presence, everything would still continue as normal. we would also do well to reflect on roxburgh’s comments about the “clergy industry”. discernment is a gift of the spirit and therefore a spiritual discipline. it, together with other practices are deeply rooted in our scriptural and traditional christian practices, yet many of them have fallen into disuse. there are healthy reminders here that in a time of crisis we need to dig deeper into our roots rather than rely on techniques for fixing the church’s problems. this is an important little book in our time of ferment and disruption. rooms.indb 100 dwelling in the world with people of peace missional discipleship within the missio dei nick ladd nick ladd has been an anglican minister for 37 years, during which time he has served in six parishes of very different social makeup. for eight years he was director of ministry, formation and practical theology at st john’s college, nottingham, and has also spent time overseeing the training and support of curates for birmingham diocese. at present, he serves with his wife in a parish in birmingham and works freelance, supporting churches in their missional development, teaching, researching, and offering spiritual accompaniment to clergy. he has recently submitted a doctorate on christian community formation and maturity. contact: nick.ladd57@gmail.com abstract dwelling in the world is a practice designed to help churches to form a public shared identity in the mission of god with people in their wider communities who want to work with them—their “people of peace”. grounded in the missio dei, this practice offers a concrete example of missional discipleship. how does this work in practice? and what happens between church members and their nick ladd—dwelling in the world with people of peace 101 people of peace? based on research conducted in 2020, this article presents that research and its findings, paying close attention to the lived experience of those involved. it argues that an exchange takes place which is relational rather than transactional where the partners are drawn together into the life of god as they join together in god’s mission. this is a disturbing and transforming public journey, which decentres discipleship from the private, individualised world of church and, by means of attention to the “other,” re-centres it in god and god’s agency in mission. therefore the outcome may be appropriately named as missional discipleship. introduction at the international research consortium (irc)1 in wellington, south africa, in june 2019, i was asked to conduct research on the practice of “dwelling in the world” (hereafter ditw). this practice is one of six “faithful disruptive” missional practices of the partnership for missional church process (hereafter pmc).2 it involves congregational members forming public relationships, on behalf of their church with “people of peace,” who they connect with in their wider community. pmc is a three-year journey of spiritual discovery for clusters of congregations who learn together. it began in 1. the irc is an invitation-only annual international conference that has been running since 2004 which aims to offer a theologically rigorous approach to inter-disciplinary research on the practice of mission in the local church. academics and practitioners are invited to present their research and reflections on missional practice in an atmosphere of positive critique and mutual learning. specifically, but not exclusively, it has been where research and evaluation of the partnership for missional church process has been shared. some of the members are also founders of this journal and their institutions have sponsored the journal. no financial transactions were involved in enabling this research. 2. the others are (rooms and keifert, 2014): • dwelling in the word • corporate spiritual discernment (and a personal version of this) • hospitality • announcing the kingdom • focus for missional action e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 102 north america in the 1980s and 1990s through the church innovations institute and has become established elsewhere—notably in south africa and the uk (church innovations institute, 2021). in the uk, the church mission society partners with church innovations to offer the process to local churches. this research took place in participating churches from four anglican dioceses across the country. pmc, as a relatively long-term process of missional accompaniment, enables christian congregations to form partnerships with their wider communities within the mission of god—forming a public and communal christian identity in ways appropriate to the pluralist context of a post-christendom world (keifert, 2006; rooms and keifert, 2014). it does this through inculcating communal spiritual practices, one of which, ditw, involves engaging in one-to-one conversations with people in the wider community who are perceived as people of peace—people who share something of the church’s values and aspirations and may then become partners in a shared missional experiment (rooms and keifert, 2014: 20–24). the early formation of this practice drew on the one-to-one methodology found in community organising (alinsky, 1971). this was revisited in the uk from 2012 through connection with citizens uk (citizens uk, 2021) in nottingham. the data in this research points to a re-drawing of the parameters of discipleship within the mission of god—a concrete example of what the missio dei looks like in practice. people of peace as a missional concept within the “missio dei” in pmc, the attention to people of peace arises from one of the six spiritual practices; dwelling in the word with luke 10.1-12 over a period of up to a year. dwelling in the word is a practice of attending to the voice of god through scripture in community. people listen in pairs to what each other hears in the passage and then give voice to what their partner says to another pair or to the others in the group. the group then reflect together on what they nick ladd—dwelling in the world with people of peace 103 are hearing from the passage through each other. dwelling in this passage led to the idea of seeking people of peace to partner with god in mission. grounded in the missio dei, the idea that god is already at work in the person of peace leads to a mutual recognition which is expressed in the verse, “and if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person” (lk. 10.6). literally the first part of the verse reads, “if there, there is a son of peace” and thus arises the concept of the “person of peace.” dwelling in the word is thus an embodiment of the missio dei and leads to the focus of this research: does this exchange actually happen in practice? what is happening when peace is exchanged and it rests on another who already shares in it? the concept of people of peace does not have a wide usage elsewhere in missional practice. where it does, it is employed in substantially different ways to pmc. some church planters use this methodology, seeing people of peace as those chosen by god to be receptive; they are people of influence who act as a bridge to the community. furthermore, a person of peace cannot be a person of faith as they are by definition someone who is “lost” (matthews, 2019: 188–191). the church planter’s task then is to form relationship with persons of peace in their own world and await opportunities to bring the lost to faith (breen, 2010). their strategy is to seek out receptive and responsive people of reputation and influence in a community (baumgartner, 2011: 398–400). matthews is critical of this person of peace approach both in terms of the indeterminacy of waiting for a response and the prescription to move on when there is none. moreover, he is uneasy about the propensity to seek people of influence and forget the poor and the outcast. the potential down-grading of education, community development and medical care is also a concern (2019: 191–197).3 3. matthews also has an exegetical critique of using luke 10 as a mission strategy. however, as the task at this point is to explain rather than defend the approach to people of peace in pmc, i will not be addressing this aspect of his critique. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 104 pmc configures the approach to people of peace differently. first, ditw sees the encounter with a person of peace as a mutual exchange in which both bring something to a potential missional partnership—“partners in god’s mission not objects of ministry”(pmc uk, 2019: 4). this creates a relationship in which there is an intersubjective discovery of embodied knowledge rather than a one-way evangelistic transaction (yong, 2007: 60).4 this decentres the church as the bringer of hospitality in a practice that is grounded in the hospitality of god (yong, 2007: 62). this seems appropriate for a pluralist context (suurmond, 1994: 198–203); evidence is that this practice gives church members a way to express faith publicly with integrity. because this is a partnership in mutually discerned action, the need to wait passively for response from the person of peace is removed as is the temptation to manipulate them to reach this point. this is a further connection to the missio dei: the reception is the discernment. second, rather than being a strategy driven by the practitioner, ditw encourages a practice of listening and discernment of the presence and activity of god. the aim is to be led by the spirit to shared action in god’s mission, to experiment together and then reflect together on what is done. to move on where no shared connection is discovered is not then abandoning the strategy or failing to persevere; rather it is the recognition of the need to respond to a god-given moment where our “peace rests” on another (lk. 10.6). both of these perspectives are grounded in pmc’s commitment to the missio dei—mission as participation in the mission of the triune god; an approach which adds to the classic doctrine “another ‘movement’: father, son and holy spirit sending the church into the world” (bosch, 1997: 390). it is perhaps unsurprising that a concept such as the missio dei that has been embraced so widely has many faces—from those that are deeply rooted in trinitarian theology to others which offer a secularized vision of mission or one where the “ecclesial nature of mission might be seen as trivial or unnecessary” (bevans and schroeder, 2004: 304). 4. see also barrett, 2020; and barrett and harley, 2020. nick ladd—dwelling in the world with people of peace 105 pmc draws from the missio dei the formative conviction that god is already present and active in god’s world. this does indeed decentre the church’s agency in mission. resisting colonising approaches, ditw proceeds with the assumption that god is at work in people of peace, who will have something to bring to the missional partnership, making this a transformative spiritual journey for all involved. however, the vision of mission remains ecclesial and christological, as can be seen by the choice of scriptures for communal reflection via dwelling in the word in the three-year process. • year 1: luke 10.1-12 focuses the congregation’s listening and discovering of partners on jesus’ sending of the disciples. • year 2: 2 corinthians 4.1–12 grounds the missional experimenting in the death and resurrection of christ. • year 3: acts 6.1–7 positions the congregation’s discernment of its missional vocation in the struggle of ecclesial formation. in seeking people of peace, pmc places spiritual transformation in christ at the heart of the missional journey. however, it removes the control of that journey from the hands of the church and trusts that god is nevertheless at work in ways that will be transformational for all partners in the relationship. in biblical terms, this can be seen in the way that both peter and cornelius are transformed by their encounter in acts 10—a transformation that is the initiative of god throughout. over time, this practice has a profound impact on the way people perceive and express their discipleship, specifically enabling them to lay down a privatised approach based around the perpetuation of their own congregation and set sail on a more public journey with unfamiliar others, centred on the mission of god. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 106 methodology, demographics and analytical approach the research question to enable the research to be grounded in lived experience, the decision was taken to focus on the story of what took place in the relationships between the interviewees and their people of peace. the focus was on the interviewees’ experience, which we have first-hand. what we know of the partners is only through the interviewees’ reporting. the research question was shaped in two parts: what is the exchange that goes on when our “peace” rests on another? how are people formed and changed by this practice? specifically in: • relationships with others • relationship with god • understanding and practice of discipleship • vision of mission and the gospel methodology the research project worked with the methodological assumption that learning happens as people reflect on their experience and articulate that reflection. furthermore, this learning is best arrived at not by direct question but through encouraging people to tell their stories and then reflect on them. so it uses a semi-structured interview approach developed for the listening exercises in the congregational discovery interviews in the first year of pmc (pmc-uk, 2018). but in addition to facilitating story-telling, the interview guide of five questions was designed to encourage reflection on the nick ladd—dwelling in the world with people of peace 107 experiences that interviewees described. in the same document, research ethics protocols for the interviewers were articulated.5 whilst recognising the reflexive component in all such research, the desire was to honour the voices of the interviewees as fully as possible and ensure that they were recorded well. interviewers summarised the interviewees’ responses to each question, using the interviewees’ words, and then checked their summary of the interviewees answers, either question by question at the time of the interview or by providing the interviewees with a draft of the transcript to comment upon. the agreed summaries were then sent to me.6 the approach of this research is akin to appreciative enquiry. the positive nature of the picture presented here is due to the fact that the purpose was to understand church members’ experiences of people of peace and how this experience had shaped and formed them. however, one question did focus on obstacles and constraints; the purpose of this was to give the opportunity for interviewees to talk about the discomfort and disruption of the missional journey. however, there is a more complex and conflictual account to be written about how churches journey with missional transformation in pmc, something that i have done in my recently completed doctoral research (ladd 2021). demographics 14 interviews were conducted in the uk across four anglican dioceses between 25th february and 27th april, 2020. the four dioceses chosen were durham, leicester, southwell & nottingham and oxford, each of which has been involved with pmc for at least two 3-year missional journeys and in most cases for more than this. such a time-frame is realistic for assessing the embedding of new practices.7 5. interview guide and research ethics protocols available on request. 6. i completed 2 of the interviews myself; the other 12 were carried out by 4 other interviewers. 7. some interviews were conducted face-to-face and others on skype due e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 108 a cross-section of people was interviewed in terms of age, gender and ethnicity, reflecting the make-up of the congregations. those interviewed had been involved with ditw as one of the pmc spiritual practices for between three and eight years. the interview base also represented a wide cross-section of roles within the church: one clergy, a number with a range of leadership roles, some with no role and some with roles that they had taken on through the pmc process.8 analytical approach each of the five questions were analysed in turn involving: • numerical grouping of the data • stories and quotations to give a more embodied sense • my reflective comments and questions numerical i employed a content analysis approach to the data. this revealed a lot of common themes, which led me to conclude that it would be valuable to group the themes numerically according to frequency of occurrence. this was not statistical sampling, but grouping the data revealed the recurrence of certain experiences and the importance of certain themes across the data. stories though there was much overlap of themes, the stories that illustrated them were diverse. therefore, alongside the numerical grouping, i included quotes and stories of slightly fuller length, staying close to the language of the interviewees, to strengthen the to covid-19 restrictions. 8. full analysis of demographics available on request. nick ladd—dwelling in the world with people of peace 109 embodied flavour of the analysis. because of the scale and nature of the project, it was neither possible nor desirable to adopt a grounded theory approach. however, the approach was still inductive with the aim of letting the interpretation arise from the interviewees’ narratives rather than trying to shed the narrative skin in the cause of theory-generation. what did i notice? once i had completed the above process with each question, i added a further section on what stood out to me immediately from the data. i felt it was important to allow some interpretation to arise before focusing more deliberately on the research question. in this way, i tried to include myself as researcher in the exploration— given my own experience both as researcher and practitioner in the pmc process in other contexts. it would be disingenuous to imagine that my experience was not at play here, but it can also be used to correlate this research with other research and experience of the process that i have. in the next section, i will present the findings focusing on the first two stages of the analysis before continuing in the next section to correlate with my observations and to explore how this data answers the research question. findings9 question 1: tell a story about how you first met a “person of peace” and the journey to get there. reflect on: what encouraged this journey, gave it life? what constrained or was an obstacle in this journey? 9. full findings available on request. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 110 some ran one-off “plunging” events to build relationships and conversation around a possible missional challenge. others found the courage to talk to people that they already knew but with whom they had never had an in-depth public conversation. others found that shop keepers, school teachers and members of groups in the community were interested in having conversations about shared interests and concerns. the range of experiments that were developed was extremely broad. here is one example of the discovery of a person of peace and what they did together: i met someone with shared love of woodland and art: we created an art-based act of remembrance event; they are giving time freely, connecting church people and outsiders; they have become an occasional attender at church who offers honest feedback! encouragement came from the recognition of god’s prior involvement in their communities and the call to discern rather than create interest—this was a new way for them of responding to god. they met with responsiveness and hospitality and the mutual recognition of the value of doing things together. the wonder of the journey is captured here: “from not knowing a person to dwelling in the word with them in your own home.” they valued the church’s prompting, owning and sustaining of this journey, but personal change was important too. freed from “bashing people over the head with faith”—as one interviewee put it—they stepped into the public space; the pmc process built confidence and empowerment. but there were constraints, too, like failures to deal with conflict in church and community alike. for example: “church hospitality only goes so far . . . and there was frustration when the missional experiment impacted on church time and space in the building.” there were personal constraints too; people spoke about the significant level of fear and uncertainty they felt about making first steps towards those in the community. they mentioned their own shyness and lack of confidence and uncertainty about being nick ladd—dwelling in the world with people of peace 111 received as a stranger. most of all was the fear of their reception and wariness about approaching people; one person spent three weeks of anxious anticipation before summoning up the courage to speak to someone. she commented that she was not “a person who went out and talked about my faith a great deal.” another spoke of realising that their faith existed in a private space and not “out in the street.” question 2: how would you describe a person of peace? reflect on: what experiences have shaped the way you see this? here are some of the ways they described their people of peace: • mutuality—purpose, connection, partnership and working together • shared values—care, love and respect • receptivity—people who see you and want to know you • desire for ongoing and growing relationship • make connections for you and the church in the community when asked to reflect on the experiences that shaped this, most evident was the participation together in the missional experiment: “in our ‘bridge community’10 i met new people who were people of peace—i just didn’t know them before—people who have energy and ideas and enthusiasm.” people reflected on how they began to see god in their new partners and how the process helped to recognise that god was already at work in people in their wider community before they had reached out to them. there was genuine reciprocity; they discovered people who wanted to give something to them without 10. the “bridge community” is formed of members of the church and the community who work together on a missional experiment. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 112 thought of gain. this subverted their habitual picture of discipleship as involving them in doing all the giving. question 3: think of some of the “persons of peace” you have connected with; what did it mean to you and to them to “share in peace” together? reflect on: the luke 10 passage says that if we meet a “person of peace” our peace “rests on them.” what has this looked like in your experience? they described their experiments as shared spiritual journeys. by sharing in dwelling in the word from the beginning, the members of the “bridge community” learned to listen and receive from each other as they attended together to scripture. being open about faith meant that it was not seen as the church’s project but rather a journey of discernment to which all contributed. this led to a growing spiritual engagement for all: the bible came to life in dialogue with the people of peace and they found themselves “living the story.” people of peace moved from passive acceptance of prayer to an openness to the spirit and began to make their own prayer requests. they were able to embrace partnering with christians and shared a sense of god being in the journey. for some, the church became their church. christians learnt from their people of peace and valued their reading of scripture and discernment. they described this as “immersing yourself in god and trusting.” this was a spiritual journey because it was a relational journey. the experience of god was mediated by mutuality and sharing of life described in question 2. here they mention again: support, relationship, sharing gifts and acting together. in terms of luke 10, for those who “go,” their courage was rewarded by discovering people who welcomed them, showed hospitality and wanted to work with them in fulfilling their aims; they saw this as “peace resting.” those who “received” discovered nick ladd—dwelling in the world with people of peace 113 they had something to give that was wanted and began sharing in a relationship that made faith accessible. they in turn became people who brought others to share in what the “bridge community” was doing. together they went on a journey from suspicion to trust, participating in a corporate discernment of god at work. question 4: tell a story of how a “person of peace” became a “partner” in mission. reflect on: how did you know when someone became you partner? what happened between you? what helped it to happen? pmc uses the word “partner” to describe a person of peace who becomes someone who shares fully in the missional experiment. the easiest way to illustrate this is with a story: we met c. she seemed very enthusiastic and i was not surprised when she said, “i want to join your team.” we run a fortnightly drop-in for people as a mental health support and she is a partner in that. we have had to switch this to facebook (covid-19) and she is running this. because she has suffered in mental health herself and in her family, we listen to her and look to her for guidance; we are learning from her. we could not have done this without her, she is the voice we needed to listen to. that’s why it feels like a partnership—it’s a two-way thing; not just the church, it’s theirs as well. the fundamental mark of partnership to them was where people began to take initiative and responsibility in the missional experiment, because they had connected with the shared agenda and values. this meant that they were actively involved in shaping the experiment. a further mark was that they were able to integrate other community groups and people into the journey. partnership happened because they took time building relationships especially with dwelling in the word. honouring the e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 114 other’s culture, being real and learning to listen, whilst receiving their hospitality; learning that god is calling their partners. question 5: thinking about your whole experience of relating to people of peace, which words from this list best capture how this practice has enabled you to grow as a disciple of christ? if none apply suggest your own words that express your growth through meeting people of peace. prayer, worship, community involvement, evangelism, discernment, hospitality, bible knowledge, listening, fellowship, awareness of god tell a story about each word you have chosen. reflect on: how is your choice influenced by your experience with people of peace? the heart of this research was to understand how this journey with people of peace had affected the interviewees’ discipleship. as they responded to the words, they told stories substantially through the lens of partnership: • listening to others who were different or not usually listened to who challenged them and shaped their learning • prayer—expressing active dependence on partnership with the god who had gone before them • community involvement—enabling participation in the mission of god with partners in the public space • hospitality in which relationships were formed, possibilities emerged, stretching them beyond their past approaches to being missional; changed mindset • “people of peace changed our awareness of god in everything” with more “traditional” words like the bible and fellowship, their comments showed the influence of their journeys with people nick ladd—dwelling in the world with people of peace 115 of peace. they focused on transformational encounter rather than developing biblical knowledge. they reflected on how god used surprising people in the bible—like rahab—and that they had learned much from their people of peace reflecting on scripture. on fellowship, they moved away from the closed language of the “family,” speaking about how the other who is different is truly welcomed in. interpretation in the light of the research question introduction the use of the concept “exchange” owes something to social exchange theory whose roots lie in behavioural psychology. here, i want to side-step the more instrumental language of profit and loss and focus on the way this theory attends to interpersonal relationships—what it might mean to “love and be loved in return.” a further step proposes that “outcomes for the two participants are jointly determined by their actions” (hogg and vaughan, 2008: 501). how do people give and receive as “persons of peace,” what makes them decide to make this mutual “investment” and how is each changed in the process? what is the exchange? the interviewees were not used to forming a public identity as a church in the community. they noted the private nature of their faith and were candid about the fears and anxieties they experienced at the thought of taking such steps. this experience is mirrored strongly in my research of this process in other contexts (ladd, 2021). taylor’s concept of the “buffered self ” conceptualises this experience. in contrasting this with the “porosity” characteristic of earlier ages, he argues that the “buffered self ” is a boundaried e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 116 and autonomous self, grounded in disengagement; a mind-centred personhood, which is self-referential (1989: 25–54). such “disengagement” may not be “hospitable to a sense of community” (taylor, 1989: 42). living in such a privatised and individualised culture, means that steps towards the other in the public space are fraught with anxiety and uncertainty and need to be handled with care (rooms, 2019: 16). though this research focuses on the positive experiences of partnering with people of peace, full weight should be given to their honesty about the struggles with this, recorded in their answers to question 1. “talking about god in practice” is a complex and unnerving experience in contemporary western culture (cameron et al, 2010: 7–17). longer-term research on these practices reveals just how difficult this is in a post-christendom context (ladd, 2021). however, the energy with which they tell their story of journeying outwards suggests that the desire to do this eventually overcame their fear. whilst the pmc process and ditw provided the vehicle to carry them forward, the energising power came from god—something they increasingly grasped (1 cor. 12.4-6). what they experienced was mutuality borne of a deep sense of connection with their people of peace through the discovery of shared values and desire for community transformation. at the deepest level, it was about forming a relationship—being known and valued, “they see you, they want to see you, want to know you. they don’t talk over you; they allow you to speak and listen to you.” it was a two-way exchange in which both parties gave and received. the interviewees discovered people who wanted to work with them and who grew to value them. the people of peace discovered ways to be involved and use their gifts in ways that transformed their communities. both interviewees and people of peace saw the work they did together as genuine partnership. this was a profoundly relational journey described as a movement from neighbors to friends. but it is a different kind of friendship to that which we normally look for in life and in church. they were seeking a language to describe the growing of relationship not in the nick ladd—dwelling in the world with people of peace 117 private world of family but in the public space of the community, “really connecting—becoming friends who have similar objectives: not necessarily people to invite home for a meal or go on holiday with—but much more than just acquaintances.” is this simply an experience of sociality? or are the partners being drawn into the life of god together? what i have described so far is a very human connection; but in our incarnational faith, the human mediates the divine (jn 1.14; 2 cor. 1.3-4; 1 jn 4.7-12). indeed, it was the commitment to the relational journey that made the journey with god possible as they shared life together. and there was real awareness of a spiritual journey. the interviewees did not disguise their faith, but were transparent about it through encouraging the shared practice of dwelling in the word (2 cor. 4:2-3). but they did not approach this as a one-sided transaction, but learned to be genuinely open to the spiritual insights and discernment of their partners. their partners in turn also saw this as a journey of spiritual discovery and some drew closer to the community of the church. it was engaging with the spiritual practices—ditw, dwelling in the word and hospitality—that enabled these public communities of faith to develop. a further practice—announcing the kingdom—is evident in the way the interviewees talk about and reflect on their experience; this is the practice that encourages church and community members to notice and name the presence of god in each other’s lives. so, what is happening here may be understood more as an exchange of god, or an exchange within god. when christians let go of the assumption that they are called to manage the process of bringing others to faith, they may be drawn into the flow of the mission of the trinity and become participants, along with their partners, in the mutual indwelling love of father, son and holy spirit (jn 17.20-26). the miracle of ordinary human relationships being caught up into this divine conversation is perhaps the root of the awe and amazement that can be seen as they share their story. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 118 how were people formed and changed by this practice? the questions were designed to focus on understanding what happened to people’s relationship with god and with others through sharing life with people of peace. however, the interviews also generated comments on the relationship with the church and with the self. the word “god” appears at least as much as the word “church” in the data. for those who have worked on missional accompaniment with anglican churches, and probably most churches, this is something that has significance in understanding the interviewees’ journeys with god. instead of being a passive receiver of their worship, god became active, an agent and leading partner in the missional process. god prompted and called them to this. god’s leading challenged their busyness and control. god was already present an active in the wider community, so their call was to discern what god was doing and to be intentional about and alert for “god moments.” this new experience of god was mediated to them through the experience of people of peace. they saw god in people of peace in their actions and words. they saw god in the spiritual journeys that they took. they discerned together with people of peace. they saw god in the way people of peace brought in others—continuing the luke 10 journey. they met god as they did dwelling in the word with people of peace, learning to receive insight from unexpected people. not only were relationships with people of peace central to this journey, but those relationships were also changed by this experience. first, they learnt to see the “other” outside the church not simply as a focus for mission but as a partner and a gift of god’s presence and activity. if god was to be found active in the wider community, then christianity could not be a private thing that they invited people into. instead it was a vulnerable relationship in which they depended upon the hospitality and welcome of the other as well as offering hospitality themselves. nick ladd—dwelling in the world with people of peace 119 moreover, they learned that relationships were an end in themselves and not an instrumental tool for making disciples. and therefore that it was in long-term growing relationships that god was encountered in the mutual giving and receiving of missional experimenting. the church played an important role in sponsoring and supporting the process but did not handle well the conflict that arose through the changes that the missional experimenting wrought— often leaving the interviewees feeling like “piggy-in-the-middle” between two groups. though the interviewees found that the partnerships changed them from wariness and anxiety to confidence and empowerment, the same is not true of the church as a whole. individuals were changed by the experience of partnership, but the church community as a whole was not experiencing the same journey. the implication therefore is that there is a journey of maturation for communities as much as for individuals, which is easily lost in an individualised culture.11 what happened to their understanding and practice of discipleship and mission? when i constructed the final question, i chose five words (prayer, worship, bible knowledge, fellowship and evangelism) which i felt encapsulated traditional understandings or practices of christian discipleship and five (listening, discernment, awareness of god, hospitality and community involvement) which i felt reflected pmc discipleship practices. of their top four choices, three were from my “pmc” group; the fourth, prayer, could be argued as a pmc priority and people certainly gave it a missional shape. of the other four, two were from my “pmc” group and two from the other. all were read through the lens of partnership with people of peace.12 11. this is the focus of my recently-submitted doctoral thesis; something that i will write more about in due course. 12. see the summary in question 5. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 120 in christendom mode, though the forms may vary, the focus of discipleship is on drawing people into church and developing their understanding of the faith and their socialisation within the christian community. the focus is on the personal formation of the individual centred on the church community. in the process, people speak of losing touch with their “non-christian” friends and the task then becomes an uncomfortable and unnatural one of going “out there” to bring people “in here.” the data shows how discipleship was formed less around the individual’s agenda and more in relationship to the “other.” the primary “other” in this was god and therefore discipleship became a way of life which took god as agent seriously and in particular his prior presence and action in the wider community. but the focus was also on the human other—proximate and distant—placing the wider community as the locus of discipleship, because this was where the god of mission was to be found. their discipleship was shaped in the crucible of relationship with others in the community, through shared practices—people who became their partners within god’s mission. this mutuality of partnership in mission meant that they viewed the communication of the faith differently. they were not trying to provide something that was absent (although they recognised that they did have things to share that could add to people’s apprehension of god), rather they approached others with respect and with the knowledge that it was god who was at work and that their task was to notice and name god’s activity. moreover, their partners were deeply involved in bringing others into the orbit of the missional challenge; in terms of luke 10, those who received peace became also the givers of peace to others. conclusion — missional discipleship the use of the language of “exchange” to speak about the interviewee’s journeys with people of peace draws attention to the mutuality of the relationship and what each gains from the other in the formation of these relationships. seeking people of peace nick ladd—dwelling in the world with people of peace 121 was a way of forming relationship in the public space in which a journey together with god could happen which worked in their communities. because of the mutuality of the relationship, it was not a matter of one seeking to implant their truth in the other, but rather forming a kind of “third space” in which people formed knowledge together with genuine openness to the other (irigaray, 2000: 51, 62–67). these relationships were not only with the human “other,” but with the otherness of god who was mediated through this complex of relationships—seeing god through the impact of one person upon the other (1 jn 4.12), rather like the unseen wind of the spirit of which jesus speaks in john 3.5-8. in this case, both partners may be experiencing re-birth as they are drawn together into the mission of god. the relationships with people of peace generated what might be described as missional discipleship in which the ecclesiology of the interviewees was redrawn with its centre in the mission of god. along with the parish council, we brought a bus-based youth ministry to the village. one [young person] said to me, “this is fantastic! why can’t we do it every night?” i told him of the cost and that other people were paying. he replied, “why don’t you sell the church building so you would have money to do this for us?” his question had a profound impact on me. we need lots of money to fund a building where a relatively small, aging group come to worship. but this effective mission activity was only funded up to a small level. does the church generate money for mission, or absorb money that could have gone to mission? we are protective of our domain, this becomes our focus; it becomes a reason not to do stuff. the bus work started with 6 young people and grew to 30, but it was not about numbers, it was about engagement. a penetration into unreached areas of the community on god’s terms. through working with people of peace, this interviewee sees the church, discipleship and mission differently. through sharing e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 122 spiritual practices—dwelling in the word, ditw, hospitality, discernment, announcing the kingdom—in the public space, the focus of discipleship has gradually shifted from the church to the mission of god. the challenge then is how to lead the whole church community on the same journey. bibliography alinsky, s. rules for radicals. new york.: vintage books, 1971. barrett, a. interrupting the church’s flow: a radically receptive political theology in the urban margins. london: scm, 2020. barrett, a., and r. harley. being interrupted: reimagining the church’s mission from the outside, in. london: scm, 2020. baumgartner, e. “a person of peace.” in b. bauer (ed.), a man of passionate reflection: a festschrift honoring jerald whitehouse. berrie springs: andrews university press, 2011. bevans, s. b. and r. p. schroeder. constants in context: a theology for mission for today. maryknoll: orbis books, 2004. bosch, d. transforming mission: paradigm shifts in theology of mission. maryknoll.: orbis books, 1997. breen, m. “understanding jesus and ‘persons of peace.’” mike breen blog. 2010. retrieved from: https://mikebreen.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/ understanding-jesus-and-persons-of-peace/. cameron, h., et al. talking about god in practice: theological action research and practical theology. london: scm, 2010. church innovations institute. “home.” churchinnovations.org. 2021. retrieved from https://www.churchinnovations.org/. citizens uk. “home.” citizens uk. 2021. retrieved from https://www. citizensuk.org/. hogg, m. a. and g. m. vaughan. social psychology. harlow: pearson education, 5th ed, 2008. irigaray, l. to be two. london: athlone, 2000. keifert, p. we are here now: a missional journey of spiritual discovery. st paul: church innovations, 2006. ladd, n. m. exploring communal maturity: a theological and ethnographic study of a christian congregation. phd thesis. university of birmingham, 2021. matthews, a. (2019). “person of peace methodology in church planting: a critical review.” missiology: an international review 47(2). 187–199. 2019. pmc-uk. listening 1: congregational discovery – the listening team. oxford: church mission society, 2018. nick ladd—dwelling in the world with people of peace 123 ———. introducing the spiritual practice of dwelling in the world. oxford: church mission society, 2019. rooms, n. missional church: what does good look like? cambridge: grove books, 2019. rooms, n. and p. keifert. forming a missional church: creating deep cultural change in congregations. cambridge: grove books, 2014. suurmond, j. j. word and spirit at play: towards a charismatic theology. london: scm, 1994. taylor, c. sources of the self: the making of modern identity. cambridge: harvard university press, 1989. yong, a. “the spirit of hospitality: pentecostal perspectives toward a performative theology of interreligious encounter.” missiology: an international review 35(1). 55–73. 2007. rooms.indb 53 a contextual analysis of onnuri church’s “love sonata” “cultural evangelism gatherings” in japan rev. j. nelson jennings mission pastor, consultant, international liaison onnuri church, seoul abstract since its beginning in 2007 through 2019, onnuri church’s love sonata musical outreach extravaganza has been held thirty times in cities all across japan (and four elsewhere in asia). capitalizing on the wildly popular 2002 “winter sonata” korean tv drama (“fuyu sonata” in japan), pastor ha yong-jo instigated a “cultural evangelism gathering” involving christian korean musicians performing and himself preaching an evangelistic message. hundreds of onnuri church volunteers have paid their own way to go and pray, make gift boxes, greet newcomers, and otherwise support each love sonata event. as a korean outreach to japan, love sonata provides an illuminating case study of cross-cultural missions in challenging e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 54 circumstances. korea and japan are close in many ways, yet in other ways they are very far apart. studying various aspects of the interpersonal interactions involved in the love sonata enterprise sheds instructive light on how mission service is embedded in actual history, often involving significant cultural barriers. supported by qualitative research from interviews with both japanese and korean participants, plus drawing on the author’s thirteen-year japan-based experience and five-year korea-based experience, this study offers a multifaceted analysis of love sonata in order not to evaluate or make recommendations but to understand its overall contextual characteristics. introduction no one could have foreseen, when it was first broadcast in south korea from mid-january to mid-march in 2002, the broad ripple effects of the tv mini-series “겨울연가” (gyeoul yeonga in korean; “winter sonata”). this twenty-episode drama of love and heartbreak accelerated the “korean wave” sweeping over the rest of asia (lee 2011), including when the series aired multiple times in japan in 2003–2004 (kbs 2004; ito 2006, 60, 62). the korean-japanese cultural connection forged by 「冬のソナタ」 (fuyu no sonata in japanese; “winter sonata”) set the stage for the seoulbased onnuri church’s “love sonata,” an innovative evangelistic outreach in japan that began in 2007 and continues to this day. two early studies of “love sonata,” one in english (takamizawa 2008) and one in korean (do 2010), explored the event for its missiological strategy. this article updates and locates “love sonata” in a wider historical and multifaceted setting. love sonata is analyzed through considering the initiative’s origins, planning, execution, reception, effects, and prospects. j. nelson jennings—a contextual analysis of onnuri church’s 55 background several factors coalesced to prepare the way for onnuri church’s love sonata. there were additional historical trends that stretched back further than the “winter sonata” tv melodrama. the central figure who conceived the love sonata phenomenon was onnuri church senior pastor ha yong-jo. ha yong-jo the late rev. ha yong-jo (1946–2011) grew up in poverty and displacement. ha was born to a christian family in northern korea in the immediate aftermath of the 1910–1945 japanese occupation. his family fled southward during the korean war, and ha’s lifelong suffering from acute illnesses began soon thereafter. after coming to his own deepened personal faith at age twenty, ha passionately gave himself to evangelism and eventually came to terms with his calling to become a pastor. ha wanted to be a foreign missionary, but health limitations kept him in korea. after beginning a church for celebrities, followed by a medical sabbatical in england, in 1985 ha began with twelve families what became onnuri church. especially after ha began a charismatic “holy spirit ministry” in the early 1990s, the church exploded in growth over the next two decades until ha’s death in 2011 (ha 2017, 24–85, 275). onnuri church’s programmatic growth was spurred along by an awe-inspiring vision, announced by pastor ha in 1994, to send out two thousand missionaries and raise up ten thousand supporting lay ministers (moon 2017, 210). specifically regarding japan, five years earlier onnuri church had begun a japanese saturday school and sunday worship service for the several japanese residents living nearby in seoul. the first onnuri “vision church” (international branch church) in japan began in 1994. four more vision churches were started in japan around the time ha was on a medical sabbatical there in 2001. during a 2002 retreat for the growing onnuri network in japan, ha declared, “i have a vision that the church in japan will stand up and jump. .  .  . revival is e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 56 on its way, soon to be met by the japanese church” (moon 2017, 235–37). under pastor ha’s visionary leadership, onnuri church’s ministries grew dramatically with the launch of onnuri tv in 2000, which expanded further into onnuri’s global satellite tv network, christian global network (cgn) tv, in 2005. particularly noteworthy in terms of reach and capacity was the live broadcast of the jerusalem peace march in august 2005 (moon 2017, 194–98). soon afterward, ha and some associates began visiting live productions in las vegas and elsewhere to research lighting, stage setting, sound control, and special effects. ha described how god had given him a vision to direct onnuri church’s resources to japan in 2007, which was surprising since that year was the centenary celebration in korea of the 1907 pyongyang revival. after extensive prayer gatherings, love sonata events were held in okinawa, fukuoka, osaka, then tokyo (ha 2017, 327–28, 334–37). in ha’s words, love sonata was “god’s love song for japan,” using culture and evangelism directed toward the next generation as its main methods (ha 2017, 328, 334). ha’s heartfelt repentance before god, and public apology to japanese, for being proud toward japanese for having been the ones persecuted (cgntv 2018, 9:50–12:14), as well as for not forgiving and harboring anger toward japanese people for their atrocities against koreans, is often cited within onnuri circles as a special act of forgiveness and reconciliation (ha 2017, 329–30; takamizawa 2008, 158). while some critics point to his misuse of business models (ha 2017, 255–62), it was rev. ha yong-jo’s vision, passion, innovation, leadership, use of entertainment techniques, and spirituality that instigated and shaped the love sonata phenomenon. korean christianity rev. ha yong-jo and onnuri church are part of christianity in korea. like many other megachurches and their pastors in south korea, onnuri church and ha yong-jo came to prominence in the long wake of abject poverty, displacement, war, and suffering. j. nelson jennings—a contextual analysis of onnuri church’s 57 korean christians were among those most targeted for persecution by the japanese military from 1910 and then by korean communists during the korean war. economic transformation slowly began to progress in the 1960s (cha 2008). revival, growth, passionate prayer, and zealous evangelism allowed many churches to emerge from those ashes of hardship and suffering, with onnuri church beginning in 1985. korean christianity had experienced both struggles and revival before the japanese occupation. the korean catholic church, its seeds sown through chinese christian literature in the seventeenth century and first confession of faith in 1784, suffered greatly under korean authorities, particularly with the loss of around eight thousand martyrs in 1866 (grimaldi 2014; kim and ko 2018). korean protestant christianity marks its beginning in the 1880s in connection with the arrival of western missionaries and their establishment of churches, hospitals, and schools. korean christians worked alongside missionaries in planting new churches and experienced sweeping revivals in the early 1900s, especially around pyongyang in 1907, accelerating the depth and breadth of churches throughout the korean peninsula. zealous, early morning prayer became a hallmark of korean christianity to this day. the 1910 japanese occupation ushered in a mixture of struggle, complicity, and displacement for many koreans, including christians, over the next half century. transport of many koreans to japan contributed to the large presence today of zainichi, or koreans living in japan. all sorts of churches have taken root in korea, including many with charismatic characteristics. several churches experienced explosive growth alongside the rapid growth of the south korean economy in the 1970s and 1980s. megachurches mushroomed and became known worldwide, most famously yoido full gospel church and pastor cho yonggi (david). mission zeal propelled korean missionaries over the twenty thousand threshold, serving in japan, the rest of asia, and indeed worldwide. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 58 korea-japan relations historically, relations between korea and japan have been mixed. positively, there has been robust economic trade, given the two nations’ proximity. cultural exchanges have ranged from religion to chinese script to food to entertainment and sports. even species of cherry blossoms have been exchanged. negatively, japan has on occasion militarily invaded korea as part of its wider ambitions, for example under hideyoshi toyotomi’s grandiose ambitions in the 1590s. japan’s 1910–1945 occupation of korea left a particularly bitter sentiment among most koreans, accompanied by unresolved disputes such as over islands (dokdo or takeshima), japanese treatment of korean laborers and “comfort women,” and whether or not japan has ever genuinely apologized. the author’s recent and extensive encounters with younger koreans, none of whom directly experienced the japanese occupation, suggests that unresolved trauma persists almost without exception with respect to japan and japanese people. increased travel and reporting back and forth during the 1980s, which included the “극일” (“beat japan”) campaign of south korean president chun doo-hwan (1980–1988), had succeeded the more restricted period of information flow during the authoritarian presidency of park chung-hee (1963–1979). south koreans’ freedom to explore and express unresolved historical disputes with japan, changing relations in all of east asia introduced by the end of the cold war, and heightened lambasting by some koreans and japanese of each other on the new internet offset greater understanding and appreciation of each other that developed further through greater cultural and interpersonal exchanges (isozaki, 2017). a 2010 opinion poll of japan-korea relations, jointly conducted by the korean broadcasting system (kbs) and the japan broadcasting corporation (nhk), revealed a wide range of feelings and beliefs among japanese and koreans, both about themselves and about each other. as to their feelings about each other, more japanese liked koreans than vice versa. comparison with j. nelson jennings—a contextual analysis of onnuri church’s 59 two previous surveys indicated that both japanese people’s like of koreans, as well as koreans’ dislike of japanese, had increased over the previous twenty years. concerning korea-japan relations, more japanese than koreans felt relations were “good,” while far more koreans than japanese considered themselves knowledgeable about the japanese occupation of korea (kono and hara 2011, 6–7, 9–10, 23–24, 32–33). these results revealed the conflicted mixture of positive and negative feelings and images that japanese and koreans hold about each other. the 2010 poll also asked, “whose name come [sic] to mind first when you think of koreans/japanese?” korean respondents overwhelmingly noted ito hirobumi, the first japanese colonial resident-general of korea. of particular relevance to this study is how the japanese responded—by an even greater margin over the next person mentioned than with the koreans’ list—with the name of bae yong-joon, korean actor and lead male star of “fuyu sonata.” moreover, when looking at the names overall that respondents listed, poll interpreters have noted, the genres of important names chosen by japanese (“entertainers” and “politicians and businessmen”) are completely different from those chosen by koreans (“historical figures” and “athletes”). .  .  . these results suggest the strong influence of korean popular culture (“hanryu”) in japan today while korea still feels the strong influence of certain historical figures. (kono and hara 2011, 27–28) the results also suggest the particular importance in japan, at least as of 2010, of the korean tv drama “fuyu no sonata.” fuyu no sonata as mentioned earlier pastor ha yong-jo, according to his own testimony, was led by the holy spiri to instigate “god’s love song for japan.” as just described, it was from within korean christianity and thorny relations between japan and korea that ha launched this new venture. the megahit, twenty-episode tv melodrama e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 60 “winter sonata” provided the cultural catalyst that helped to trigger ha’s decision to pursue the cultural evangelism gathering “love sonata,” beginning in 2007. when “겨울연가” (“winter sonata”) first aired in 2002, “the sob-fest love story [was] regarded as just another popular tv series in korea” (lee 2011). in japan, however, the series’ 2003–2004 four airings on nhk (hayashi and lee 2007, 198) captivated record-setting audiences. top-selling books, videos, and dvds, popular websites, and travel packages to the filming site in korea soon followed (ito 2006, 60–61; kamiya 2004), as did a twentysix-episode 2009 anime version shown in both korea and japan (kyodo news, 2009). 「冬のソナタ」 (“fuyu no sonata,” “winter sonata”), or 「冬ソナ」 (“fuyusona”), as it popularly came to be called, was unquestionably a social and cultic phenomenon of major proportions in japan (lee 2011). while the 2002 world cup cohosted by korea and japan would be more widely considered to have been a bridge-building event for the two countries, in actual fact it was “winter sonata” that more successfully broke down the invisible dividing wall (kubo and katase 2016). as noted earlier, the lead male actor bae yong-joon was catapulted into “heartthrob” status in japan, particularly among middle-aged women, who endearingly called him “yon-sama” (lee 2011). bae was mobbed by thousands of female fans at haneda airport when he visited japan in 2004 (yasuko 2004), prompting japan’s prime minister koizumi junichiro famously to quip that bae was more popular in japan than he was (lee 2011). bae and lead female co-star choi ji-woo, who had also risen to stardom in japan, appeared together before an overflow crowd packed into tokyo dome in 2009, coinciding with the anime release. there have been numerous studies as to why “winter sonata,” and the actor bae yong-joon, became such a megahit in unprecedented fashion for a korean drama in japan. many point to the numerous subplots involving attractive actors enmeshed in various types of slowly revealed, complicated relationships (including pseudo incestuous). some credit the excellent acting, experienced directing, melancholic music, and breathtaking j. nelson jennings—a contextual analysis of onnuri church’s 61 scenery. undoubtedly it is the deep, heartfelt, and ever-evolving but undying central storyline of the love between kang joon-sang/ lee min-hyung (spoiler alert: the same character, played by bae yong-joon) and jeong yoo-jin (played by choi ji-woo). this made watching “fuyu no sonata” essentially a “spiritual or religious experience” for many japanese (ito 2006, 65). particularly strategic for casting light on both why and how “winter sonata” made the cultural connection that it did for pastor ha’s and onnuri church’s “love sonata” venture is comparing japanese and korean perceptions of what the melodrama’s popularity actually entailed. given the substantial volume of analyses of “fuyusona” mania, naturally there are numerous explanations, both japanese and korean. as representatives of both a certain level of cultural expertise and popular thinking, each country’s media presentations exhibit identifiable characteristics that enable meaningful comparisons. in general, japanese media have pointed to japanese middle-aged women falling for the melodrama and its handsome and romantic “yon-sama,” bae yong-joon. korean media, by contrast, have tended to describe the fuyu no sonata phenomenon as part of hallyu, or the “korean wave” of cultural impact throughout china and southeast asia that japan had finally joined (hayashi and lee 2007, 199). capitalizing on the expansion of the “korean wave” into japan, and sensing the deep resonance that many japanese had experienced through the love story in “winter sonata,” rev. ha yong-jo launched onnuri church’s “love sonata” venture of “cultural evangelism” into christianity-resistant japan (moon 2017, 238). ha envisioned riding the crest of hallyu to cause a “wave of love” and of “reconciliation and forgiveness” to sweep over japan, then the rest of asia and the entire world (ha 2017, 328–29, 332, 337). while ha’s vision is open to criticism as having been much too grandiose, his expectation for revival to envelop japan as it had korea a century earlier, spearheaded by “love sonata,” cannot be exaggerated. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 62 the love sonata program by the end of 2019, onnuri church had put on thirty love sonata events across japan (love sonata n.d.). (four additional love sonata events were held in four different southeast asian countries between 2008 and 2011, before pastor ha’s death in august 2011.) the first two were in march 2007, on consecutive nights in okinawa and fukuoka. two-day events became the continuing pattern in osaka in may. the tokyo love sonata in july was particularly noteworthy for its sheer size: five thousand came from onnuri church in korea, and the main event drew a crowd of twenty thousand at the saitama super arena (ha 2017, 346–47). love sonata’s were also held in sapporo and sendai in 2007. hence from an onnuri church point of view the love sonata wave had swept across all of japan, from south to north. there were another four events in 2008 (plus one in taiwan), then a pattern of semiannual events that began in 2009 (moon 2017, 248). as noted earlier, rev. ha and onnuri church describe love sonata as a “cultural evangelism gathering” (“문화전도집회”; “文 化伝道集会”). as ha put it, “i thought that if we invited korean celebrities who are popular and influential in japan, many japanese would show interest. many japanese who do not know jesus may very well be interested in the korean wave, and many korean celebrities are christians” (ha 2017, 334). onnuri church had already been using “customized evangelism” and “seeker-friendly” approaches since the mid-1990s (ha 2017, 250–62; moon 2017, 238–39), so instigating the love sonata approach was effectively taking the same, familiar tack. the newly established cgntvjapan enabled wider networking of churches in japan and broadcasting of love sonata, further creating a cutting-edge feel. the climactic meeting an evangelistic meeting on the second evening culminates every love sonata event. a major civic venue is rented, which in itself is almost always unprecedented and unimaginable for the small, j. nelson jennings—a contextual analysis of onnuri church’s 63 under resourced japanese local churches taking part. admission tickets are offered free through churches, as organized by the local planning committee. after varied openings with videos, choral welcomes, and exquisite sand animations, the gala performance features several individual korean christian musicians giving vocal or instrumental performances and sharing their christian testimonies. many of these musicians have performed in multiple love sonatas. the first japanese ever to perform at a love sonata was classical guitarist antonio koga. having recently confessed his faith in christ and received baptism, koga appeared at the 2017 tokyo love sonata. also noteworthy at that same 2017 tokyo love sonata was winter sonata co-star choi ji-woo walking on stage to give her christian testimony. choi also narrates a nearly one-hour love sonata ten-year retrospect, available on youtube (cgntv 2018). other christian korean celebrities widely popular in japan have made appearances, including several from 2009 to 2011 by han hye-jin, who had recently become known in japan for her starring role in the eighty-one-episode tv series and korean historical drama “주 몽” (“朱蒙,” “チュモン,” “jumong”). amidst the celebrities’ appearances and musician’s performances, pastor ha always gave an evangelistic message and invitation. ha’s successor, onnuri church senior pastor lee jae-hoon, has continued to give those messages since ha’s death in august 2011. attendees are asked to complete a response card indicating a confession of faith or new commitment to christian service. after the cards are collected by several korean volunteers from onnuri church walking the aisles with baskets, guests open a box of gifts specially prepared by the onnuri church volunteers. other meetings starting with the 2007 osaka love sonata, church revival seminars are held on the first day (moon 2017, 240). the current pattern is to have three seminars, two in the morning and one in the early afternoon after lunch. all are led by korean, onnuri e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 64 church-related experts. the first seminar presents pastor ha’s (and onnuri church’s) ecclesiology and philosophy of ministry, while the second and third address concerns like education and church-society relations. as with the other events held during the two days, ample cgntv cameras and personnel are present to record the proceedings. duranno publishing, also associated with onnuri church, has numerous books and related items on display for sale. in keeping with the first day’s focus on christians, a “gospel night” of praise and a message is offered by and for area churches. while planning and results of love sonata events will be examined below, this “gospel night” gathering brings different churches together for planning, joint choirs, and strengthened relationships. while onnuri church musicians lend support, for the most part the evening is japanese-led. an additional feature that emerged at the 2007 tokyo love sonata has been a “korea-japan leadership forum” (moon 2017, 241). onnuri church’s newly constituted “christian ceo forum (ccf)” sought to bring together korean and japanese leaders in business and society in order to strengthen ties and opportunities for collaboration (moon 2017, 293–96). currently a luncheon is held on the second day of the love sonata event, with japanese and korean leaders sitting together in groups of ten at round tables, facilitated by multilingual participants. various dignitaries offer greetings, along with a special speaker or two. love sonata focuses on children and younger adults as well. along with spiritual study sessions, children learn song and dance numbers that they perform for the adults (cgntv 2018, 27:07–31:07). a “passion” rally focuses on middle and high school students, while an “ezra” rally brings korean and japanese college students together for interaction. while onnuri church staff and organize these gatherings, japanese speakers are invited to participate as speakers (do 2010, 93–94; takamizawa 2008, 152). these four adult and youth gatherings comprise each two-day love sonata event. other activities take place behind the scenes, including gift and venue preparation, a joint breakfast for japanese j. nelson jennings—a contextual analysis of onnuri church’s 65 and onnuri church leaders, and an intense prayer gathering specially focused on the culminating evangelistic gala affair. thirty love sonata events have been offered, some returning to the same city where a previous love sonata was held. the ten-year mark, especially the second tokyo love sonata held in 2017, would have been a convenient stopping point. however, those responsible for such a decision have made a renewed commitment to continue this “love song for japan” for the foreseeable future. planning and preparation an ongoing, international event of the magnitude and complexity of love sonata clearly needs a great deal of advanced coordination and planning. indeed, before love sonata debuted in 2007 there was japanese input (moon 2017, 239), stage-event research by pastor ha, and initiatives by multiple organizations affiliated with onnuri church, including the aforementioned vision churches in japan, cgntv, duranno publishing, and ccf. the entire project was bathed in fervent prayer by onnuri church who, like many other churches in korea, held special year-end prayer meetings at the end of 2006 and at the beginning of 2007, particularly in onehundred-year commemoration of the 1907 pyongyang revival. a special forty days of prayer for japan highlighted the importance of 2007 for onnuri church (ha 2017, 328–30). onnuri church 러브소나타 (“love sonata”) is one of several onnuri church ministries that has its own structure and website (lovesonata.org) while functioning under the onnuri umbrella. all of these ministries are major enterprises in their own right and have onnuri church’s senior pastor, currently lee jae-hoon, as the official executive director. for love sonata, a semi-annual pattern of spring and fall events developed in 2009 after the flurry of the first two years. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 66 prayer, publicity, and other preparation now fit comfortably into onnuri church’s annual rhythm. a small seoul-based staff coordinate record-keeping, calendars, recruitment, publicity, travel arrangements, and countless other particulars. cgntv’s central role of creating promotional videos, broadcasting and recording the actual love sonata events, and expanding antennae receptivity in upcoming love sonata event areas requires ongoing planning. the prominent place of the second-day leadership forum requires ccf’s participation. planning includes the arrangements for the several hundred onnuri church volunteers, who travel at their own expense for gift-making, sign-holding, prayer, and other often unsung roles. japanese churches each site has a local steering committee, composed largely of area japanese pastors. the committee takes shape at least one year in advance and attends at least two love sonata events prior to the one that they plan and manage in their own location. this committee bears much responsibility for local publicity, the logistics of event planning, and follow-up. each event’s committee coordinates with the ongoing committee of previous event chairpeople, the lone japanese staff member, and onnuri church-related people in seoul to provide continuity and expertise. the important place of sharing finances merits particular attention. as a megachurch, onnuri church and its associated ministries far outstrip the japanese churches that are involved in terms of people and financial resources. even so, the japanese churches underwrite certain portions of each love sonata event, as part of a conscious effort to bear their share of the financial responsibility. cross-cultural dynamics love sonata is full of cross-cultural interactions. pastor ha and other onnuri leaders have been well aware of such cultural j. nelson jennings—a contextual analysis of onnuri church’s 67 realities, listing two of love sonata’s four main “dreams” (along with “revival” and “mission”) as korean-japanese “reconciliation” and use of “culture” for evangelism (love sonata n.d.). the several different groups of people involved experience the cultural dynamics in various ways. japanese church leaders in japan who become involved as organizing committee members welcome the stimuli and challenges from onnuri church, but they also work through some difficult adjustments. accustomed to existing as a small religious minority in japan, the prospect of openly sponsoring a large, public, and expressly evangelistic event “helps stagnant japanese local churches reignite a passion for evangelism” (anonymous interview with the author, november 2019).1 this process can be stretching and uncomfortable. japanese church leaders and members alike are not used to the free expressions of “愛します” (“i love you”) that the korean volunteers ring out verbally and on placards welcoming event attendees. indeed, while many japanese are favorably disposed to korean celebrities and pop culture, confronted at the event with bright korean colors, lines of korean greeters, and the specially hand-made gifts of wreaths placed on attendees’ heads at the main event’s conclusion—a special korean custom of honoring someone but a practice unknown and strange in japan (and explicitly mentioned as such by a japanese participant—amounts to a cultural shock for many japanese attendees). for japanese people interacting with koreans at love sonata events, hearing korean spoken and sung, as well as hearing japanese spoken with varying degrees of korean accents, can have a deep effect. through actual personal encounters, ingrained prejudices and misconceptions can bubble to the surface in numerous, 1. in november 2019, i conducted thirty-nine personal interviews with both korean and japanese parties variously involved with love sonata, instigated by the question, “what has been the most important effect of love sonata?” e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 68 unpredictable ways. for example, as one japanese observer put it, “japanese have benefitted from receiving koreans’ love when they didn’t want to” (anonymous interview with the author, november 2019). korean many of the korean program leaders, including staff with love sonata, cgntv, ccf, and vision church pastors, speak japanese well and have been connected with love sonata since its 2007 beginning. some of them serve as language interpreters, along with a few korean-speaking japanese. they become cultural bridge-builders and seek to utilize both korean and japanese cultural strengths. as korean onnuri church-related leaders, they help to maintain the focus of love sonata on evangelism and worship, all the while remaining sensitive to the input of japanese counterparts. interestingly, while some local japanese organizing committee members might want to soften or otherwise adjust the direct appeal of some of the meetings, one long-time japanese participant observed that in large part it has been the japanese leaders who wish to maintain the event’s overall character and structure, even while some of the korean leaders have considered making substantial adjustments. some korean features of the various programs are obvious: church seminar speakers, leadership forum presenters, gala performance musicians and main speaker. many of the other korean contributions are intentionally hidden, including gift preparation and prayer. whether intentional or not, some korean characteristics of the event are unmistakable, from conversations overheard to bright colors to expressive welcoming greetings. some of the hundreds of korean volunteers from onnuri church have attended repeatedly. others serve for their first or second time. depending on their familiarity or experience with japan, their experiences vary. most koreans carry unresolved trauma with respect to japan, so traveling there touches deep-seated and conflicting emotions. whatever the korean volunteers’ individual experiences may be, their sacrificial presence is mentioned j. nelson jennings—a contextual analysis of onnuri church’s 69 regularly at all events, in order to stress the korean christians’ love for japan and the japanese attendees. reception and effects most likely, few if any readers of this study will have ever heard of love sonata or onnuri church. even so, there have been significant effects among various related constituencies. onnuri church pastor ha yong-jo indicated that the 2007 focus on japan was a major shift for onnuri church. by no means has that meant an exclusive focus on japan. however love sonata is accompanied by several missionaries, short-term mission teams, vision churches, cgntv, publicity, better world (onnuri’s ngo) relief efforts, and onnuri’s japan ministries in korea. these ministries represent a major commitment of prayer, people, finances, and other efforts. conversions according to cards returned at the end of all 30 evangelistic events in japan, there have been nearly 3,400 professions of faith in christ (love sonata n.d.). that amounts to almost 4.4 percent of the total of over 77,000 japanese attendees. interestingly, the highest (approximately 8–9 percent) percentages of professions of faith occurred in three of the early love sonatas, in 2007 (okinawa, fukuoka, and sendai). discerning what has taken place in, and through, the lives of these love sonata attendees who indicated they had confessed faith in jesus christ requires further extensive and detailed research. while a significant number, the almost 3,400 conversions indicated—when set against japan’s total population of over 126 million (world population review 2020)—amount only to an infinitesimal 0.0027 percent. this tiny percentage is hardly a “wave” e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 70 sweeping across the country. nor would the percentage of the cumulative number of japanese love sonata attendees out of japan’s total population (0.0611 percent) fare much better, including when compared to the well over 20 percent tv ratings of “fuyu no sonata” in japan by the end of only its first airing in 2003 (yasuko 2004). the significance of the numerical results varies according to expectations and measurement standards employed. churches in japan the consensus among experienced observers (both japanese and korean) of love sonata is that the greatest beneficiaries have been japanese churches. along with onnuri church’s encouragement and example to evangelize, the cooperation between area churches—which otherwise would not have occurred—in planning and executing the event has been a much cited positive effect, particularly in smaller cities in japan. the relationships formed have continued, both personally and through ministry collaboration. the fact that 3,033 churches from many different denominations have participated in love sonata events—out of about 13,800 total churches in japan (johnson and zurlo 2019, 436–37), or almost 22 percent—indicates the extensive reach that love sonata has had among japanese churches. the wider christian landscape in japan a historical viewpoint helps in determining where the love sonata phenomenon fits in the wider picture of christianity in japan. japan has experienced periods of modest christian growth (and suffering) in association with western influence, namely in the late sixteenth century (followed by severe persecution in the seventeenth century), late nineteenth century (followed by pressures from increased japanese nationalism), and mid-twentieth century (preceded by government suppression). korean christianity has added its energy to foreign missionary efforts in japan since the j. nelson jennings—a contextual analysis of onnuri church’s 71 late twentieth century, including such ambitious movements as david yonggi cho’s “salvation campaign for ten million japanese people” initiated in the late 1970s (shigaki 2014). christianity’s foreign image in japan has been both altered and reinforced by such non-western mission initiatives. the shapes of love sonata’s effects on new christian converts and japanese churches will help paint love sonata’s place in the ever-developing picture of japanese christianity. korea-japan relations the different types of interactions between koreans and japanese—particularly those involved with planning and leadership forum luncheons—have undoubtedly had a positive effect on interpersonal relations. ha yong-jo’s example of apologizing to japanese has impacted onnuri church members who have examined their own attitudes towards japan. increased cross-cultural interactions would be needed to heighten mutual awareness of each other’s historical suffering. it is noteworthy that periods of strained political rancor have not detoured love sonata from continuing: only covid-19 managed to postpone events planned for 2020. the positive views among many love sonata participants (japanese and korean) of improved korea-japan relations are noteworthy. the integrity and humility of members of both onnuri church and participating japanese churches have been fundamentally important. prospects high costs, predictable fatigue, modest results, and decreased japanese interest in the “korean wave” (roehrig 2015, 90–91) have suggested to some that love sonata has served its purpose and should be discontinued. however, at the ten-year mark in 2017 onnuri church made a renewed commitment to continue love sonata with a particular emphasis on reaching next-generation e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 72 japanese. moreover, wildly popular k-pop bands and korean dramas are currently providing a third phase of the “korean wave” to “almost all age groups” of japan’s “hallyu fandom” (park 2020). after the lifting of covid-19 restrictions and resumption of love sonata events, onnuri church members and japanese churches will need to respond with fresh vigor to sustain what has been a major undertaking. through examining its wider historical and multifaceted setting, this study has sought a deeper understanding of love sonata’s origins, planning, execution, reception, effects, and prospects. as noted earlier, the four stated “dreams” of love sonata are “revival” of japanese churches, korean-japanese “reconciliation,” “mission” to japan, and use of “culture” for evangelism. the hope is that, through contextual analyses like this one, participants and observers alike will have a more informed understanding of how those dreams were formed and of how they are being realized. bibliography cgntv. 2018. “러브소나타 10년, 1퍼센트의 기적 [love sonata ten years, one percent miracle].” youtube video. online. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=wakas-ceygg. cha, myung. 2008. “the economic history of korea” eh.net encyclopedia. edited by robert whaples. online. http://eh.net/encyclopedia/theeconomic-history-of-korea. do, yook hwan. 2010. “선교학 관점으로 본 온누리교회 문화전도 전략에 관한 연구: 동경 러브소나타를 중심으로 [a study of the postmodern cultural evangelistic strategy of the onnuri church: special reference to love sonata, tokyo].” dmin thesis, fuller theological seminary. grimaldi, cristian martini. 2014. “the catholic church in korea: born of persecution and perseverance” union of catholic asian news. online. https://www.ucanews.com/news/the-catholic-church-in-korea-born-ofpersecution-and-perseverence/71588. ha, yong-jo. 2017. the dream of an acts-like church: onnuri community church’s ecclesiology and pastoral philosophy. translated by aimee bak. 2nd rev. ed. seoul: duranno ministry. previously published as 사도행전적 교회를 꿈꾼다. 2007. hayashi, kaori, and eun-jeung lee. 2007. “the potential of fandom and the limits of soft power: media representations on the popularity of a korean j. nelson jennings—a contextual analysis of onnuri church’s 73 melodrama in japan.” social science japan journal 10 (2): 197–216. doi: 10.1093/ssjj/jym049. isozaki, noriyo. 2017. “mutual perceptions in japanese and korean civic society.” japan institute of international affairs. online. http://www2.jiia. or.jp/en/pdf/digital_library/world/170331_isozaki.pdf ito, kinko. 2006. “middle-aged japanese women’s love affair with winter sonata and its social implications.” japan studies review 10: 59–69. online. https://asian.fiu.edu/projects-and-grants/japan-studies-review/ journal-archive/volume-2006/ito-winter-sonata-final-1.pdf. jennings, j. nelson. (2019). thirty-nine personal interviews with both korean and japanese parties variously involved with love sonata, instigated by the question, “what has been the most important effect of love sonata?” conducted november 2019. johnson, todd m., and gina a. zurlo. 2019. world christian encyclopedia. 3rd ed. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. kamiya, setsuko. 2004. “korean love story heats up japan.” japan times, april 7. online. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2004/04/07/films/filmreviews/korean-love-story-heats-up-japan. kbs. 2004. “japanese satellite channel to air ‘winter sonata’ no-cut.” kbs global, november 3. online. http://english.kbs.co.kr/hallyu/ entertainment_news_view.html?no=1376. kim, kirsteen, and hoon ko. 2018. “who brought the gospel to korea? koreans did.” christianity today, february 9. online. https://www. christianitytoday.com/history/2018/february/korean-christianity.html. kono, kei, and miwako hara. 2011. “japan-korea past, present, and future: from a public awareness survey.” japan broadcasting corporation (nhk), broadcasting culture research institute: public opinion research division, december 1. online. https://www.nhk.or.jp/bunken/english/reports/pdf/ report_111201-1.pdf. kubo, kenichi, and kyoko katase. 2016. “「冬ソナ」初恋の純真を描いたユ ン監督の純真 [‘winter sona’ director jun’s innocence depicting the innocence of first love).” nikkei business, december 21. online. https:// business.nikkei.com/atcl/report/15/070300016/121900049. kyodo news. 2009. “stars reprise ‘winter sonata’ roles for ‘anime.’” japan times, september 30. online. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/ news/2009/09/30/national/stars-reprise-winter-sonata-roles-for-anime. lee, claire. 2011. “remembering ‘winter sonata,’ the start of hallyu.” korea herald, december 30. online. http://www.koreaherald.com/view. php?ud=20111230000497. love sonata. n.d. “introduction, ‘love sonata.’” love sonata. online. http:// www.lovesonata.org/introduction/lovesonata. moon, chang-geuk, ed. 2017. onnuri community church: the first thirty years. translated by onnuri mission r&d. seoul: lee jae-hoon, onnuri community church. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 74 park, ji-won. 2020. “hallyu resurges in japan amid diplomatic rift.” korea times, july 23. online. https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/ art/2020/07/398_293277.html. roehrig, terence. 2015. “japan–south korea economic ties: stability and growth through discord.” in east asian development model: twentyfirst-century perspectives, edited by shiping hua and ruihua hu, 77–97. london; new york: routledge. shigaki, shigemasa. 2014. “a study on the church growth theory and world mission of pastor yonggi cho: focusing on mission in japan and the salvation campaign for ten million people.” ma thesis, yonsei university, seoul. takamizawa, eiko. 2008. “a missiological analysis of the ‘love sonata’ project in japan.” torch trinity journal 11 (1): 147–58. world population review. 2020. “japan population 2020 (live).” world population review. online. https://worldpopulationreview.com/ countries/japan-population. yasuko, sakagami. 2004. “tv drama triggers a ‘korean wave’ in japan.” nipponia, december 15. online. https://web-japan.org/nipponia/ nipponia31/en/trend/index.html. rooms.indb 11 our agricultural krísis sketches of a missional response matthew anslow abstract in australia, and indeed across the world, we are experiencing the effects of a broken food system, such that we face the possibility of a serious agricultural crisis. current hopes for a resolution to this impending crisis are generally pinned to technology, despite the various problems associated with the use of agricultural technologies over recent decades. such a situation demands a christian missional response—an agriculturally-conscious missiology. this paper argues that farming and food production constitutes an aspect of christian mission. the nt notion of krísis (judgment) is an as opportunity for repentance, applied to suggest that our agricultural crisis is a missional opportunity for the church since it has spiritual, practical, and traditional resources necessary for a new agricultural paradigm. in light of these resources, the paper makes some provisional suggestions, directed at “consumers,” related to three missiological categories: relationship, contextualization, and participation. each contributes to a way of thinking that ellen davis has called “agrarianism.” e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 12 introduction wendell berry, in his essay, “nature as measure,” makes the following observation about the state of food production in the united states: for many years . . . we have asked our land only to produce, and we have asked our farmers only to produce. we have believed that this single economic standard not only guaranteed good performance but also preserved the ultimate truth and rightness of our aims we have bought unconditionally the economists’ line that competition and innovation would solve all problems. . . . but the solution has been extravagant, thoughtless, and far too expensive. we have been winning, to our inestimable loss, a competition against our own land and our own people. at present, what we have to show for this “victory” is a surplus of food. but this is a surplus achieved by the ruin of its sources. (berry 2009, 5) thirty years ago, pronouncements of such a pessimistic kind were unfashionable. they have, however, become more regular as the state of the global environment deteriorates more quickly than most could have imagined. in the central west of new south wales, australia, the eastern edge of which i call home, we have witnessed the severe effects of drought that continue to ravage the landscape. drought has long been a feature of this land, but the effects of changing weather patterns have increased its regularity, duration, and severity. our family knows multiple others within a fifteen-minute drive of our property that have been forced to either temporarily or permanently close their market gardens. destocking has become commonplace. these losses of food production are a result of both mismanagement and environmental deterioration. such deterioration is widely, and rightly, associated with climate change, though this is only one aspect of the problem. humans currently oversee such signs of the impending collapse of the worldwide food system as global soil degradation and topsoil loss, desertification of forests and farmland, heavier reliance on matthew anslow—our agricultural krísis 13 genetically modified organisms and chemicals in agriculture, the reduction and loss of seed diversity,1 catastrophic bee death (as well as ongoing losses of other important insects), the pollution and diminution of our water sources, and so forth. such effects are only a handful of those that could be named. we could, in addition, point to various ethical, economic, and geopolitical issues that stem from the social and ecological crises that, according to ched myers, have “been stalking human civilization for centuries, and [have] now arrived in the anthropocene epoch” (myers 2016, 2). my focus here, however, is on the possible impending agricultural crisis we face, though there will of course be overlap with other concerns. after all, those most likely to suffer the consequences of shortfalls in global food production and distribution will be the world’s poor.2 current hopes for a way beyond this impending crisis generally lie in technology. in 2016, the economist published a piece pointing to the un estimate that, by 2050, agricultural production will need to increase by 70 percent over 2009 levels in order to meet global demand. this is despite the fact that most arable land is already being farmed, while staple crops like rice and wheat have plateaued in terms of yields (carr 2016). the solution? according to the economist, the application of technology, including in forms such as “smart farms” and genomic tinkering, is vital. this hope, derived from our continued trust in the enlightenment story of progress, ignores that the un also reports that we currently lose or waste one-third of all produced food (gustavsson et al. 2011). further, crop yields have plateaued despite the application 1. usda listings of seed varieties showed that between 1903 and 1983, 93 percent of all varieties had been lost (fowler and mooney 1990, 63–67). 2. just in this decade, there have been at least two major famines in east africa alone. the 2010–2012 famine on its own was responsible for up to 260,000 deaths. see associated press 2013; checchi and robinson 2013. the 2008 food crisis, in which wheat, corn, and rice prices spiked dramatically, led to millions of people being unable to access food, thirty riots across three continents, and seventy-six million people suffering from starvation. some even argue that this was the precipitating event that sparked the arab spring (cornford 2016a, 79). e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 14 of technologies such as synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and powered machinery. we have, in fact, worn out in a few generations land that took countless millennia to form. it is, of course, likely that technology will play a significant role in the future of agriculture. however, such a technocratic model as that espoused by the economist would further subject global agriculture to control by large-scale agribusiness, and this is a questionable outcome given the track record of multinationals like monsanto (see robin 2009; shiva 2016). technology, moreover, is unlikely to alter destructive human attitudes to the natural world or the dislocated relationships between humanity and the rest of creation. indeed, advanced technologies may exacerbate these disorders. as patriarch bartholomew has said, “what is asked of us is not greater technological skill but deeper repentance . . . which signifies fervent ‘change of mind’ and radical transformation of lifestyle” (bartholomew i 2012, 171). in short: we need a new narrative. the connections between this agricultural crisis and christian mission are not obvious, at least within the realm of evangelicalism in which i currently live and move and have my being. some evangelicals in australia are more concerned to guard against what they call “green theology” than to develop a meaningful, gospel-centered response to the current crises we face (e.g., monk 2018). for others, at least in my experience, food and agriculture are not concerns worthy of theological reflection. my task in this paper, therefore, is a provisional exploration of a largely untouched area of missiology. i will sketch a christian missional response to our current agricultural moment, one that i hope is a small blessing to the church and world. i should be clear: though my family lives on a farm, we are not farmers. our efforts since we set up our farm have been largely limited to subsistence, with only extremely small-scale forays into market production. in truth, most of our economic activity is best described as bartering. in short, i am not attempting to solve our global agricultural crisis; i am not remotely qualified for this task. i am simply offering a sketch of an agriculturally-conscious missiology, what could perhaps be called an earthy missional theology. matthew anslow—our agricultural krísis 15 farming and food as mission? given that i am no missiologist, and also the uncommon connection i am drawing between mission and farming and food, it is appropriate that i give a cursory account of my understanding of mission. in the opening pages of transforming mission, david bosch (2011, 1–11) makes several critical points that are pertinent to my present exploration of mission. first, christian use of the language of “mission” is relatively recent. second, “mission” prior to the sixteenth century described the trinity, specifically the sending of the son by the father and the sending of the spirit by the father and the son. third, we should distinguish between mission and missions in order to differentiate between mission as a theological reality and missions as particular forms of participation in this reality. for bosch, mission refers primarily to “the missio dei (god’s mission), that is, god’s self-revelation as the one who loves the world, god’s involvement in and with the world, and the nature and activity of god, which embraces both the church and the world, and in which the church is privileged to participate” (bosch 2011, 10). a simpler way of putting this is that mission is, first and foremost, what god is doing. i recognize that this way of describing mission could be deemed overly flippant. it is vulnerable to our tendency to retrospectively baptize our activities as divinely-willed. who is to say what god is doing, anyhow? i am, however, also aware of the tendency to over-define mission. indeed, bosch notes: “mission remains undefinable; it should never be incarcerated in the narrow confines of our own predilections” (2011, 9). what, then, can we say about what it is that god is doing? the entirety of scripture testifies that god’s mission entails the self-revelation of god and god’s ongoing redemptive activity in and for the whole of creation. from creation itself, to god’s call of abram; from the redemption and call of israel to the incarnation; from christ’s death and resurrection to the consummation of new e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 16 creation—god has been revealing godself and working for the liberation of creation throughout the scriptural narrative. soon after the inception of this narrative we encounter the primeval dislocation between humanity and god, self, others, and the rest of creation. this latter dislocation—between humanity and the rest of creation—takes numerous forms, as explored throughout genesis. among the most immediate effects, however, is that the ground is cursed, such that agricultural efforts—which up to that point in the story had been unnecessary—are disordered: cursed is the ground because of you;     in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;     and you shall eat the plants of the field. by the sweat of your face     you shall eat bread until you return to the ground. (gen 3:17–19) here adam is condemned to a life of arduous agriculture, as opposed to hunter-gathering in god’s abundant garden. indeed, he will eat bread, which is not natural food (howard-brook 2010, 28). this is symbolic of the toil that will be required. in other words, genesis 3:17–19 paints a picture of agriculture itself as a product of this original dislocation, an activity that is both absent and unnecessary in the era prior to this event. agriculture is, after all, a human imposition on nature. though agriculture is absent in the period prior to dislocation, the vocation of the adam had been “to work it [‘abad] and keep it [šāmar]” (gen 2:15), referring to the garden. there are at least two levels of meaning here: first, and most obviously, the human is to tend the soil in order to make it productive. second, however, is the fact that these hebrew terms are used to refer not to gardening, but to duties associated with the tabernacle (num 3:7–8; 8:26; 18:5–6). in other words, the adam’s work in genesis 2 is liturgical in nature. moreover, in deuteronomy 5:12, “observe” [šāmar] is used to instruct the israelites to keep or guard the sanctity of the sabbath. t. d. alexander comments: “in all likelihood, adam was commissioned to keep or guard the garden so that it matthew anslow—our agricultural krísis 17 would remain holy. this was a normal task associated with any sanctuary” (2008, 26). this suggests the adam is appointed as a guardian of sacred space and not simply to be a gardener. there is a deep connection between the man and the garden: adam, the human, is formed by god out of the adama (the soil). in short, there is an interplay here between working the land and guarding its sanctity, both of which constitute part of humanity’s vocation. in addition to adam’s role, ellen davis points out that genesis’ first chapter is insistent on the place of seed and fruit in creation, and that god endowed creation with abundant fertility (davis 2009, 42–66; see also cornford 2016a, 82). moreover, humans are created possessing dignity befitting those made in god’s image, in contrast to the servitude implied in the babylonian creation myth, enuma elish. a necessary conclusion of witnessing god’s love poured out into an abundant creation is that the exploitation of such creation must be rejected. indeed, according to davis (2009, 55), the “dominion” (radah) given to humanity in genesis 1 should be more accurately thought of as “mastery among” as a master craftsperson “who works with reverence and respect for both his tools and materials” (cornford 2016a, 82). in other words, god’s apparent intent is that humans achieve a level of skill in understanding and stewarding creation, such that work can continue to occur that will further perfect what god has made. the stacking of this suggestion with the articulation of adam’s role to work and keep the garden in genesis 2 suggests that, while agriculture may be an unnatural imposition on creation, there is meant to be a human agrarian presence in which creation is “mastered among” (not mastered over) for its good and the good of humanity.3 there is clearly a tension here in that adam is appointed to care for the garden and steward creation, and yet agriculture is viewed as a curse. this is understandable in the historical context of the ancient near east given that agriculture represented 3. bauckham suggests that humans “subduing” the earth is related to the command to fill the earth, and that only by agriculture were humans able to fill the earth. to subdue the earth, he says, is “to take possession and to work the soil in order to make it yield more food for humans than it would otherwise do” (2011, 226). e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 18 widespread oppression. people who settled in one location to farm became subject to both natural dangers (like disasters and shifts in weather) and human oppression (as city-based elites extracted their surplus production through the threat of violence). agriculture made possible the existence of the city, a form of human organization to which genesis is uniformly opposed, in part due to the oppression is represented (e.g., gen 4:16–24; 11) (howard-brook 2010, 28; see also lenski 1966, esp. 189–242). despite the portrayal of agriculture as a curse, biblically it is also something to be redeemed. in torah, israel is given specific commands regarding agriculture. examples include: • restitution for land damaged by livestock (exod 22:5) • allow the land to rest, according to sabbath regulations (exod 23:10–11; lev 25:3–7, 11–12) • allow slaves and animals to rest, and to enjoy what they produce (exod 23:12; lev 25:4–7; deut 5:14) these commands deal with various agricultural issues including soil fertility, pest control, labor and animal ethics, crop rotation, overfarming, erosion and compaction. such commands reflect god’s care for the earth and concern that israel’s agricultural practices echo such care. the meaning of the story of the manna in the wilderness in exodus 16 could be construed partly as an object lesson in how to do agriculture when the time eventually comes for israel to transition into a settled existence—take only what you need, not too much and not too little (myers 2001). this is revisited in leviticus’s commands to restrict production to certain years (lev 25). in other words, human agriculture is not separate from creation, but exists within its limits. it is also worth remembering that the land into which yhwh promised to bring israel following its wilderness wandering is described according to its agricultural bounties: for the lord your god is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of matthew anslow—our agricultural krísis 19 wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing. (deut 8:7–9a) that god’s mission might encompass the redemption of agriculture is also signalled in the ot’s vision of future restoration: they shall beat their swords into plowshares,     and their spears into pruning hooks . . . they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees. (mic 4:3–4) micah’s vision of an idealized future, like that found in isaiah 65:17–25, is not devoid of agriculture. rather it is characterized by each family having access to their own agricultural livelihood, unthreatened by external ambitions and environmental adversities. according to these prophets, this state of affairs is the will and doing of yhwh. in sum, while the ot’s witness on agriculture is mixed, it does tend toward redemption at the behest of yhwh. the missio dei involves the redemption of farming. the nt’s witness is less explicit on the matter, given the latter testament’s generally parochial focus on local concerns in the burgeoning ekklēsia. still, there are glimpses of agricultural redemption, or at least concern for agriculture and environment. the book of revelation includes several descriptions of environmental devastations or “judgments” including fig trees dropping their winter fruit (6:13), the burning up of trees and grass and the poisoning of water (8:7–11), and the drying up of rivers (16:12).4 each judgement is the result of beastly imperial violence (woodman 2011, 178–84). these are a form of krísis, which i will define and discuss shortly. jesus himself, in luke 4:18–19, appeals to the levitical agricultural laws when, channelling isaiah, he declares his vocation to proclaim the year of the lord’s favor—the jubilee—in which the land is rested and returned to its original owners. these levitical 4. i will have more to say about the category of “judgment” below. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 20 laws remind us that if we live in the land in accordance with yhwh’s commands relating to its limits, that land will yield its fruit and we will eat our fill and live securely. however, leviticus 26 warns us that, whether because we give it respite or because it becomes desolate, the land will have its rest. i would suggest that such predicted outcomes do not require divine action. they are simply the natural consequences of human stewardship or spoiling of the land. whatever the case, if jesus’ own vocation involves the proclamation of jubilee—with all of its agricultural implications—we ought to consider the ways in which it figures into our understanding of christian mission. agricultural krísis as missional moment i have described the impending agricultural moment as a crisis. by this i mean two things. first, i mean “crisis” in the conventional sense of the word: a time of danger, instability, or upheaval. i point this out not to be a harbinger of death, but to offer an interpretation of where our current practices have led us—and might lead us still. second, however, is the biblical sense of the word “crisis.” when the nt speaks of krísis, it is usually translated “judgment.” this is fitting, in that humanity is now experiencing the consequences of its actions and underlying worldview dating back to at least the industrial revolution. we must exercise more nuance than this, though, since if this is the sum total of “judgment,” it is less than just. the global poor, those who have done the least to contribute to our environmental and agricultural crises, will bear the brunt of the effects of our sins. while i cannot comprehensively deal with the topic of judgment in the nt in this paper, john’s gospel sketches a helpful way forward. in john 3, the evangelist records the words of jesus: “this is the judgment (krísis), that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. for all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed” (john 3:19–20). in other matthew anslow—our agricultural krísis 21 words, for john, krísis is an opportunity. it is a point of decision. will we come to the light, or will we hide away in the darkness, forbidding our deeds from being exposed by the light? will we repent, or slink back into our evil until it catches up with us? this is the moment we currently face—krísis. indeed, christians have much from which to repent. wendell berry pronounces that “the culpability of christianity in the destruction of the natural world and the uselessness of christianity in any effort to correct that destruction are now established clichés of the conservation movement” (1993, 93–94). berry lambastes christians for their complicity in the cultural destruction and economic exploitation of traditional cultures and of farmers, and for their indifference to the natural world’s rape and plunder and the destruction wrought by industrial economics. he is also critical of the distinction between biblical instruction and the behavior of the supposedly biblically instructed. for berry, even “respectable christian behavior” is catastrophically detached from biblical instruction, and the survival of creation may well rely on the renewal of christianity (1993, 95). the tragedy is that christians have a genuinely unique contribution to make with regard to agriculture, and environmentalism more generally. there is indeed a place for increased knowledge of and improved techniques for agriculture. but the heart of the matter lies not with these things.5 what is much more pressing, and indeed prior to any particular practice, is a recovery of correct vision of and right relationship to the land. this means a correction of our failure to see the land truly as “good,” and as a gift. as pope francis said in laudato si’, “nature is usually seen as a system which can be studied, understood and controlled, whereas creation can only be understood as a gift from the outstretched hand of the father of all” (2015, 76). this point is hardly novel, but to grasp its implications requires a complete overhaul of the lives 5. after all, increased knowledge and improved techniques are only as good as the people wielding them. there are a range of “organic” farming practices that may be applicable in a range of situations, but to discuss these in an abstract sense is pointless and, ironically, a failure to exercise the principles of environmental observation and contextualization that such practices require. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 22 and relationships of basically every person living in the west amid late-capitalism. there is an opportunity for christians to model to society what true life looks like, but this can only happen with the reorientation of our vision. revival, after all, is not primarily about the conversion of the world, but about the revitalization of the church. such revitalization must include seeing the land as good, and truly seeking its good for the sake of our good. this is an “interior conversion” as “a loving awareness that we are not disconnected to the rest of creatures, but joined in a splendid universal communion” (francis 2015, 217, 220). this is a change that will require a reanimation of our imaginations, including theological. for many protestants, such a revolution of theological imagination must include a reorientation of our notions of salvation. christ, after all, is reconciling all things to himself (col 1:19–20; cf. eph 1:9–10). there is no reason to think this does not include non-human creation. such cosmic reconciliation is the mission of christ—a mission on which we must be willing to embark. we are the present embodiment of the shalōm that god will eventually bestow on all creation. within my own australian context, there is much that christians can learn about this cosmic notion of salvation from our aboriginal brothers and sisters, in particular those who have sought to construct a distinctly australian aboriginal theology. in their work rainbow spirit theology, the rainbow spirit elders outline a theology of land and reconciliation, beginning with the assertion that the creator spirit (god) camped among us in jesus christ, who suffered, died, and returned to life in our land, not only in an historical sense in roman palestine, but also as a living reality in the land (rainbow spirit elders 2007, 66). christ, they argue, continues to suffer with the land in order to give new life (rainbow spirit elders 2007, 67). such suffering of the land is that referred to in the nt (rom 8:22), and christ came to overcome the powers under which the suffering land is groaning—christ not only suffers, but can overcome the evils which enslave the land (rainbow spirit elders 2007, 68). moreover, through christ, the land and the people are reconciled with the creator spirit, and with one matthew anslow—our agricultural krísis 23 another. this latter process is something in which we are able to participate (rainbow spirit elders 2007, 69–72). finally, the rainbow spirit elders rightly point out that for such reconciliation to occur, the australian church must acknowledge the crimes committed against aboriginal people, their culture, and their land. this is a rich theological sketch of various elements of reconciliation with the land. it makes clear, in light of romans 8, that the land’s liberation is an aspect of christ’s work, a suggestion in contrast to much western soteriology, detached as it has been from land. the rainbow spirit elders, and other aboriginal leaders, are pointing to the krísis we currently face whereby we are being given the opportunity to readhere soteriology with the land. for some, the connection of all of this—in particular, acknowledgement of past sins committed against aboriginal peoples—with farming and food may be obscure. but the truth is that reconciliation with this land’s first peoples is a prerequisite for ending our agricultural crisis. we will never learn to see this land rightly—as a good gift—until we have come to terms with our sins against it and against those who cared for it for some sixty-five thousand years (clarkson, 2017). moreover, we deprive ourselves of the wisdom of hundreds of generations of proper management of this land for both its benefit and ours. while i cannot claim the same wisdom as these elders, i can suggest various ways in which the church can embody a more intentional and holy approach to mission as it regards farming and food. while i could speak about necessary forms of farming, such as organic farming or small-scale farming, or political realities such as food sovereignty and water management, these are hardly relevant to the daily life of the vast majority of western christians. here i will point my suggestions not to farmers, but rather to those who rely on farmers. such suggestions are not exhaustive, nor definitive, but are merely sketches of the kind of work that is both possible and necessary. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 24 getting our house in order i have already suggested our current krísis demands we learn to see land rightly and recover a harmonious relationship with land. for so-called “consumers,” this will take innumerable forms. it will begin not with particular actions, but with realigned desires. indeed, our desire for more of everything has led to the wreckage of the earth’s resources, including the sources of our food (more on this imminently). consumerism is a spiritual disposition, one characterized by detachment from the material world (cavanaugh 2008, 34–35). for this reason, our great challenge is to develop the spiritual discipline of relating to the material world (cavanaugh 2008, 47). our problem is not that we are too materialistic, but that we desire to transcend material constraints (cavanaugh, 2011). we are not materialistic enough. we must become more materialistic, that is, healthily connected to the material world, even at the level of our desires. consumerism does not arise randomly, but rather proceeds from our desires, as they have been trained in the industrial era. what is required is a realignment of our desires on a large scale. the rich christian history of reflection on desire bestows on us a unique and crucial message for the world. such witness, particularly that present in the early centuries of the church, also points us toward one inescapable conclusion: the good is irresistible, and we only desire what is not the good to the degree that we have been blinded to the truth regarding what is good. augustine was correct when he famously commenced his confessions by noting that our hearts are restless until they rest in god (augustine 1997, 1.1), who is goodness itself and the source of all that is good. such rested hearts will see things in their proper place in relation to god and will thus have had their desires properly ordered. one implication of all of this is that there is a connection between conversion—people coming to a knowledge of god in christ and being initiated into the community christ established—and the restoration of our agriculture. however, any evangelistic efforts on this front will be thwarted by the harsh truth that, on the whole, matthew anslow—our agricultural krísis 25 christians have little embodied witness to which they can point as good news. most christians do not have ordered desires when it comes to land, food, and consumption, let alone the practices necessary to offer an alternative to our current malaise. we must, therefore, get our own house in order if we wish to be missional. this will mean more than buying organic food, or using an ethical shopping guide, or even attempting more ambitious goals such as the one-hundred-mile diet.6 none of these things is wicked, but none necessarily challenges the economic conditions under which farmers toil and consumers consume.7 such economic conditions blind us from the reality of the food we eat by making it impossible to know the processes by which such food arrives at our table. such veiling makes possible infinite configurations of the food market, such that even subversive movements—for example organic food—can be subsumed into a fundamentally destructive market system. the church’s greatest witness will be to recover those elements of food production and eating that otherwise characterize christian mission: relationship, contextuality, and participation. my suggestions here are by no means comprehensive, and in fact i am resistant to offering overly prescriptive solutions since they will not be born of the relational and contextual work that is necessary in each unique environment. rather, these are merely sketches that illustrate the direction in which i think we must migrate. these sketches are intended to be seen in addition to other, more widely understood tasks of the church, for example education, which will play a crucial role in awareness-raising and habit formation. relationship the church needs to recover the relationships necessary to embody an alternative to our current food economy. while deconstructing 6. in which a person seeks to procure only food produced within a onehundred-mile radius of their home. 7. though, of course, they can be exceedingly helpful in undermining pervasive economic habits if undertaken rightly. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 26 this economy is a task of gargantuan proportions, beginning to enact an alternative need not be. the resources exist to connect with nearby farmers in order to purchase food from a known source, and to support local farmers who strive to enact a healthy and sustainable agriculture. farmer’s markets are one obvious example—indeed, an example that is trending upwards—even if my experience tells me they can become problematic when managed within a consumerist paradigm. such local connections may lead to the achievement of the aims of the one-hundred-mile diet in such a way as to prioritize human connection rather than, say, environmental puritanicism. the difference the church can make beyond the individual eater is that it, as one of the last remaining major voluntary institutions in the west, can communally structure its purchasing and eating, including pooling money in order to support good farmers. this would no doubt be a radical proposal for some, since it requires christians to surrender their own individual financial sovereignty, at least with regard to food. but can this can work? i have experimented, with reasonable success, with joint food purchasing on a smaller scale within the context of an intentional community in sydney. new life was evident as people shared more meals together and embraced community to greater depth. churches can generate lists of local producers and suppliers of sustainable goods, encouraging church members and the wider community to purchase from them. i imagine that in some settings it is not outside the bounds of possibility for a regular church meal to become central to the life of a community, and to begin to shape the habits of that community. earth dinners, in which a festive gathering is held on earth day, represent one possible model whereby theory and practice converge.8 earth dinners are relatively simple: you gather a group of people—whether family, friends, or the broader community— to share a dinner comprising food from local and sustainable sources, during which participants tell stories, discuss the food we 8. my gratitude goes to michael frost, my colleague at morling college, for drawing my attention to this model. matthew anslow—our agricultural krísis 27 eat, brainstorm ideas for how we can eat more sustainably, and celebrate the food the earth provides. the timing of such an occasion could be reconfigured to align with an agricultural event, such as a local time of harvest, in order to better conform our rhythms to that of the environment. contextualization cavanaugh suggests that globalization, though it may have increased our awareness of and sympathy for other times and places, has nonetheless produced a detachment from all times and places (2008, 44). this is a profound observation, and demands our replace-ment, our reconnection with this time and place as a time and place, not merely as the contingency in which we happen to exist. many churches are primed to be able to offer a local, contextual alternative for food production. community gardens are rarely able to produce sufficient food to provide meaningfully for even a handful of people, but they can become a catalyst for neighborhood food production. churches can often access unused space that can be converted into such gardens, whether on their own land, that of parishioners, or on land stewarded in agreement with local government. perhaps churches could even reclaim curbsides though this may cross legal lines in some jurisdictions (or at least the limits of our willingness to contravene them). from a community garden, churches are able to welcome those from the wider community, learn from their experience, and pass on collective knowledge through all manner of gatherings. again, i have experimented with this reasonably successfully in recent years, at least on a small scale with few resources. such possibilities remind me of monastic practices in the medieval period which, far from the protestant mythology of monks “fleeing the world,” sustained european memory and culture in a period of turmoil. as kenneth latourette notes, benedictine and cistercian monasteries involved themselves with, among other things, improving soil and agricultural methods. one example was e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 28 the benedictine’s pioneering use of marl (lime-rich mud). hence the monasteries became centers of “orderly and settled life . . . pioneers in industry and commerce” (latourette 1938, 379–80). as with the benedictines, the recovery and cultivation of agricultural knowledge in the cities will become increasingly important in our time as food prices likely rise in the future. community gardens, and the innumerable home gardens they could spawn, could provide the material means to buffer cities against future crises and lay the groundwork for renewed relationships between churches and their local communities. they may also make us less reliant on large-scale, industrial agriculture and provide a meaningful alternative to it in the meantime. as berry has argued, mastery of land can only happen on a certain scale, since mastery requires intimate knowledge (1977, 31). churches can pioneer this kind of mastery born of contextualization and in opposition to those monocultural forms of agriculture born of industry. participation i have already suggested that christians and churches ought to participate in their own food production, whether through community or home gardens, and that they should participate in the relationships that make eating well a possibility. i would add that we can participate in political advocacy for the sake of our food systems. i would suggest that christian voices have been largely non-existent on such issues. some churches, such as the uniting church in australia, have thankfully been outspoken about climate change. this is a significant agricultural issue, but there are more issues, and there is more at stake. i would also suggest that christians and churches can participate by reclaiming other areas of food production. as jonathan cornford notes, “very few of us actually produce anything tangible and material, let alone produce things that serve our basic everyday needs” (2016b, 32). this is an opportunity. even cooking one’s own meals is a subversive act in our time when eating out is easier than ever, and cheap, poor-quality, environmentally-intensive, matthew anslow—our agricultural krísis 29 pre-prepared meals are more common than ever. even more subversive is the performance of this act in the context of community, whereby we have organized ourselves to cooperatively produce the things we need without the mediation of large-scale industrial processes or capitalist markets. more subversive still is the sheer pleasure of eating meals that we have prepared, especially those prepared from produce we ourselves have grown. one possible starting point for this is the adoption of preparing food liturgically. it is worth noting that most christians celebrate the lord’s supper using food items that are produced in ways that are damaging to the environment, such as bread or crackers produced from grains grown in chemically-fertilized monocultures and packaged in unrecyclable material. the preparation of the eucharistic elements using ingredients that are sustainably and ethically produced is a good starting point, just as the sacrament of the lord’s supper is the starting point for our life together and our mission of welcoming the world to the table of the lord. conclusion all i have said could be summarized by ellen davis who calls for “agrarianism”—“a way of thinking and ordering life in community that is based on the health of the land of living creatures” (2009, 1). my suggestions are sketches of a recovery of our connection to the rest of creation, our seeking after god (the good) which orders our desires, genuine christian community, and a holistic understanding of christian mission. while there can be a tendency toward forms of legalism in environmental circles, i certainly do not intend anything i have said to be understood as such. my aim for this paper is to inspire further conversation on a rarely explored but crucial topic. what i would want to assert is that the krísis we face is an opportunity in which we can choose to continue on our destructive path or choose the gift of life offered by the redeemer. we should not seek to enact anything i have said out of a burdensome sense of obligation to a reduced way of life. we should rather seek to become the e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 30 kind of people who desire to recognize the gift of living simply and sustainably within nature’s limits in communion with god, ourselves, others, and non-human creation. in offering a sketch, i hope that more detailed work might be done. to recall augustine, it is in this place that our hearts will be at rest. it is also a timely way in which we may participate in the missio dei. where better to conclude than with the following poetic reminder from our era’s most profound agricultural prophet (berry 2005, 18–19)? there are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places. bibliography alexander, t. desmond. 2008. from eden to the new jerusalem: exploring god’s plan for life on earth. nottingham: intervarsity. associated press. 2013. “somalia: famine toll in 2011 was larger than previously reported.” new york times, april 29. online. http://www. nytimes.com/2013/04/30/world/africa/somalia-famine-toll-in-2011-waslarger-than-previously-reported.html. augustine. 1997. the confessions. translated by maria boulding. new york: new city. bartholomew i. 2012. on earth as in heaven: ecological vision and initiatives of ecumenical. edited by john chryssavgis. new york: fordham university press. bauckham, richard. 2011. living with other creatures: green exegesis and theology. waco, tx: baylor university press. berry, wendell. 1977. the unsettling of america: culture & agriculture. san francisco: sierra club. ———. 1993. “christianity and the survival of creation.” in sex, economy, freedom & community: eight essays, by wendell berry, 93–116. new york: pantheon. ———. 2005. “how to be a poet (to remind myself).” in given: poems, by wendell berry, 18–19. berkeley, ca: counterpoint. ———. 2009. “nature as measure.” in bringing it to the table: on farming and food, by wendell berry, 3–10. berkley, ca: counterpoint. bosch, david j. 2011. transforming mission: paradigm shifts in theology of mission. 2nd ed. maryknoll, ny: orbis. matthew anslow—our agricultural krísis 31 carr, geoffrey. 2016. “the future of agriculture: factory fresh.” economist: technology quarterly, june 9. online. https://www.economist.com/ technology-quarterly/2016-06-09/factory-fresh. cavanaugh, william t. 2008. being consumed: economics and christian desire. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. ———. 2011. “only christianity can save economics.” abc religion & ethics, april 15. online. https://www.abc.net.au/religion/only-christianity-cansave-economics/10101550. checchi, francesco, and w. courtland robinson. 2013. “mortality among populations of southern and central somalia affected by severe food insecurity and famine during 2010–2012.” fews net, may 2. online. https://web.archive.org/web/20130512052359/http://www.fews.net/docs/ publications/somalia_mortality_estimates_final_report_1may2013_ upload.pdf. clarkson, chris, et al. 2017. “human occupation of northern australia by 65,000 years ago.” nature 547: 306–10. cornford, jonathan. 2016a. “so shall we reap: a biblical perspective on the agricultural challenges of the coming century.” in coming back to earth: essays on the church, climate change, cities, agriculture, and eating, by jonathan cornford, 78–91. northcote, vic: morningstar. ———. 2016b. “standing at the crossroads: where the crisis of the church and the crisis of the world meet.” in coming back to earth: essays on the church, climate change, cities, agriculture, and eating, by jonathan cornford, 13–36. northcote, vic: morningstar. davis, ellen f. 2009. scripture, culture, and agriculture: an agrarian reading of the bible. new york: cambridge university press. fowler, cary, and pat mooney. 1990. shattering: food, politics, and the loss of genetic diversity. tucson, az: university of arizona press. francis. 2015. laudato si’. vatican city: vatican. gustavsson, jenny, et al. 2011. global food losses and food waste: extent, causes and prevention. rome: fao. online. http://www.fao.org/3/ mb060e/mb060e00.pdf. howard-brook, wes. 2010. “come out, my people!”: god’s call out of empire in the bible and beyond. maryknoll, ny: orbis. latourette, kenneth scott. 1938. the thousand years of uncertainty. vol. 2 of a history of the expansion of christianity. new york: harper & brothers. lenski, gerhard e. 1966. power and privilege: a theory of social stratification. new york: mcgraw-hill. monk, scott. 2018. “how can churches guard against green theology?” sydney anglicans (blog), october 21. online. https://sydneyanglicans.net/ blogs/guard-against-green-theology. myers, ched. 2001. the biblical vision of sabbath economics. washington, dc: tell the word. ———. 2016. “a critical, contextual, and constructive approach to ecological theology and practice.” in watershed discipleship: reinhabiting e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 32 bioregional faith and practice, edited by ched myers, 1–25. eugene, or: wipf & stock. rainbow spirit elders. 2007. rainbow spirit theology. hindmarsh, sa: atf/ wontulp-bi-buya. robin, marie-monique. 2009. the world according to monsanto: pollution, corruption, and the control of the world’s food supply. new york: new. shiva, vandana. 2016. stolen harvest: the hijacking of the global food supply. lexington, ky: university of kentucky press. woodman, simon p. 2011. “can the book of revelation be a gospel for the environment?” in bible and justice: ancient texts, modern challenges, edited by matthew j. m. coomber, 178–94. london: equinox. ef2-2.indb 73 the franciscan vow of poverty as an ancient and modern resource for innovative missional practice1 james fox-robinson james fox-robinson graduated an ma in ministry, mission, and theology (distinction) through the church mission society in 2020. he is a third order franciscan interested in how monastic practice relates to contemporary mission. he lives with his family in durham, uk. his passion is the performing arts and he currently works as a university-based theatre practitioner. contact: jamesfoxrob@gmail.com abstract this paper explores the experience of those choosing to live a monastic lifestyle and analyses these experiences as potential missional practice in our time. questionnaires, surveys, and interviews were used to correlate the language, symbols, understanding, and experience of participants. using the data in an imaginative way, i offer a conversation between: a pilgrim interested in monastic practices, clare as a facilitator, and composite characters that were 1. editorial note: while ecclesial futures uses intext citations, an editorial decision was made to use footnotes in this particular article in order to preserve the clarity of the dramatic script. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 74 created using the research data. these characters’ conversations share and critique the lived experience of the research participants. this imaginative conversation also creatively provides a literature review. drawing on ideas from fantasy fiction, the analysis and results of the research are explored in a fantasy world called “freedom.” the research demonstrates the cyclical process of contemplative action. innovative missional practice (by individuals and the church as a whole) becomes an ethos by which to live. defining missional spirituality in this manner deepens the church’s understanding of “mission” in our time. introduction this paper speaks into the need to carefully assess how, as followers of christ, we assemble beliefs, perspectives, and practices, a process called spiritual formation. it creatively engages with ancient monastic spirituality to argue that the franciscan vow of poverty is a timely and relevant pathway worth investigating. as it explores the challenges of consumerism, materialism, and environmental degradation, it reinvigorates “a blasé world with the freshness of franciscan spirituality.”2 this approach draws a particular franciscan viewpoint into dialogue with mission. i believe we are in a time that requires us to think radically about our christian faith and how we live it out, a time perhaps that encapsulates new wine’s need for new wineskins.3 in our time, using the term “monastic” is an imperfect act of cultural translation that obscures more than it reveals.4 instead, i suggest that franciscan spirituality is an approach that is well placed to grapple with the dominant issues for a culture that has become uncomfortable with conventional religious language.5 franciscan spirituality 2. mother mary francis pcc., chastity, poverty, and obedience: recovering the vision for the renewal of religious life (ignatius press, 2007) p14. 3. see matthew 2:22. 4. see stephen j. davis, monasticism: a very short introduction (oxford university press, 2018) p10. 5. see rowan clare williams, a condition of complete simplicity: james fox-robinson—the franciscan vow of poverty 75 is earthy; it does not shy away from facing the realities of the world head on; but it always tries to do so with love. franciscans aim to enter the mystical life of love. we too can enter the mystical life of love through contemplative spiritual practice. this engagement requires finding the practices that speak into our journey of discipleship.6 this paper provides some options. as one of the participants in my research says, “jesus said follow me, he never said worship me. paul said ‘do not conform but be transformed.’”7 this brings into question the way the church has been “doing” mission for decades, particularly when engaged in an attractional model. this participant’s comments suggest that we need to radically reform the way we define mission, away from “doing” towards “being.” the argument that follows focuses on what the lived experience of those involved in monastic communities might teach us about “being.” the research suggests that growing values of simplicity, contentment, generosity, and hospitality in individuals will grow the church’s capacity to engage in mission that is relevant for our time. the research shows that emerging new monastic communities are engaged in the task of drawing the wisdom from more traditional monastic and mendicant orders and enculturating it into their own contexts. new monasticism, with its own ethos and orientation, stands at a crossroads of contemplative and prophetic traditions, social theory, and emergent understandings of religiosity.8 franciscan wisdom for today’s world (canterbury press, 2003) pxiv. 6. see e. allison peers, the art of contemplation (spck, 1925) p3. 7. questionnaire 6 17.10.2019. 8. jonathan dunnemann, “towards a new monastic theology,” https:// static1.squarespace.com/static/54c7cca3e4b090b74410c5db/t/54d784f7e4b0 a80ddb27e6b8/1423410423988/final+towards+a+new+monastic+theolo gy+%282%29.pdf p1. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 76 monastic spirituality as an ecclesial future the growth in the number of emerging new monastic communities in the last couple of decades is well documented.9 members of these communities recognize the need to respond to developments in the world outside10 by exploring how to live out our faith in authentic and relevant ways.11 it is through developing one’s own faith that one’s cup might overflow12 into the world around us. this overflow occurs through living an alternative lifestyle which addresses the inequalities that fatigued us. if we choose to take on the challenge of being in but not of the world, monastic practices “provide a means for re-enculturation to a markedly different(iated) lifestyle and worldview.”13 monasticism points us towards a communitarian ethical model,14 as vows are taken in the presence of the rest of one’s community. monastic practices work best in community. hence, i interviewed members of these communities. as christians in community we can play a role in the critique of culture. we can build practices that replace unjust social systems with a commitment to non-violence, lack of possessions, fasting, etc. in this way we take on the mantle of monastic orders and their ritualized strategies of social differentiation.15 9. see bishop david walker’s comments in hattie williams, new monasticism: a desire to go deeper is met, https://www. churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/28-september/features/features/ new-monasticism-a-desire-to-go-deeper-is-met. 10. see michael moynagh, church in life: innovation, mission, and ecclesiology (scm press, 2017) p138. 11. see robert e. webber, the younger evangelicals: facing the challenges of the new world (baker books, 2002) p53. 12. psalm 23:5. 13. see stephen j. davis, monasticism: a very short introduction (oxford university press, 2018) p15. 14. norman k. denzin, interpretive ethnography: ethnographic practices for the 21st century (sage publications, 1997) p274. 15. see stephen j. davis, monasticism: a very short introduction (oxford university press, 2018) p17. james fox-robinson—the franciscan vow of poverty 77 this research builds on missional thinking from the last decade or so. emerging missional literature can be categorized into “discovering, utilizing, engaging, and extending the theology of mission.”16 this research falls into the “extending” category as it seeks to “deepen our understanding, address key issues, and develop a missional hermeneutic.”17 the research is rooted in historic understanding of mission and ancient monastic practice, drawing from that deep well an understanding of being followers of christ for our time. such a theology of mission is possible through a franciscan standpoint epistemology. such an epistemology brings a “particular interpretive logic.”18 a monastic standpoint has been excluded from the dominant discourses in the church. yet franciscans live out in microcosm the vocation of all christians—to love and to be present to the world. i take a franciscan standpoint epistemology and rather than exploring the belief that the vow of poverty is helpful to growing in faith (discipleship), i take this as predetermined through the experience of franciscans through the centuries and instead focus on the vow as a framework for exploring mission. there are other voices present here too, those who have realized the need to take seriously our discipleship and are “beginning to develop missional communities that have a specific call to their locality; they are often called emerging new monastic communities.”19 emerging monastic communities are exploring the vocation to love and be present in new and exciting ways, so i have also 16. craig van gelder and dwight j. zscheile, the missional church in perspective: mapping trends and shaping the conversation (baker academic, 2011) p70. 17. craig van gelder and dwight j. zscheile, the missional church in perspective: mapping trends and shaping the conversation (baker academic, 2011) p90–98. 18. norman k. denzin, interpretive ethnography: ethnographic practices for the 21st century (sage publications, 1997) p31. 19. hattie williams, new monasticism: a desire to go deeper is met, https:// www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/28-september/features/features/ new-monasticism-a-desire-to-go-deeper-is-met. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 78 included their voice in my research. the monasticism that seems to be emerging in the twenty-first century is one that both questions the heroic asceticism of the past yet pays attention to the internal motivation for following the monastic values and how these values are put into missional action. new monastic communities model the need to explore mission around values rather than hard outcomes. materials and methods this research uses “the language of themes and patterns to draw the reader into the divine mystery and drama, providing reflective experiences that enable us to reimagine the world and our place within it.”20 i use a correlation method of “contextual theology” “fuelled by both intellect and imagination, as critical engagement with experience, cultural information, and tradition takes place at both rational and intuitive levels.”21 this method proposes a basic switch in the process of coming to know reality. instead of beginning with the conviction that reality is “out there,” existing somehow independently of human knowing, it suggests that the knowing needs to begin one’s quest for knowing what “is” by attending to the dynamic of one’s own consciousness and irrepressible desire to know.22 this is evident in how i research and in the way that the narrative is formed and presented. my method of data collection is based on the “wesleyan quadrilateral” methodology for theological reflection. the term was first coined by twentieth-century american methodist scholar 20. see hattie williams, new monasticism: a desire to go deeper is met, https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/28-september/features/features/new-monasticism-a-desire-to-go-deeper-is-met., p12. 21. elaine graham, heather walton, and frances ward, theological reflection: methods (scm press, 2005) p162. 22. stephen b bevans, models of contextual theology (orbis books, 2002) p140. james fox-robinson—the franciscan vow of poverty 79 albert c. outler,23 and the method is based on four sources as the basis of theological and doctrinal development—scripture, tradition, reason, and christian experience. scripture is woven throughout this story. this aids in defining contemplative spirituality and mission within a biblical framework. tradition is a major part of the methodology, as the franciscan tradition plays a central role. wesley states that without reason we cannot understand the essential truths of scripture. however, i believe that reason is not a mere human invention and the holy spirit must play a role in helping us understand the mysteries of god. this is why experience is so important to this quadrilateral model. as a third order franciscan, i speak from my own journey of exploring poverty, chastity, and obedience. i also draw on literature that members of the third order use daily. data collection began with a paper questionnaire at the anglican religious communities conference. to deepen saturation, i repeated the same questions through an internet survey. i dug deeper into the lived experience of those in monastic orders through further face-to-face interviews. this gave me, as researcher, the opportunity to explore themes more deeply. it also enabled the writing of a narrative that expressed that lived experience in an authentic way. my ontological position is that the knowledge, views, understandings, interpretations, and experiences of those who live a religious life are meaningful properties of the social reality which my research questions are designed to explore.24 hence, taking a franciscan standpoint epistemology alongside an interest in members of new monastic communities suggests that interviews and questionnaires are both legitimate ways to generate data based on my ontological position.25 i am aware that there is the potential for 23. w. stephen gunter et al., wesley and the quadrilateral: renewing the conversation (abingdon press, 1997) p17. 24. jennifer mason, qualitative researching (sage publications, 1996) p39. 25. jennifer mason, qualitative researching (sage publications, 1996) p40. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 80 epistemological shortcomings with interviews in terms of only being able to access the interpretations and understandings revealed during the interview. however, given that my methodology is based on interpretive correlation, i cross-checked interpretations with the questionnaires and available literature in building a true picture of monastic understanding around the vow of poverty. in exploring the experiences of people who have taken vows or engaged with poverty as a life choice, deeper, archetypal meanings are found. “by focusing on the value orientation of the vows, we are invited to reclaim the significance of the vowed life for all god’s people and not merely for those called to live that life.”26 the values themselves do not change from one age to the next—how we enculturate those values, how we translate them into personal, interpersonal, social and political action is a human dynamic from within which people invent “liminal movements” to assist them in grounding and living out their god-given value orientation.27 franciscan spirituality is based strongly on “imitatio christi,” living lives in the light of christ, following christ’s example.28 in a world that is paralysed by possibility, “the affluence of choice,”29 we need to be people that make the choice to live a missional life, to be imitators of christ. “to be sustained for life and mission in a turbulent world we need to nurture a particularly resilient form of spiritual life.”30 i believe we can do this by exploring and engaging with contemplative monastic practice. to present my data, i created a “messy text”31 drawing on the life experience of those who have taken monastic vows as an 26. diarmuid o’murchu, poverty, celibacy, and obedience: radical option for life (the crossroad publishing company, 1999) p15. 27. diarmuid o’murchu, poverty, celibacy, and obedience: radical option for life (the crossroad publishing company, 1999) p17. 28. see stephen j. davis, monasticism: a very short introduction (oxford university press, 2018) p61. 29. paul borthwick, great commission great compassion: following jesus and loving the world (ivp books, 2015) p13. 30. cathy ross & colin smith (eds.), missional conversations: a dialogue between theory and praxis in world mission (scm press, 2018) p210. 31. norman k. denzin, interpretive ethnography: ethnographic practices james fox-robinson—the franciscan vow of poverty 81 “existential turning-point moment”32 in their lives. the messy text takes the form of a narrative. “stories are privileged and imaginative acts of self-interpretation. we tell stories of a life in order to establish meaning and to integrate our remembered past with what we perceive to be happening in the present and what we anticipate for the future.”33 a “messy text” provided a way to explore what franciscanism in the past and present might say into the future of mission. my aim is to re-present the voice and experiences of those who are under-represented in missional discourse with an “enlightened eye, a form of connoisseurship” that allows what has been seen to be shared in a public and critical way.34 composite characters have been developed from the data, based not on the participants of the research but on the experiences they shared. in this way i can “compress considerable amounts of documentary evidence from a variety of sources into a vivid and unified telling of the story.”35 the “messy text” uses tropes from fantasy fiction by introducing the main protagonist before sending them into a fantasy world akin to the chronicles of narnia. the narrative also draws on the character concept from pilgrim’s progress, developing characters directly from the research data. using software to highlight repeated words from the questionaries and surveys, i was able to compile a shortlist of contemporary language that participants related to the vow of poverty. i then built character profiles by cross referencing that language with the interview data. in this way, the characters become a “living” embodiment of the research data. using contemporary language was a theme that participants repeatedly said is important to their missional practice. by using the same language in the narrative, i am showcasing for the 21st century (sage publications, 1997) pxvii. 32. norman k. denzin, interpretive ethnography: ethnographic practices for the 21st century (sage publications, 1997) pxvii. 33. herbert anderson and edward foley, mighty stories, dangerous rituals: weaving together the human and the divine (jossey bass, 1998) p3. 34. herbert anderson and edward foley, mighty stories, dangerous rituals: weaving together the human and the divine (jossey bass, 1998) p32. 35. j. hollowell, fact and fiction: the new journalism and the nonfiction novel (university of north carolina press, 1977) p31. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 82 to other mission practitioners how we can use ancient monastic practice as a resource for developing innovative missional practice in our time. the narrative remains rooted in reality, one in which “the skills, imagination, and lens of cross-cultural mission that is nurtured when a missionary travels to another country or culture is precisely the kind of thing we need for our own contexts now.”36 franciscan fantasy: results, discussion, and theological reflection prologue narrator like so many other pilgrims before him, jim strolled through the olive groves back from san damiano towards the city of assisi, periodically wiping the midday sweat from under his hat. today was the third day of his pilgrimage to assisi with a coachload of other tourists who, he guessed, may also be exploring what st francis and st clare may have to speak into what had become a bland and uneventful spirituality. the planned excursion for the afternoon was the basilica of santa chiara, the resting place of st clare and the crucifix from san damiano through which god had apparently spoken to st francis.37 jim was mildly suspicious of such stories— although open to having a similar encounter. jim waited, leaning on an ancient stone buttress at the edge of the basilica38 until the hordes had 36. jonny baker, in jason s. sexton and paul weston (eds.), the end of theology: shaping theology for the sake of mission (fortress press, 2016) p233. 37. br damian kirkpatrick ssf, fr philip doherty ofm conv, sr sheelagh o’flynn fmdm (eds.), joy in all things: a franciscan companion (canterbury press, 2009) p213. 38. details of the chapel and its surroundings come from a conversation james fox-robinson—the franciscan vow of poverty 83 taken their photos and moved on before he found a quiet spot to sit and admire the famous crucifix hanging beatifically in the void above. in an uncharacteristic moment of extemporary prayer, jim whispered, almost to himself, “what’s it all about god? why am i here?” it was at this point that jim hoped for one of those wonderful and creative god moments mentioned earlier, but nothing happened. after a minute or two, for jim wasn’t a terribly patient person, he stood up, turned around and took his selfie stick out of his back pocket. having adjusted his phone to the perfect angle, he smiled and pressed the button to take the instagram image all his friends were expecting . . . jim vanished. jim woke up, not as you might expect in early-thirteenth-century assisi, for that, dear reader, would be too obvious a plot device. instead, he found himself lying on the ground staring up at the ceiling of a vintagelooking marquee. looking down at him was a young lady, who sounded much more proper than she looked. scene—a vintage marquee with low tables around which small groups of eclectic-looking characters are drinking herbal tea. clare i’m clare, are you okay? jim yes, i’m jim. clare lovely to meet you, jim. jim stands to get a better sense of his surroundings. all hi, jim! via facebook from people who have made a pilgrimage to assisi, a privilege i have yet to accomplish. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 84 jim am i dead? clare i hope not; do you want to join us? jim errrm, i guess so . . . where am i? clare a tent called “poverty.” jim eh? clare poverty. jim like, poverty, the concept of being poor? clare poverty is not a concept, or a law, or a thing, or a substance which can be analysed, dissected, or put through a filter to separate cultural and psychological elements from the pure gospel essence.39 however, you are welcome to explore that essence here . . . jim okay. clare tea? jim yes, please. contentment i’m contentment. clare that’s simplicity, this is hospitality and generosity. contentment we’re discussing how many compensations you need to buy in order to keep you from noticing the emptiness inside.40 jim compensations? simplicity something that counterbalances or makes up for an undesirable or unwelcome state of affairs.41 39. thomas clarke, “witness and involvement,” quoted in joyce ridick, treasures in earthen vessels: the vows (st paul publications, 1984) p2. 40. rowan clare williams, a condition of complete simplicity: franciscan wisdom for today’s world (canterbury press, 2003) p64. 41. lexico, “compensation.” https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/ compensation. james fox-robinson—the franciscan vow of poverty 85 generosity and therein lies the crux of this evening’s conversation. contentment is it, in fact, unwelcome or undesirable to notice the feeling of emptiness in the first place? jim does emptiness equate to poverty then, how do the two relate? simplicity good question, young man. we have to reflect on why we feel the need to consume. contentment do you define yourself by possessions, wealth, or status, jim? jim errrm, i’m not sure i’ve ever thought about it. simplicity precisely. to be poor actually stretches human potential, because it is no longer rooted in an understanding which judges a person for what he or she has.42 jim but aren’t status, power, and acquisition of wealth a blessing? contentment are they?43 this may be a jarring reality to those who have power and wealth, but being poor gives us the eyes to see.44 jim to see what? clare the divine. simplicity young man, you need to move “from the boundary of logic to the horizon of paradox”;45 it will serve you well here. 42. rowan clare williams, a condition of complete simplicity: franciscan wisdom for today’s world (canterbury press, 2003) p64. 43. for a deeper understanding of poverty in relation to the old testament, see francis j. moloney sdb, free to love: poverty, chastity, obedience (darton, longman, and todd, 1981) p1–4. 44. see rowan clare williams, a condition of complete simplicity: franciscan wisdom for today’s world (canterbury press, 2003) p64. 45. diarmuid o’murchu, poverty, celibacy, and obedience: radical option e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 86 contentment you need to let go of what you think you know, what you’ve been told, taught, and to some extent experienced thus far in your life if you want to make the most of this debate. jim okay. contentment where were we? generosity materialism.46 contentment ah, yes. do you engage with the media much, jim? jim i guess i watch the news and some tv and social media and stuff. contentment try to ignore the media; it tells us we need more. it is arguable that materialism is the single biggest competitor . . . for the hearts and souls of millions in our world today.47 clare i assume that’s what brought you here in the first place. you want some sort of freedom from the culture in which you live? jim i guess so. it just feels like there might be something more to life. simplicity so what example are you setting? jim in what regard? contentment are you content? jim what does that have to do with the emptiness i feel? simplicity have you not been paying attention? do you try to fill that emptiness with material goods? for life (the crossroad publishing company, 1999) p34. 46. questionnaire 11 11.09.2019. 47. craig l. bloomberg, neither poverty or riches: a biblical theology of possessions (intervarsity press, 1999) p132. james fox-robinson—the franciscan vow of poverty 87 jim not really. i try to give away the money i don’t need. generosity good to hear. jim this feels less like a discussion and more like an inquisition by the minute. clare sorry, jim. they like to make the most of the time they have with a guest. jim i’m content with what i have, there’s just a niggling feeling that there’s something more to life . . . and it sounds like you might be saying that we should be less content if we want to hear the divine, but at the same time we should be content in all circumstances, so which is it? contentment content whatever the circumstances, subtle difference. you can be poor and content, wealthy and content, sick and content . . . it’s a mindset, a way of being, an ethos.48 jim then no, i’m not content. i need to know more about how contentment with material things relates to the emptiness. clare having what is necessary to serve the divine to the best of your ability.49 jim so, it’s like when people talk about letting go of the ownership of things?50 contentment having a prophetic attitude to material possessions breaks down barriers in a society based on wealth.51 generosity this applies to material things, but also to knowledge, skills, availability. are you clinging to 48. questionnaire 6 07.10.2019. 49. questionnaire 8 11.09.2019. 50. questionnaire 5 11.09.2019. 51. questionnaire 11 11.09.2019. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 88 these as your own possessions or do you willingly share them?52 jim so what’s the difference between contentment and simplicity? simplicity simplicity is a deliberate choice to counteract the kind of consumer culture, consumer lifestyle of the world.53 jim so having what we need rather than what we want allows us to live a counter-cultural lifestyle that actually benefits others? generosity that depends what you do with the rest of your income. you can choose a less affluent lifestyle for the benefit of others.54 jim like that saying, “living simply that others can simply live”?55 hospitality that would indeed link it back to poverty, but what about the emptiness this debate started with? simplicity to simplify physically, emotionally, and spiritually gives us time and energy to focus on filling the divine emptiness, thus creating an ever-increasing cycle of finding deeper spiritual peace. jim i think i’m getting it. it isn’t about how much you have, it is about how you view what you have;56 simplicity is a value that creates space to fill the emptiness with the divine rather than taking part in a material lifestyle.57 52. written interview 23.04.2020. 53. written interview 23.04.2020. 54. questionnaire 6 07.10.2019. 55. survey 1 13.10.2019. 56. survey 4 14.10.2019. 57. questionnaire 6 07.10.2019. james fox-robinson—the franciscan vow of poverty 89 simplicity well done, jim. we can live with a poverty that allows for need, not greed.58 jim but what about the monastic brothers and sisters who have nothing, who choose real poverty? simplicity some choose poverty but live comfortably; you might say they live simply rather than in poverty, others by virtue of where they live are actually very poor and live in what may be more traditionally described as poverty.59 jim so how do you define poverty? simplicity a lack of power; the power for example, to have your say and be heard, or to know your rights and demand them; the power to have access to essential services or to share fairly in the world’s resources or to live in the security not only of surviving, but also of thriving.60 jim i’m involved in projects to help those people. projects addressing domestic poverty: soup kitchens, food banks, credit unions, homeless shelters . . .61 simplicity the key here is that some choose poverty; all are called to live simply.62 hospitality and to serve the poor. like you said, jim, this is also about the dimension of our relationship to the poor. to those who have nothing not through their choice but because of circumstances, usually beyond their control, which have deprived 58. questionnaire 8 11.09.2019. 59. interview 1 11.09.2019. 60. christian aid, partnership for change, executive summary, 2012, p3 61. susan durber, poverty: the inclusive church resource (darton, longman, and todd, 2014) p66. 62. questionnaire 11 11.09.2019. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 90 them of adequate housing, medical care, food, employment, et cetera.63 jim may i have some more tea? what do i owe you? generosity our treat. you see, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etcetera, is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. if our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, i should say they are too small. there ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditures exclude them.64 jim so, that’s how generosity links to simplicity and contentment? clare you’re getting it. jim it’s not simple though, is it, at least not to get your head round the changes that need to be made . . . contentment you know something practical you can try, jim. give thanks. jim what, like saying grace before a meal? generosity well yes, but more than that; be thankful in all circumstances.65 gratefulness builds contentment, contentment lays the foundation for a generous life.66 everything is linked. and sharing, being committed to radical sharing.67 jim i see; we’re back to holding things lightly? 63. written interview 23.04.2019. 64. c. s. lewis, mere christianity (macmillan, 1958) p81–82. 65. 1 thessalonians 5:18. 66. paul borthwick, great commission great compassion: following jesus and loving the world (ivp books, 2015) p145. 67. survey 2 13.10.2019. james fox-robinson—the franciscan vow of poverty 91 generosity everything is linked. i encourage you to have a continuing dialogue between poverty and generosity based on a belief that your possessions are held in trust for the work of the divine.68 jim i’ve always thought that to share is more intelligent than to accumulate. but it’s so easy to fall into the trap of consumerism. i understand now that “in our option-overload world, we face the daily choice on how to use our money, our time, our gifts, our home and our very lives.”69 generosity spot on. try to be concerned more for the generosity that gives all, rather than for the value of poverty in itself.70 jim gives all, like time and energy and your home, etc. generosity everything is linked. do you have anything to say about that hospitality? hospitality certainly. i can add some thoughts. you mentioned home there jim but let us for a minute define hospitality as being less about place and more about commitment to openness of life to others.71 clare hospitality is about both giving and receiving, it’s important to be free to receive the hospitality offered by others.72 hospitality linking to what has already been said, does your idea of hospitality allow for identity with the poor?73 68. survey 7 17.10.2019. 69. paul borthwick, great commission great compassion: following jesus and loving the world (ivp books, 2015) p141. 70. survey 6 17.10.2019. 71. questionnaire 7 11.09.2019. 72. written interview 23.04.2020. 73. written interview 23.04.2020. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 92 generosity you are here to broaden your perspective, jim, so when you get home you can continue that process by engaging in class-crossing practice—you may need to engage with those outside of your usual social circles to broaden your perspective. simplicity remember the horizon of paradox. we all need to strive to create community—a place of love, safety, and growth, yet, at the same time, welcoming the stranger and service to the world outside that community.74 jim well, that doesn’t sound at all simple. generosity paradox. for anyone accustomed to social privilege and institutional strength, hospitality involves a dispossession of all that would keep us from loving our neighbours in vulnerability and humility.75 clare spiritual growth takes place as the spirit sends us across social, cultural, and religious lines.76 hospitality a practical way of looking at this is to expand your friend base; pursue empathy with the poor by sharing life together.77 counter-cultural service to the poor—be known for hosting a socioeconomically diverse group of friends at your home.78 74. cathy ross and colin smith (eds.), missional conversations: a dialogue between theory and praxis in world mission (scm press, 2018) p119. 75. dwight j. zscheile (ed.), cultivating sent communities: missional spiritual formation (eerdmans publishing, 2012) pxiv. 76. dwight j. zscheile (ed.), cultivating sent communities: missional spiritual formation (eerdmans publishing, 2012) p9. for example; peter’s encounter with cornelius in acts 10. 77. francis de sales, introduction to the devout life (eremitical press, 2009). 78. see paul borthwick, great commission great compassion: following jesus and loving the world (ivp books, 2015) p147. james fox-robinson—the franciscan vow of poverty 93 jim i know we need to do something about those who are hungry, thirsty, or in need of clothing. those who are strangers, sick, or in prison. the marginalized and the vulnerable,79 it’s finding the time, isn’t it . . . contentment ah, well, that’s just about priorities. if you are filling the emptiness with the work of the divine rather than engaging with consumerism, the time will be available. generosity try this when you get home: the more you give away, the more comes.80 jim the more what? clare time, money, peace, joy, humility, love . . . that’s how the economics of the divine economy actually work.81 hospitality of course, there is another important aspect to hospitality. how we accept or abuse the hospitality of the planet we live on. jim having a smaller footprint.82 generosity remembering that, of course, this is all linked. it all connects to justice, issues of slavery, environment.83 jim yes! isn’t it obvious that there’s more than enough stuff on the planet? we actually don’t need it. shouldn’t we stop manufacturing today?84 79. see paul borthwick, great commission great compassion: following jesus and loving the world (ivp books, 2015) p58–64 80. interview 1 11.09.2019. 81. interview 1 11.09.2019. 82. survey 8 17.10.2019. 83. questionnaire 7 11.09.2019. 84. interview 1 11.09.2019. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 94 clare this is the system that’s got to change.85 generosity you can think about paying more for food and goods that have been ethically sourced.86 jim which is fine for me, but hardly achievable for those who actually live in poverty. hospitality that’s why we need alternative economic models to unbridled growth. offering ways of living that are ecologically sustainable and which foster human values.87 jim okay, so a part of what poverty is about is our witness in a world being eaten up by the economic model of growth and expansion where there are dwindling resources to support that growth?88 clare but there’s also a more basic call to take care of the environment and the other inhabitants of it. our life is intimately connected with creation.89 hospitality hang on, i’ll see if ecology is here . . . yes, there she is! i’ll invite her over. clare this is jim. ecology hey jim, enjoying your time with this lot? jim taxing on the old grey cells but yes, learning a lot. ecology so you wish to know more about family relationships within all creation? jim here to learn. 85. interview 1 11.09.2019. 86. questionnaire 6 07.10.2019. 87. written interview 23.04.2020. 88. written interview 23.04.2020. 89. franciscan seculars, “canticle of the creatures.” http://franciscanseculars.com/the-canticle-of-the-creatures/. james fox-robinson—the franciscan vow of poverty 95 ecology birds, fire, and wind are brothers, the moon, stars, and water are sisters and our planet earth who nourishes us is mother.90 jim i’ve never thought of creation like that. ecology creation is nature viewed with the creator in mind; creation is fullness, life, and community. creation becomes fraternity.91 jim so “creation” is broader than just the environment or ecology? ecology exactly. we need to think about the redemption of all creation.92 now you’ll have to excuse me as i need to get back to a fascinating debate on what role cosmology and triangular numbers play in addressing modern poverty. jim goodness. contentment so you just need to explore which element of poverty you feel called to do something about— we can’t all do everything. jim how do i know what is an authentic way for me to engage with poverty? hospitality one of the signs that our poverty is authentic will be the readiness of others to confide in us their own experiences of suffering, grief, and loss. if we are evading the mystery of poverty in our own lives we will shut ourselves off from the pain and weakness in the lives of our brothers and sisters.93 90. franciscan seculars, “canticle of the creatures.” http://franciscanseculars.com/the-canticle-of-the-creatures/. 91. franciscan seculars, “canticle of the creatures.” http://franciscanseculars.com/the-canticle-of-the-creatures/. 92. see clive w. ayre, “eco-salvation: the redemption of all creation.” worldviews 14.2/3 (2010) p232–42. 93. martin l. smith ssje, living in hope: a rule of life for today, (canterbury press, 1997) p17. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 96 jim so it’s a process, start somewhere and see if it feels right? generosity if you love the poor, you will share their poverty and be poor like them. if you love the poor be often with them. be glad to see them in your own home or to visit with them in theirs. be poor when conversing with them and speak to them as their companions do, but be rich in assisting them by sharing some of your more abundant goods with them.94 contentment on a practical note, resist management processes and models of governance and leadership to support the poor more actively.95 jim how do i do that? generosity being generous and focusing on outward-looking and doing rather than maintenance.96 in this way we can mirror the character of the divine to the world. perhaps we can turn the tide on places of power and hierarchy, where the marginalized do not feel welcome any more.97 clare well, it’s time for me to go; i’m heading to café chastity. care to join me jim? jim café what? clare chastity. jim errrm, sure. let me just summarize what i’m taking from this. thank you so much for everything you’ve shared. living an alternative lifestyle premised on giving, justice in social 94. francis de sales, “introduction to the devout life,” discipleship journal 25 (1985) p33. 95. questionnaire 1 11.09.2019. 96. questionnaire 10 11.09.2019. 97. see cathy ross & colin smith (eds.), missional conversations: a dialogue between theory and praxis in world mission (scm press, 2018) p123. james fox-robinson—the franciscan vow of poverty 97 relationships, working for fair and equitable sharing with others and the environment98 gives people a broad range of ways to engage with poverty that might actually lead to sustainable change. contentment in a nutshell . . . simplicity it’s been a pleasure jim, you take care, friend. hospitality see you again sometime. generosity yes, welcome back anytime. clare let’s go. jim bye all. conclusion this paper has creatively explored the relevance of the monastic vow of poverty for contemporary challenges such as consumerism, materialism, and ecological disaster. the results embedded in this “franciscan fantasy” narrative demonstrate that the monastic vocation is a call to each and every one of us—not necessarily to follow a call to join a monastic order but to live an alternative lifestyle, to “be in the world but not of it.”99 monastic spiritual practices are “not the exclusive property of religious orders, we just explicitly live them out in a particular way.”100 the vow of poverty is investigated as living an alternative lifestyle premised on contentment, simplicity, generosity, and hospitality. practical strategies like thankfulness and expanding ones’ base of friendship become ways to embody franciscan spirituality today. the result is a creative expression of our individual and corporate call to missional practice which might lead to sustainable change. 98. questionnaire 10 11.09.2019. 99. john 17:14–16. 100. written interview 23.04.2020. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 98 acknowledgments i am indebted to everyone who filled in a questionnaire or online survey that gave me such a breadth of data to work with, especially the attendees of the 2019 religious communities conference. also to the interviewees who so openly shared their life experiences. thanks to my tutors at church mission society, the brothers and community at hillfield friary for the use of their library, and finally, to the editors of this journal for their wisdom and support. rooms.indb 1 editorial nigel rooms church mission society, oxford, uk, and the queen’s foundation, birmingham, uk nigel.rooms@churchmissionsociety.org it is always remarkable to me how a journal issue comes together from disparate sources, but when the articles are placed alongside each other, the whole offers many connections and therefore new insights. this issue is no exception to such a rule. thus, themes of poverty, engaging in mission with the other, the nature of research in searching out the hidden with curiosity and ingenuity, plus the fine detail of the practices involved in participating in the mission of god characterise what is laid out before us in six engaging articles. i’m also immensely pleased that we have the most female authors we have had so far and that the majority of those writing have african and asian location or heritage. at the heart of this issue are authors being published for the first time, three of whom, i think, have crossed boundaries and borders to locate themselves in a place not of their birth. such movement, in my experience, always offers tremendous insight for everyone involved, not least because the task of participating in god’s mission is always an intercultural enterprise which changes all of us. beatrice churu and mary getui from kenya begin this issue with a deeply compassionate call for not so much liberation theology (though there are many echoes of that project in the paper) as e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 2 a theology for breathing amidst poverty. it is the holy spirit who is described as breath in our scriptures, yet george floyd was unable to breathe under the weight of the oppressor and covid-19 has squeezed the breath out of millions of people, especially the poor. recovering a gospel based on the courage to simply breathe is the task the authors set themselves. they present searing analysis of the double-edged alienation that poverty brings on both the “wretched of the earth” and the “lords of poverty” who are the cause of it. they show how the incarnate christ addresses both sides of the poverty divide and offers a way for redemption and reconciliation, which demonstrates the principle that god has provided all the resources both within the church and in the wider context and culture for the flourishing of everyone. they pull no punches, however, in showing how those resources, especially the cultural capital inherent within africa, are so often denied and ignored and urgently need to be recovered. what emerges is a truly african missiological response to their context, and they finish with a beautiful example of how this is embodied in one local christian community. this article deserves to be widely read and reflected on throughout the continent of africa and further afield. staying with poverty and an author who began life in east africa, i am pleased to share daniel njuguna’s article with our readership, not least because it is suggestive to lay it alongside the previous one and note similarities and differences. njuguna addresses questions arising from his context as a church of england parish priest in an area of significant poverty and in anticipation of a research project which he will undertake for a professional doctorate. there are inevitable questions which churu and getui do not have to deal with in the same way, such as the decline and closure of churches, but nevertheless what emerges is not dissimilar. njuguna is convinced of the need to complexify questions of mission and discipleship, and he does so suggestively by turning to a theology of baptism and theosis following steve bevans’s lead. this means that njuguna refuses to separate personal and social transformation in the way that the enlightenment project has so often done. and then it is in going to the edge of the church and nigel rooms—editorial 3 its world and by creating common spaces that the messiness of life has to be dealt with in all its confusing complexity, but that is where the life of the new age is to be found breaking in. sheila akomiah is also part of the african diaspora, in her case west africa, and is now living in scotland. she presents, in the article, data from her recent phd thesis which studied the growth of new churches in glasgow, scotland, between 2000 and 2016. she presents a fascinating picture of the fast-changing scene in a major british city which is under-researched. as mainstream churches continue their inexorable decline, new churches spring up. two things stood out for me in this work. first, the detailed detective work akomiah has to undertake to find and catalogue new churches. this is painstaking, ground-up work, and it is noticeable that larger national church surveys completely miss the data she is uncovering. more concerning, however, is her finding that the vast majority of these churches are ethnically homogenous. inevitably, she references mcgavran and wagner’s theories of church growth, which claim that people like to gather around those who look and act like them. i have always thought that giving in to such sociology is theologically disastrous given the witness of galatians 3:16 and revelation 7:2. it is not akomiah’s task in this article to address what to do about what is clearly happening in glasgow’s new churches, but it is an urgent and pressing question for the worldwide church, and does lead naturally in to the next article. sinwoong kim also presents an aspect of his recent doctoral research in a fascinating paper sharing how korean missionaries in britain have engaged with the phenomenon of nominalism, something they have not really encountered before. it is helpful to place this article after akomiah’s as there is a sense in which it addresses what happens when a diaspora community breaks out of its homogeneity and engages with its british context, a journey all such communities will have to go on if they are to sustain themselves across generations. what is also interesting to me in this work, since i have been engaging with this post-christian reality for many of my ordained years, is how the outsider, the missionary, the etic person views my own english/british reality, nigel rooms—editorial 3 its world and by creating common spaces that the messiness of life has to be dealt with in all its confusing complexity, but that is where the life of the new age is to be found breaking in. sheila akomiah is also part of the african diaspora, in her case west africa, and is now living in scotland. she presents, in the article, data from her recent phd thesis which studied the growth of new churches in glasgow, scotland, between 2000 and 2016. she presents a fascinating picture of the fast-changing scene in a major british city which is under-researched. as mainstream churches continue their inexorable decline, new churches spring up. two things stood out for me in this work. first, the detailed detective work akomiah has to undertake to find and catalogue new churches. this is painstaking, ground-up work, and it is noticeable that larger national church surveys completely miss the data she is uncovering. more concerning, however, is her finding that the vast majority of these churches are ethnically homogenous. inevitably, she references mcgavran and wagner’s theories of church growth, which claim that people like to gather around those who look and act like them. i have always thought that giving in to such sociology is theologically disastrous given the witness of galatians 3:16 and revelation 7:2. it is not akomiah’s task in this article to address what to do about what is clearly happening in glasgow’s new churches, but it is an urgent and pressing question for the worldwide church, and does lead naturally in to the next article. sinwoong kim also presents an aspect of his recent doctoral research in a fascinating paper sharing how korean missionaries in britain have engaged with the phenomenon of nominalism, something they have not really encountered before. it is helpful to place this article after akomiah’s as there is a sense in which it addresses what happens when a diaspora community breaks out of its homogeneity and engages with its british context, a journey all such communities will have to go on if they are to sustain themselves across generations. what is also interesting to me in this work, since i have been engaging with this post-christian reality for many of my ordained years, is how the outsider, the missionary, the etic person views my own english/british reality, e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 4 and how helpful that perspective is; we need more of this. having defined sociological approaches to nominalism, kim presents detailed analysis of his research subjects’ approach to the nominal christians they find in abundance around them. then, in a sophisticated missiological reflection, he begins to make sense of the phenomenon and make some proposals as to how to respond to it. what is suggestive to me here is the “cognitive dissonance” the nominal christian brings to the missionary encounter; they upset the unhelpful binary between the saved and the unsaved, creating the requirement for curiosity, inquiry and a discernment of god’s activity—which isn’t always there, but might just be. thus, an open inquisitive stance to the other emerges—which takes us to our next article. in fact, nick ladd’s research (not unrelated to his doctoral research thesis, of which we hope he will write more in the future) picks up several themes in this issue of the journal. if missional discipleship is related to practices that complexify the relationship between mission and discipleship (njuguna), what is the nature of those practices? all mission is encounter with the other in public space, however strange that other may seem to us (kim), so what is happening when we form a public relationship across the boundary of the church? ladd picks up a research question from one of the groups related to this journal, the international research consortium, and runs with it in the uk context. the practice of dwelling in the world, which is part of the missional change journey of the partnership for missional church process, is examined in detail by interviewing those who have practiced it and asking what was happening as they were forming relationships in public with “people of peace”—a concept drawn from luke 10:5–6. what is the exchange that is going on as peace is shared in public? such a question takes us into the fine detail of crafting the missional church—just as a craftsperson has to pay attention to the smallest element of their work. given our inheritance in the west, such encounters are fraught with pitfalls on both sides, yet what emerges from the research demonstrates that the god of mission is to be nigel rooms—editorial 5 found in the mutual space between two people forming a relationship which participates in that very mission. our final article is a new departure and a little different to the others, not least in the way that it wasn’t peer-reviewed in quite the same manner, as that would not have been possible given its autobiographical nature. it is a truism that there is no theology without biography, and therefore telling the story of how one church leader grew into embodying a missional stance in their life and ministry should be mightily instructive. i am grateful to coenie burger from south africa, therefore, for offering to write the story of his personal journey for us in this issue. we learn many things from coenie as he shares his story, not only in the de-colonizing of his denomination, the dutch reformed church, which has its clear failures and successes, but also, again, picking up a theme of this journal—a life lived in curiosity, always looking for new ways of seeing things—and reading and producing an enormous number of books and written material, some of which the reader may wish to follow up. once again thanks to patrick todjeras for putting together a wide range of book reviews, not least our first contribution from an orthodox source. another new departure is my co-editor, steve taylor’s foray into reviewing “grey literature”—we’d like to see more of this kind of review if readers are interested in sending us their reflections on resources they find generative in participating in god’s mission. rooms.indb 75 a ref lection on nominal christians in contemporary england a non-diasporic korean missionary perspective sinwoong kim the queen’s foundation for ecumenical theological education, birmingham, uk contact: sp.kim@yahoo.com abstract this article attends to the religious landscape in contemporary england, particularly those who display some christian beliefs and practices loosely, while their church attendance is slight, occasional or non-existent. in western society and churches, they are predominantly characterised as “nominal christians.” from a missiological perspective, i examine the adequacy of this characterisation, drawing upon my empirical findings of non-diasporic korean missionaries’ engagement with the phenomenon of interest. firstly, i show how nominalism is addressed in the two major sociological approaches that attempt to characterise the religious trend in the contemporary western culture, namely, secularization theories and de-institutionalization theories. secondly, i present e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 76 empirical findings of korean missionaries’ reflection on nominalism in the light of such a sociological debate. finally, i examine the missiological implication of their reflection for nominalism in reference to the concept of missio dei. i argue that korean missionaries’ accounts disclose what i call “religious nominals” who have some valid elements of christian faith in an increasingly deinstitutionalized ecclesial context. they represent a distinctive religious constituency among whom god carries out the redemptive work of christ, the manner of which is as yet to be explored. this disclosure invites us to review our understanding of nominalism with a serious theological exploration of such a redemptive intervention of god. this exploration also invites further reflection on our current discourse of missional church in this particular theological context. introduction this article draws on research conducted over the course of my doctoral project which investigated non-diasporic korean missionaries. as missionaries, they focus on doing mission among local people outside their migrant communities in england (freston, 2010: 162–163). the project explored the sociological and theological meaning of their missionary experience through indepth interviews with nine missionaries whom i selected out of 44 questionnaire participants across england. one of the major findings from this exploration was about their encounter with a unique religious landscape in england: it consists of those who display some christian beliefs and practices loosely, while their church attendance is slight, occasional or non-existent. two statistics can be used to illustrate this constituency in a tangible way. first, the latest uk national census (2011) shows that 59.4 percent of the english population identified as christian.1 secondly, it is estimated that less than 5 percent of the population 1. while the 2021 uk national census is on the way, the national centre for social research (curtice et al., 2019: 4–5) suggests that 38 percent of the british public identified as christian in its survey of 3,879 britons in 2018. sinwoong kim—a reflection on nominal christians 77 would attend the church by 2025 (brierley, 2014). the apparent gap between these two figures captures the number of those who have an unconventional christian attachment (see drane, 2008: 75–76). this gap suggests that more than a third of the national population has such a christian connection in contemporary english society. in western society and churches, this christian adherence is predominantly characterised as “nominalism” (glock and wuthnow, 1979). at the heart of nominalism is “lack of a strong belief in a higher power, and indifference towards churches, but an irregular adherence to religion as a significant cultural, familial, and moral marker” (day, 2012: 440). in other words, nominal christians engage with christianity for various reasons other than for faith matter per se. eddie gibbs (2002: 239) asserts that such a christian adherence represents a serious “deviation between the identity claimed by persons and the actual commitment to that identity” (see also dyck et al., 2014). this view of nominalism is also popularised within the korean churches in their discussion on doing mission in the west (nam, 2010: 48–52; han, 2014: 51–53). such a view, however, seems to be insufficient to address the empirical findings from my research into korean missionaries’ engagement with the phenomenon in england. they have encountered not only those who show a loose christian attachment on little or no religious grounds, but also those who do so with some valid elements of faith experience, the nature of which they do not fully understand. the encounter with this latter group has led korean missionaries to review their understanding of nominalism. in this article, i will address this review by korean missionaries from a sociological and missiological perspective. sociologically, this review draws our attention to nominalism in the context of the ongoing sociological discussion on the religious trend in the contemporary western culture. missiologically, korean missionaries’ review involves theological reflection on god’s relationship with nominal christians. this has an impact on both doing mission and being church among them. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 78 i will start with a brief sketch of two sociological approaches that address the religious validity of nominal christians’ attachment to christianity. this will be followed by my empirical findings that highlight how korean missionaries understand the nominal christians they encountered and in what ways they reflect on their view of nominalism in such an encounter. finally, i will examine their reflection missiologically in the light of the concept of missio dei. two sociological approaches to nominalism a range of sociological discussions is available to highlight how western society approaches the religious elements of nominal christians. among the most relevant approaches are “invisible religion” (luckmann, 1967), “believing without belonging” (davie, 1994), “vicarious religion” (davie, 2000), “fuzzy fidelity” (voas, 2009), and a contemporary account of secularization theories by charles taylor (2007) and steve bruce (2011). while these approaches adopt a variety of perspectives that overlap or contrast with one another, they are divided into two strands. a leading point of contention is whether christian nominalism represents a loss of interest in religion itself or a change in religious commitment. nominalism as an insignificant and decreasing religiosity the first sociological strand, which suggests that nominalism represents a loss of people’s interest in religion, is based on secularization theories. while discussions on secularization are ongoing and being modified (dawson, 2011: 57–75), they are all built upon one premise: the decline of religion is inevitable in modern societies (berger, 1969: 108). drawing on such a view, steve bruce and david voas argue that nominal christians’ engagement with christianity reflects an insignificant and disappearing religiosity. voas (2009) identifies nominal christians in his study of religious change in europe, which draws upon the european social sinwoong kim—a reflection on nominal christians 79 survey (ess).2 voas finds that, while the level of religious measures continues to decline across europe, still a half of the population in each country shows a level of those measures that is neither as high as that of the patently religious nor as low as that of the patently unreligious. he refers to this intermediate constituency as “fuzzy christians,” given that christianity has been the dominant religion for centuries in europe (voas, 2009: 164). the religious life of this cohort reflects that of nominal christians. voas characterises nominal christians’ attachment to christianity in two ways: insignificant and decreasing. first, it is insignificant given that their christian connections only play “a very minor role (if any) in their lives” (voas, 2009: 164). in his view, their attachment to christianity can be explained by their christian upbringing, tradition or ethnicity. while day (2012: 449–453) considers such a natal or ethnic nominalism as sufficiently “religious” in the sense of the durkheimian tradition (i.e. religion is a social function to help people form a sense of shared identity and morality), she also points out that this fashion of religion does not necessarily draw people into beliefs in transcendent or sacred canopy. secondly, voas argues that nominal christians’ engagement with christianity represents a decreasing practice. given that the ess shows a constant decline in the level of religious measures over time across europe, voas (2009: 167) asserts that the numbers of fuzzy christians will be eventually overtaken by the numbers of the areligious (see also voas and chaves, 2016: 1525–1534). bruce stands in line with voas’ characterisation of nominalism. first, bruce suggests that the religious decline in europe is a process of generational change “from seriously religious to intermediate to secular” (bruce, 2011: 19). in other words, the manifestation of nominal christians is only a temporary phenomenon. secondly, bruce (2011: 99) compares nominal christians with football supporters who do not watch games or are not interested 2. the ess data were collected from 22 european nations in 2002 and 2003. the survey asked people questions about three religious elements: affiliation, practice, and beliefs. voas combined their responses into a single scale of religiosity and then analysed the average level of religiosity by five-year age cohort for each country. for details, see voas, 2009: 156–160. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 80 in the game results. just as we may doubt how significant football is to such supporters, bruce questions how significant christianity is for nominal christians. voas and bruce’s accounts, however, offer us only a partial reading of nominal christians’ religious life. underlying their analysis is a sociological attempt to examine one’s religiosity through institutionalized measures of religion. for instance, the key variables for the measure of religiosity in the ess predominantly reflect institutionalized religious expressions (see voas, 2009: 156). voas and bruce’s assessment thus involves little or no investigation of nominal christians’ religiosity beyond their institutionalized expressions. the two following methodological issues are largely responsible for this limited approach. first, voas and bruce’s approach involves an analytic assumption that religion is defined in terms of institutionalized forms. their approach to religiosity is thus limited to “scientific analysis only to the extent that it becomes organized and institutionalized’”(luckmann, 1967: 22). secondly, their approach assumes a strong correlation between self and society. this assumption implies that the decline of religiosity at a macro-structural level (e.g. the separation of state and church) and a meso-institutional level (e.g. the decline of religious organisations for education and health) inevitably results in the demise of religiosity at a micro-individual level (e.g. the decline in time and energy that individuals devote to religious activities) (dawson, 2011: 27–32). however, a simple equation between self and society is highly contested in sociological studies (see martin, 1990: 295; davie et al., 2016: 555–557). nominalism as an increasingly de-institutionalized religiosity the second sociological strand in theorising nominalism is built upon the critiques of secularization theories. as those critiques investigate the religious persistence beyond institutionalized manifestations in contemporary culture, they are often labelled as sinwoong kim—a reflection on nominal christians 81 “de-institutionalization” theories (harrison, 2007: 32). drawing on an alternative reading of the self-society linkage, proponents of de-institutionalization theories suggest that religion at a micro-individual level survives in modern societies despite the decline at its macro-structural and meso-institutional levels (davie et al., 2016: 552–557). while there are a number of scholars who support this view, i will discuss the works of grace davie, thomas luckmann and charles taylor, given their relevance to this article.3 davie takes nominalism as a sign of religiosity in an increasingly de-institutionalized context. her argument is based on two concepts: “believing without belonging” and “vicarious religion.” davie suggests that there are people who “want to believe but do not want to involve themselves in religious practice” (1994: 107). she interprets this phenomenon as a development of individualised forms of religion, which are shaped by the surrounding culture (1994: 75–84). given that christianity has remained the key surrounding culture to such a development in western society, she asserts that nominal christians still hold “many of their deepseated religious aspirations” in their own ways (2000: 8). in an attempt to probe further the connection between nominal christians’ religiosity and their intermittent institutionalized religious expressions, davie develops the idea of vicarious religion (2000: 38–81). she construes nominal christians’ institutionalized engagement as an explicit exhibition of their individualised religiosity. she thus asserts that nominal christians profess “the notion of religion performed by an active minority but on behalf of a much larger number who (implicitly at least) not only understand, but, quite clearly, approve of what the minority is doing” (davie, 2007: 22). in other words, under the visual tip of nominal 3. my use of the term “nominal christian” may include those who maintain loose christian connections, while engaging with other religions or spiritualities. however, they are excluded in my discussion. they are in “the interstices of ‘blurred’ religious affiliations and borderless (spi)ritual practices that are concomitant to multiple religious belonging” (rajkumar and dayam, 2016: 1). their religious life thus deserves separate academic attention. in this respect, the works of sociologists such as paul heelas, linda woodhead and meredith mcguire go beyond the concerns of this paper. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 82 christians’ institutionalized religious expressions lies hidden the significant mass of their individualised religiosity. the key to the examination of their religious life is therefore to understand such an invisible mass of religiosity, “without which the visible part would not be there at all” (2010: 264). davie’s attempt to uncover a latent level of religiosity resonates with luckmann’s discussion of “invisible religion” (1967). luckmann argues that religious engagement in contemporary societies is not necessarily associated with the systems and practices of organised religion and thus is not always visible (luckmann, 2003: 276–277; see also knoblauch, 2003: 268). accordingly, an investigation of such invisible religiosity requires a differentiation between religion and institutionalized religion (luckmann, 1967: 50). luckmann thus offers an important sociological framework: the crisis of institutional religion represents, not its demise, but a shift to a more individualised form of religion (1967: 90–91). luckmann asserts that this shift implies individuals’ reliance on their own personal resources for religion rather than on those provided by religious institutions or authorities (1967: 104–105). this sociological shift closely relates to taylor’s view of religion in modern society. having critically examined the existing concept of “secularit” in secularization theories, he suggests that de-institutionalization is an important characteristic of religion in modern society and thus that “the fate of belief depends much more than before on powerful intuitions of individuals” (taylor, 2007: 531). in other words, secularity has not completely removed the room for religion. instead, it has created different rooms for our modern religious life. importantly, these rooms are to be varied, multiple and thus contentious. davie, luckmann and taylor’s approach has methodological significance for the investigation of nominal christians’ religious life. it allows us to avoid limiting our examination to the analysis of their institutionalized religious engagement. instead, it leads us to focus on what is going on underneath such an engagement and what it means for them to continue to do so. sinwoong kim—a reflection on nominal christians 83 davie, luckmann and taylor’s approach, however, is not without an analytic challenge. according to them, what is to be accessed is a “subtle, many-layered, shifting, and constantly evolving entity, which cannot easily be broken down into straightforward, testable hypotheses” (davie, 2010: 265). the challenge is thus to consider the extent to which nominal christians’ beliefs and behaviours could be taken as evidence of religiosity. even their “subjective valorization” of anything that is special to them could be uncritically labelled as religious experience (dawson, 2011: 93). in short, davie, luckmann and taylor’s approach needs further analytic development despite its methodological significance. korean missionaries’ view of christian nominalism the above two sociological views, namely, secularization theories and de-institutionalization theories, show how scholars address nominalism in their discussion of religion in the contemporary western culture. it is revealed that while the proponents of the first view such as bruce and voas fail to delve into nominalism in an increasingly de-institutionalized context, the exponents of the second view such as davie, luckmann and taylor make attempts to do so. this second view thus draws our attention to the religious vitality of nominalism and the need for further exploration. this sociological review has an implication on our missionary approach to nominal christians. underlying their christian engagement may lie some valid faith elements that are highly heterogeneous and idiosyncratic. in other words, nominal christians may represent a missionary constituency who engage with christianity in a way that has been neither fully explored nor appropriately accounted for. in this respect, my empirical findings are relevant to this current discussion. they uncover korean missionaries’ reflection on nominalism, which emerged out of their long-term and relational interactions with nominal christians. in other words, my findings involve korean missionaries’ attempt to look into the faith e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 84 experience of nominal christians at a micro-individual level. a qualitative research approach has also enabled my investigation to access korean missionaries’ account from their own perspective (bryman, 2012: 470). it is worth reiterating here that these findings are from a study of “non-diasporic” korean missionaries in england. although there is a growing academic attention to korean mission in the west along with other non-western missionary movements (kim, 2015: 49–51; kim, 2019: 2–3), researching into non-diasporic korean mission is a relatively new area. the korea world missions association (2020) reports that there were 1,228 korean missionaries officially sent to western europe in 2019. however, no statistics are available for how numerous non-diasporic korean missionaries are in england.4 evidently, my findings bring to the surface the presence and voice of non-diasporic korean missionaries, particularly concerning their perspective of nominalism in england. while these findings cannot be generalised as the representative view of all non-diasporic korean missionaries in england, they allow us to see what is meaningful and significant for those who participated in my study (see denzin and lincoln, 2008: 4). here i highlight some of the findings that are related to the purpose of this article. observing nominal christians korean missionaries have encountered nominal christians in various contexts, including parks, supermarkets, universities, local festivals, church services and events. just as sociologists of religion identify nominal christians’ unconventional christian connections, korean missionaries also recognise such connections among the nominal christians they encountered. their accounts suggest that nominal christians tend to show a combination of the two particular patterns of christian elements: a) familiarity with church or christianity, and b) some christian practice. 4. i contacted at least 44 non-diasporic korean missionaries through a snowball sampling method during my data collection from 2014 to 2016. sinwoong kim—a reflection on nominal christians 85 the first pattern indicates that despite their low church attendance, nominal christians are familiar with church or christianity in various ways. for example, some have had a christian upbringing or education. they are familiar with biblical stories or christian principles. korean missionaries’ accounts often show that most nominal christians do not hesitate to describe themselves as christian when they are asked about their religion. some of them also talk about their beliefs in jesus or god, displaying a stronger attachment to their christian faith than korean missionaries expect. the second pattern is that nominal christians continue to have some forms of christian practice albeit intermittently and in varying degrees from person to person. for instance, they occasionally go to church for various reasons (e.g. in the event of rites of passage or christian festivity). to korean missionaries’ surprise, the majority of the nominal christians they encountered were also baptised. some have maintained a positive view of christening or had their children christened. for korean missionaries, the combination of these two patterns is an important indicator that distinguishes nominal christians from other missionary constituencies. for example, korean missionaries’ accounts reveal that they tend to exclude people of other faiths (e.g. muslims, hindus or sikhs) from the category of nominal christians due to their lack of the second pattern. for the same reason, korean missionaries exclude those who are not related to church or christianity in any way as they hardly display any of the two patterns. identifying cultural and religious nominals korean missionaries’ accounts show that they make another important distinction about the individual nominal christians they encounter. at the heart of this distinction is korean missionaries’ own reflection on the question whether those nominal christians have any genuine faith commitment to christianity. according to e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 86 their accounts, korean missionaries display at least three different views of the nominal christian engagement. the first view emerges from the korean missionary interviews which highlight that some of the nominal christians they encounter have only a cultural familiarity or attachment to christianity. for example, philip (pseudonym)5, a korean missionary participant, said that some nominal christians “do not really have any faith commitment . . . i think they just know some verses from the bible, that’s all.” the interviews show a second view regarding other nominal christians whose attachment to christianity involves some valid elements of christian faith. for instance, luke said that some of the nominal christians he encountered “are born again. i can tell they have definitely established a relationship with god.” a third view surfaces when the missionaries spoke of nominal christians whose christian connections seem to be more than just cultural expressions while finding it difficult to evaluate those connections in terms of their faithfulness to christian teachings or beliefs. a good example is found from chris’ account when he said that some nominal christians seemed to have “fragmentary experience of the gospel and christ.” these three views suggest that korean missionaries categorise the nominal christians they encounter into three groups: a) those who have no faith at all, b) those who have faith and c) those who may have some faith. more importantly, this identification of these three subgroups suggests that korean missionaries’ views involve both of the two aforementioned sociological accounts of nominalism. for example, those interviewed who spoke of the first subgroup of nominal christians suggest that their christian connections involve no religious concerns, motivation or interest in any sense. this suggestion goes to the heart of voas and bruce’s view. as highlighted, voas’ key argument about fuzzy christians is that their christian engagement largely reflects their culture and tradition, but not religion (voas, 2009: 164). bruce (2011: 19) also asserts that this christian engagement lacks serious religious 5. the names of korean missionaries in this article are pseudonymised. sinwoong kim—a reflection on nominal christians 87 commitment. in my view, the korean missionaries’ accounts of the first subgroup provide empirical evidence for voas and bruce’s sociological argument. hence this subgroup can be called “cultural nominals.” by contrast, korean missionaries’ accounts of the second and third subgroups highlight the perception that these nominal christians have some religious elements albeit not fully explicable. this perception follows the view of davie, luckmann and taylor, who argue that underneath each nominal christian connection lies a religiosity which needs a further sociological exploration. accordingly, korean missionaries’ accounts of the second and third subgroups provide empirical evidence for davie, luckmann and taylor’s argument. hence both these subgroups can be called “religious nominals.” religious nominals and missionary uncertainty it is not surprising that the korean missionaries interviewed for my study have encountered cultural nominals in england. as david bosch (1991: 476–477) highlights, people of a secular worldview, including atheists and secular humanists, have been a challenge to western churches in their contemporary culture. cultural nominals have been part of such a challenge, given that they engage with christianity on non-religious grounds (voas, 2009: 164). moreover, the epithet “nominal christian” has already shaped the korean churches’ perceptions of cultural nominals in the west (choi, 2011: 208–210; han, 2014: 75–79). an encounter with religious nominals, however, is a relatively new experience to korean missionaries. my analysis of the korean missionary movement and its historical development (kim, 2019: 20–54) shows that the concepts of korean overseas mission are predominantly church-centric. they stress a christian journey shaped by the gatherings and activities of the church. underlying those concepts is what michael mcclymond (2010: 344) calls the “ecclesiological” dimension of mission, according to which the “church is a sign of god’s mission in the world and an anticipation e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 88 of the fulfilment of god’s final purposes” (see also ahn, 2011: 82). such a church-centric approach to mission has left korean churches with an ecclesiological assumption that one’s church commitment largely equates with one’s faithfulness to god (han, 2012: 94–95). hence korean missionaries are likely to treat religious nominals as cultural nominals because of their insufficient church commitment (kim, 2019: 181–187). in this respect, my empirical findings are an indicator that some korean missionaries in england show a different pattern in their approach to religious nominals. more interestingly, this pattern surfaces out of those missionaries’ awareness that there may be a lot more in religious nominals’ faith experience than they could see and understand. in other words, this new pattern is grounded upon their uncertainty about religious nominals’ christian connection. in my view, the emergence of this missionary pattern suggests that korean missionaries pay attention to religious nominals from the perspective of de-institutionalization theories, which involve a methodological uncertainty in the examination of one’s religious experience at a micro-individual level. beyond the principle of excluded middle the significance of korean missionaries’ attention to religious nominals from the view of de-institutionalization theories is that it represents a review of the understanding of nominalism that is widespread in the korean church. more precisely, it challenges the binary classification underlying the idea of nominalism, in which people are considered as either christian or non-christian with little attention given to those who do not fall in either of the categories. this classification deeply relates to “the principle of excluded middle” (tertium non datur in latin). this principle presupposes that every proposition or statement indicates either one thing or its negation (da silva, 2011: 333). the key assumption underlying the principle is that the two contradictories (one thing and its negation) are mutually exclusive. thus there is no middle ground sinwoong kim—a reflection on nominal christians 89 between the two. hugh chandler (1967: 807–809) critiques the legitimacy of this principle with regard to its approach to the negative or contradictory form of a proposition or statement. he argues that it neglects the significant difference between “partial” and “total” negation. any signs of partial negation, such as deficiency or indeterminateness, are forced to be the condition for total negation. in this sense, chandler’s criticism reflects the critique of what edward dutton (2010: 197) calls “dictionary definition.” by dictionary definition, dutton indicates an attempt to define things by a clear set of essential attributes, by virtue of which, something is regarded as what it is. however, as dutton points out, this dictionary definition emphasises the hard boundaries of those essential attributes to such a degree that it leads to a dichotomous categorisation. things are thus categorised only into two great opposite blocs (“what it is” and “what it is not”) depending on whether those essential attributes are involved. inevitably, any deficiency in such essential attributes, whether partially or totally, leads something to be put under the category of “what it is not” as against the category of “what it is.” consequently, other distinctive attributes are given little or no adequate consideration. it is this dichotomous characteristic that korean missionaries question with regard to the idea of nominalism. korean missionaries’ accounts suggest that such a dichotomy does little justice to religious nominals’ unique faith experience. they show that while this dichotomy leads us to label those religious nominals as “nonchristian,” it hinders us from paying proper attention to all the faith attributes that they may hold other than their church commitment. korean missionaries’ accounts thus highlight the need to attend to religious nominals as a constituency that stands in the middle ground between the completely areligious and those christians with church commitment. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 90 a missiological reflection on korean missionaries’ view of religious nominals what might the korean missionaries’ accounts of religious nominals mean missiologically? at the heart of their accounts is the suggestion that those religious nominals may have a christian faith journey in a way that we do not fully understand in an increasingly de-institutionalized context. such a suggestion raises a theological question about god’s relationship with religious nominals. it invites us to consider whether and how god is related to them in their unorthodox christian engagement. this theological consideration is missiological in nature. an exploration of god’s interaction with religious nominals relates to a faithful participation in the mission of god among them. korean missionaries’ accounts of religious nominal thus stimulates a distinctive missiological reflection in reference to missio dei. more specifically, they raise key theological and ecclesiological questions about a christocentric-trinitarian approach to missio dei in the context of religious nominals. in short, korean missionaries’ accounts suggest the need for a critical review of a christocentrictrinitarian way of understanding those religious nominals. korean missionaries’ view of religious nominals from a christocentric-trinitarian approach to missio dei in an attempt to reflect on the theological meaning of korean missionaries’ accounts of religious nominals, missio dei offers a useful framework. in mission studies, missio dei has contributed to the development of a key characterisation of mission, that mission originates from the triune god (bosch, 1991: 389–390). this characterisation has invited ongoing theological debate about the kingdom of god into missiology. as mission is conceived in reference to the triune god, how can one speak of mission without considering the existing discussion of god’s purpose for establishing the kingdom in the world and thus the role of the father, son and spirit for such a purpose (see flett, 2010: 53–61)? consequently, sinwoong kim—a reflection on nominal christians 91 missio dei offers a range of understandings of mission drawing upon different theological views of god’s kingdom. a christocentric-trinitarian approach to missio dei is developed by mission theologians and practitioners who understand that the kingdom of god is the realm where god reigns over the creation through the salvation offered in christ (arthur, 2010: 53). they apply this christocentric view of the kingdom to the trinitarian framework of mission and suggest that mission is to establish and expand god’s kingdom through the redemptive work of the son, which is initiated by the father and empowered by the spirit (engelsviken, 2003: 483; flett, 2010: 53–61). mission is a continuation of the redemptive act of the triune god. the proponents of this approach to missio dei suggest a particular ecclesiological interpretation, according to which the church is the indispensable vehicle for god’s redemptive work (arthur, 2010: 54). newbigin (1953: 147–148), one of the most formative voices for this stance, emphasised that the church is a provisional embodiment of what god is establishing through such work of christ. god is calling out the church as a community of people who belong to god’s kingdom and witness to the redemptive work of the son in the world (goheen, 2000: 115–117). in my view, this approach to missio dei provides two theological affirmations about how god relates to nominal christians. first, they are either redeemed or unredeemed depending on their engagement with god’s redemptive work through christ. second, god invites them to this redemption by means of the witnessing activities of the church. these affirmations imply that, without engaging with the church, they cannot be involved in the work of the son. given that both cultural and religious nominals hardly relate to god’s redemptive work because of their insufficient engagement with the church, they are unredeemed creations. on the one hand, korean missionaries’ accounts of cultural nominals reflect this theological stance. they perceive that cultural nominals, in their intermittent church commitment, have hardly any valid faith elements. hence cultural nominals do not engage with the redemptive work of the son. on the other hand, korean e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 92 missionaries’ accounts of religious nominals are not entirely in line with such a theological stance. as highlighted earlier, korean missionaries acknowledge that religious nominals may have some valid elements of christian faith. this acknowledgement suggests that those religious nominals may engage with god’s redemptive work despite their insufficient church involvement. those interviewed were uncertain about whether to consider religious nominals’ faith engagement as sufficient for their full redemption. nonetheless, korean missionaries’ attention to such a unique redemptive engagement highlights the need to address another way of understanding a christocentric-trinitarian approach to missio dei for religious nominals. a critical christocentric-trinitarian way of understanding religious nominals korean missionaries’ attention to this redemptive engagement provides a distinctive theological reflection on religious nominals’ relation to god. can religious nominals be related to the redemptive work of god in ways that korean missionaries do not fully comprehend? put differently, religious nominals are neither unrelated to god’s redemptive work nor fully related to it in the existing ways that korean missionaries understand. this theological view points to a christocentric interpretation of god’s missionary work among religious nominals, the manner of which is yet to be explored and thus calls for our attention. what is required is the emergence of a critical christocentrictrinitarian way of understanding religious nominals. at its heart remains the christocentric-trinitarian assertion that the mission of god is construed in terms of the redemptive work of christ. at the same time, this assertion accompanies a lack of complete understanding of how god continues such a work among those who engage with christianity in an increasingly de-institutionalized context. unfortunately, korean missionaries’ accounts do not offer insights about this emerging theological view. their accounts sinwoong kim—a reflection on nominal christians 93 predominantly show they continue to reflect on god’s redemptive work in the lives of religious nominals as they are constantly examining those religious nominals’ faith experience. the disclosure of this ongoing reflection, however, is sufficient to draw our attention to a critical need to explore a distinctive theological understanding for those who are in the middle ground in the current dichotomy of christian and non-christian. the significance of this theological exploration is that it reminds us of the fundamental insight that missio dei offers for missionary engagement with religious nominals. the original intention of missio dei was to elevate god to the position of the subject of mission and relegate us to the position of participants (arthur, 2010: 50). necessarily, missio dei is designed to conceptualise our missionary engagement as a participation in what god is doing. such a conceptualisation, however, does not automatically guarantee that our participation is always informed by what god is up to. quite opposingly, as shown in and after the international missionary council conference in willingen in 1952, mission theologians and practitioners have often incorporated into missio dei their favourite views on “the nature of god himself and of his act in the world” (flett, 2010: 43). in other words, the material content of god’s missionary activity is susceptible to theological affirmations of those who practice missio dei. this danger can be particularly the case in our approach to religious nominals when one depends on theological affirmations of a christocentric-trinitarian view to the extent of assuming that all of them are universally valid in every context. however, even if these affirmations were insightful and profound in many contexts, whether they would be applicable to other contexts, in this case engagement with religious nominals should be determined by what god was doing in their unorthodox christian involvement. otherwise, such affirmations might distract one from what god was up to in that context and thus override god’s mission. in short, a critical christocentric-trinitarian approach to missio dei in the context of religious nominals implies an attempt to ground a christocentric-trinitarian view of mission in one’s e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 94 constant search of a relevant theological view for them. with this approach, our participation in god’s mission does not represent “our” missionary outreach to those religious nominals but that of god. this approach enables us to reinforce god’s agency in our missionary engagement with religious nominals. in other words, it leads us to practice missio dei among them. an ecclesiological implication of a critical christocentrictrinitarian approach to religious nominals a critical christocentric-trinitarian approach to religious nominals also invites us to reflect on the church’s nature and shape for her faithful participation in god’s redemptive engagement with those religious nominals. in reference to missio dei, the absence of this reflection seriously jeopardises the meaning of the church in the context of doing mission among religious nominals. more precisely, without such a reflection, an ecclesiological framework of missio dei, namely, the church’s ontological position in god’s mission (guder et al., 1998: 11–12; pugh, 2017: 60) is endangered in relation to religious nominals. in this particular context, such an ecclesiological ontology implies that the church is called out to be a community that attends to those religious nominals for their engagement with the redemptive work of christ (goheen, 2000: 115–117). how then can the church justify her ontological position for religious nominals? this justification requires an innovative imagination of the church that engages with god’s redemptive mission in an increasingly de-institutionalized religious context. this imagination invites our current discussion of what is called “missional church” into a particular sociological and theological context where religious nominals are found. this invitation is not based on the intention of “piggybacking” them for their little or no commitment to institutionalized christian practice. rather, it is to articulate the church in light of a relevant theological exploration for god’s redemptive interaction with religious nominals. sinwoong kim—a reflection on nominal christians 95 this point needs to be particularly emphasised since no valid missional church can be expressed for religious nominals without a proper theological consideration of missio dei in its given context. further studies on theological insights for god’s redemptive engagement with those religious nominals are required to advance the discourse of missional church for them. in so doing, i would like to make two suggestions in relation to korean missionaries’ accounts of religious nominals. first, a proper theological reflection on god’s relationship with religious nominals needs to start with our attempt to engage with the faith journey of those religious nominals where it takes place. while missio dei clearly reveals that mission starts from god, we can only approach such a mission from where it takes place and thus where we can engage (see thangaraj, 1999: 58; sebastian, 2011: 211–213). religious nominals’ increasingly de-institutionalized faith experience is an essential context for a relevant theological reflection. second, our uncertainty about how god is active among religious nominals is not unavoidable but is actually desirable. as shown in the korean missionaries’ accounts, religious nominals’ faith experience is a ground for korean missionaries’ uncertainty about god’s relationship with those religious nominals. this uncertainty leads korean missionaries to be open to the unknown and unfamiliar ways of god’s interaction with religious nominals. this uncertainty is thus a necessary impetus for our attempts to disclose such a work of god (sivalon, 2012: 17). conclusion with the decline in the significance and presence of christianity, the concept of nominalism has been used to characterise the religious landscape of england. from the perspective of secularization theories, this concept is useful to highlight that england is full of those who lack any religious concerns or interest in christianity despite their loose christian connections. however, my empirical investigation of non-diasporic korean missionaries in e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 1 96 england suggests the need for a revision of such a view of england. their understanding of nominalism from the perspective of de-institutionalization theories shows that while some english nominals are undoubtedly atheists or secular humanists, others, namely religious nominals, are in a middle ground between the completely areligious and those christians with institutionalized commitments. in reference to the concept of missio dei, such an understanding implies that religious nominals are neither completely unrelated to god’s redemptive work nor fully related to it in the way korean missionaries understand. this view invites a serious theological exploration of the redemptive intervention of god in the lives of religious nominals. from a missiological perspective, this exploration further invites us to reflect on our current discourse of missional church for them. korean missionaries’ accounts remind us that our attempt to look at, understand and engage with religious nominals’ increasingly de-institutionalized faith experience is an essential context for this ecclesiological reflection. their accounts also suggest that our uncertainty about god’s redemptive interaction 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(2011) “interrogating missio dei: from the mission of god towards appreciating our mission to god in india today.” in r. olsen (ed.), mission and postmodernities. oxford: regnum, 2011. sivalon, j. c. god’s mission and postmodern culture: the gift of uncertainty. new york: orbis, 2012. taylor, c. a secular age. cambridge: belknap, 2007. thangaraj, m. t. the common task: a theology of christian mission. nashville: abingdon, 1999. voas, d. “the rise and fall of fuzzy fidelity in europe.” european sociological review 25(2), 155–168. 2009. voas, d. and m. chaves. “is the united states a counterexample to the secularization thesis?” american journal of sociology 121(5), 1517–1556. 2016. ef2-2.indb 31 wilding the church ref lections on the process of wilding as a metaphor for the church as a co-agent in mission with the holy spirit in a secular age paul bradbury paul bradbury is an ordained pioneer minister in the church of england based in poole, dorset. he is the founder and leader of poole missional communities, which plays host to a number of fresh expressions of church and pioneer mission initiatives. he is an associate tutor with church mission society and is a dth research student with the university of roehampton. contact: bradburp@roehampton.ac.uk abstract in recent years numerous wilding projects have emerged, many inspired by isabella tree’s bookwilding (tree 2018). wilding tells the story of the transformation of the estate at knepp from intensive arable farm to biodiverse woodland and scrub. wilding is a process that offers a new paradigm for land management, in which nature leads and human agency facilitates. here i argue that wilding offers a rich metaphor for a new paradigm of ecclesial imagination in a secular age. this new “ecclesial imaginary” places e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 32 the church as a co-agent with the holy spirit, participating in the emergent life generated through the power of the spirit. the use of this metaphor in nature conservation is described and its theological validity explored. the article ends with some preliminary reflections on the potential of this metaphor to move the church toward a more fruitful disposition in its mission in a secular age. introduction wilding is a movement within the world of conservation which advocates a radically different way of addressing the challenge of reversing the decline in biodiversity. in recent years its approach has gained considerable traction across the world. wilding rests on a principle of giving nature freedom to “take the lead,” allowing areas of land to “rewild” without a preconceived end result. human agency is facilitative rather than directive. this is in sharp contrast to standard conservation projects where habitat restoration toward target species in decline is driven by science and human intervention. i first explored wilding through engaging with the story of the wilding project at the knepp estate in sussex, a story told in isabella tree’s book wilding (tree 2018). at knepp declining yields of wheat, despite numerous technical innovations and amalgamations with neighboring farms in search of economies of scale, led to the reluctant decision in 2000 to stop arable farming and begin a process of rewilding. this process, still ongoing, involved leaving land fallow and introducing “keystone species,” such as large grazing mammals that mimicked ancient indigenous species, in order to facilitate a nature-led process of environmental renewal. there was no specific end in mind, no aim to return particular species or produce particular outcomes. a key principle of wilding is that “the process is the outcome” (monbiot 2013, 83). the story is replete with surprise as unanticipated species come to make their home at knepp, often in habitats which modern experts assumed were unsuitable. twenty years later knepp and the story told by isabella tree is a source of inspiration and expertise for landowners paul bradbury—wilding the church 33 and land managers worldwide. the concept of managing land for biodiversity as well as for products for human consumption is now part of uk government legislation.1 the church in the west currently finds itself in the midst of a fundamental transition in the social paradigm in which people live. its forms, practices, and procedures are those that developed predominantly in a premodern and modernist age (murray-williams 2004; murray-williams 2011; tickle 2012; duerksen and dyrness 2019). its inability to adapt sufficiently to cultural change and its tenacious commitment to some patterns and structures that served it well in a now-disappearing paradigm leave it in a situation not unlike knepp in 2000—facing declining “yields” (based at least on its own metrics, attendance and giving) despite numerous rounds of amalgamations (e.g. church of england parishes merged into ever larger benefices) and technical innovation programs (e.g. challenge 2000, the decade of evangelism, myriad).2 the church is facing a failure of its own imagination, stuck in a particular way of seeing itself and the world, and historically invested in a missional disposition toward the world that is no longer apt. in this paper i want to reflect on wilding with reference to the church. a conversation in this area has developed over recent years, accelerated by the recent publication of rewilding the church by steve aisthorpe (aisthorpe 2020). aisthorpe argues for a recommitment to a fundamental love of christ alongside our love of the church. aisthorpe’s perspective is primarily christological. he brings a key insight from the wilding metaphor in his argument for the reintroduction of christ as a “keystone species” within the environment of the church. referring to christ as “the 1. “the agriculture bill sets out how farmers and land managers in england will be rewarded in the future with public money for ‘public goods’—such as better air and water quality, thriving wildlife, soil health, or measures to reduce flooding and tackle the effects of climate change” (gov.uk 2020). 2. challenge 2000 was an ecumenical congress held in birmingham in 1992 which set a goal of planting two thousand churches by the year 2000. the decade of evangelism was introduced as a resolution at the 1988 lambeth conference. myriad was recently launched by the bishop of islington with a goal of planting ten thousand churches in ten years. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 34 great interferer,” he states, “saying ‘yes’ to jesus is to introduce into the environment of our lives a species so other and so powerful that total transformation is inevitable” (aisthorpe 2020, 53). my perspective is more pneumatological, a complementary perspective to aisthorpe, focusing primarily on an ecclesiology that might be reimagined by learning to participate with the wild creative gift of god’s missionary spirit. why the metaphor of wilding? aisthorpe’s book is just one example of the degree to which the metaphor of rewilding is capturing the imagination of the church at present. in my own work engaging in networks of mission enablers and church planters across the country this metaphor is generating considerable interest and discussion. is this significant? or nothing more than a passing trend? sally macfague argues that the power of metaphorical language lies in its invitation to a dialogical approach to exploring reality. metaphors describe how reality both “is and is not” like the metaphorical field in question. a metaphor which gains in popularity may become a dominant metaphor, whose power to explain reality provides some degree of a model for our experience and our engagement with the world (mcfague 1982). the power of wilding as a metaphor lies in its connection with the recent growth in more organic and relational ways of understanding organizations. organizational theorists have drawn on work in the sciences to radically alter how organizations are understood, shifting our conception from newtonian machines toward that of “complex adaptive systems” (uhl-bien, marion, and mckelvey 2007). this developing “complexity theory” (waldrop 1993) has been driven by a perceived failure in the newtonian paradigm’s ability to do justice to the experienced reality of organizations. complexity theory recognizes the relational nature of organizations as the sum of conversations between interdependent and interrelated individuals drawn toward a common purpose. further, it sees change as a characteristic of the system, through paul bradbury—wilding the church 35 the system’s ability to learn and adapt to changes in the environment around it. complexity theory thus embraces the possibility of emergence and “self-organization” as the system welcomes new ideas and recalibrates in response to information from the milieu of the world (doornenbaal 2012; moynagh 2017; rooms 2019). wilding’s emphasis on the interrelatedness of our environment, on emergent change as a property of the system, and on human agency in humble solidarity with the complexity of the natural world, all relate closely to the perspective of complexity theory. wilding’s growing influence on contemporary ecclesiology may also be a function of a similar perception of the limitations of previously dominant mechanistic metaphors for our understanding of the church and of its ability to make better sense of our experience of the complex and interrelated world in which the church sits. whilst recognizing that all metaphors run the risk of luring us into making the world in their image, wilding offers to the church a metaphor that invites a shift in paradigm, in particular a shift in paradigm away from newtonian cause-and-effect conceptions and toward more relational and porous understandings of the essence of the church and its relationship with the world. wilding can act as a powerful metaphor toward a renewed “ecclesial imaginary.” i use the term “ecclesial imaginary” as shorthand for the way in which people imagine their world and context as members of the church. for the vast majority of people this imaginary is not articulated or explicit but carried through cultural forms and practice. the term is a development of charles taylor’s “social imaginary” from his hugely influential book a secular age (c. taylor 2007). taylor describes a social imaginary as “the way in which [people] imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations which are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images which underlie these expectations.” he further describes it as “how ordinary people ‘imagine’ their social surroundings.” for taylor this “social imaginary” is often not expressed in theoretical terms; it is carried in images, stories e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 36 and legends, etc., and as “that common understanding which makes possible common practices, and a widely shared sense of legitimacy” (c. taylor 2007, 171–72). an “ecclesial imaginary” is therefore the way in which the relationship between god as missionary agent and the church is imagined. it is how the normative expectation of church in relation to god and the world is held in our imagination and expressed in our language and practice. in this paper i explore this renewed ecclesial imaginary through a conversation with taylor’s thesis in dialogue with jürgen moltmann’s three ecclesial paradigms (moltmann 2011). moltmann’s work offers an ecclesiological perspective on the paradigmatic shifts in western culture so powerfully articulated by taylor. this conversation then opens up a space in which the metaphor of wilding can be explored theologically, before describing how the metaphor can enable the church to start to inhabit a renewed ecclesial imaginary. the secular age—taylor’s articulation of a new cultural and religious paradigm. the sense of a fundamental shift in the social and cultural paradigms of the west is by no means new. the church has, however, been relatively slow to respond, either in reconceiving its identity and purpose or in reimagining the forms and posture it might take. decline in religious affiliation in the west has been well documented (brierley 2000; goodhew 2016; brown and woodhead 2016) and, despite significant efforts from church institutions in the form of investment and strategy, appears largely irreversible. the popular secularization story of decline, arguing for the eventual disappearance of religion, has, however, been largely dismissed in favor of a story that starts to articulate a change in the religious disposition of the west. it is not that religion is declining, but that people are expressing faith in different and novel ways. taylor paints the popular secularization story as a “subtraction narrative” whereby the decline of religion is the sloughing off of religious baggage with a consequent liberation into the paul bradbury—wilding the church 37 freedom of religion-less humanity. his counternarrative is one of addition, a tracing of the ways in which the enlightenment and reformation(s)3 made it possible for humans in the west to consider life without a conception of god and within an “immanent frame” that is of human flourishing within a purely material world. for taylor, the persistence of religion vindicates this addition narrative, for it points to the insufficiency of the secular vision for human flourishing and to the fundamental nature of humanity, not as beings within an immanent frame, but beings with a sense and need for the transcendent. we are “homo quaerens”—people who search4. however, the expression of our search in this new secular age is different. taylor describes the “nova effect,” an explosion of religious expression which is diverse, novel, and largely individually oriented. he further describes the new paradigm as the “age of authenticity,” characterized by a social imaginary of “expressive individualism” (c. taylor 2007, 473). in this paradigm “the injunction would seem to be: let everyone follow his/her own path of spiritual inspiration. don’t be led off yours by the allegation that it doesn’t fit with some orthodoxy” (c. taylor 2007, 489). this therefore invites the question: how can the church respond faithfully to this radical change in the social imaginary and faith expression of people in a secular age? missio dei, moltmann, and metaphor—towards an ecclesial imaginary for a secular age it is the development of the theology of the missio dei that lays the ground for a renewed ecclesial imaginary and that offers a more faithful conception of the church’s posture in a secular age. john flett traces the development of the theology of missio dei to the 3. taylor prefers to describe the immense changes of the sixteenth-century reformation as “reformations,” arguing that the social and cultural changes generally associated with the protestant reformation had equally long-term effects on catholicism, for example. 4. this phrase comes from a podcast interview between nick spenser and charles taylor (reading our times 2020). e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 38 missionary conferences of the first part of the twentieth century (flett 2010). the debates responded to the challenge to the west of its missions as no more than colonial expansion. this challenge raised the question of the nature of mission. what is the theological substance of mission? is mission intrinsic to the nature of the church? is mission intrinsic to the nature of god? the theology of missio dei works to situate the mission of the church within the nature of god and to collapse any notion of a rift between the immanent and economic trinity. the life of god contained within the trinity is a self-giving flow of reconciling love. thus, god’s nature is not contingent on mission, or any work of the church. god’s nature, which is mission, is sufficient in and of itself. mission is not a second step for god, and nor is it a second step for the church. jürgen moltmann has articulated three paradigms in the history of the church which relate closely to cultural paradigms of western history described by charles taylor (moltmann 2011). the “hierarchical paradigm” describes what we might commonly call christendom, a “monarchical episcopacy” clearly and powerfully ordered by the vertical relationship between god, the bishop and the church. this ecclesial structure is firmly embedded in society through the anointing of the monarch or ruler by the church as a divine ruler and servant of the state within the wider normative structures of christendom. the reformation begins to usher in what moltmann describes as the “christocentric paradigm.” the church increasingly looks less to the vertical authorities of the episcopacy and the monarchy for unity, authority, and legitimation and instead gathers these around christ as the head of the church. the congregation or community of the faithful, gathered around christ, through his word and sacrament, constitutes the major form for this ecclesial imaginary. thus, a developing separation is made from the world, a growing emphasis on individual choice and membership in the fellowship of the church, and a growing sense of the church’s agency in the world as a means of extending the lordship of christ. this more assertive church imaginary relates closely to taylor’s definition of the modernist age as the “age of mobilisation.” pre-modern paul bradbury—wilding the church 39 christendom and its embedded enchantment of all life is in retreat. god may be present in divine design or order but the cosmos has been disenchanted and the previously reliable status quo disrupted. the void must be filled by institutional effort and assertion into the public space (c. taylor 2007, 445–72). moltmann, however, believes that “the new age of the church will be the age of the holy spirit” (moltmann 2011, 24). moltmann describes this predominantly as a democratizing movement of the spirit whereby every member of the church acquires their agency and “through the experience of the holy spirit the all-equalizing brotherhood of christ fans out into a multicolored diversity of charismata” (moltmann 2011, 26). this is a church that trusts in the power and authority of the holy spirit and thus makes space for every individual to have the power of agency and to bring their experience of faith in an active and participative way into the life of the church. moltmann’s paradigmatic shifts in the ages of the church are an ecclesial perspective on taylor’s articulation of the transitions in the wider culture of the west. the present “secular age” taylor dubs the “age of authenticity,” characterized by the understanding that it is the role of the individual to realize their own way of being human. the constraints of religion or social convention are thrown off. choice is the ultimate value and tolerance the only virtue. christianity’s liberalizing and individualizing impulse through the democratizing and empowering work of the spirit finds things in common here, while at the same time recognizing the dark side of liberalism’s deification of choice and aversion to constraint. for our purposes here i want to note the complementarity of these paradigmatic shifts in the church and in wider western society and to probe what this means for a church whose routinized processes and structures can be belligerently resistant to the sort of agility needed to respond to wider cultural change. the premodern era saw the emergence of the parish as the fundamental unit of social organisation in christendom, a form which has been remarkably resilient to social change (rumsey 2017). the modernist age saw the emergence of the congregation, a e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 40 voluntary association of believers, as the primary form of church life (duerksen and dyrness 2019). this form has become normative in our experience and in our imagination. however, as duerksen and dyrness assert, the church is not an entity that sits above cultural contingency. the church is an emergent phenomenon whose forms develop through the conversation between scripture, tradition, and context. our frequent error is to mistake established forms as normative not just for our context and time but for the church’s nature: quite often the particular expression of an ecclesial marker becomes frozen in time, disassociated from the cultural, social, and political influences that generated its emergence. over time, the context in which those markers gained their particular salience fades from view, and the practices themselves come to be seen as pure markers of the church (duerksen and dyrness 2019, 149). in the same way that liberalism and the secular age have created a new social imaginary, the church is being invited into a new ecclesial imaginary. it is an imaginary oriented around the missio dei in which the church takes an ec-centric place in the context of society, a humbler and more collaborative posture, that seeks to participate with the already-present-and-active holy spirit in the building of the kingdom of god and that embraces emergence in the development of its forms and ministerial life (see fig 1). figure 1: christocentric and charismatic paradigms in mission paul bradbury—wilding the church 41 our struggle to fully inhabit any new paradigm of ecclesial life is thus a struggle to shift our ecclesial imagination toward a new paradigm. furthermore, it is language that helps articulate that imaginary, a language that draws almost exclusively on metaphor. as mcgilchrist (2009, 179) argues: “all understanding, whether of the world or even of ourselves, depends on choosing the right metaphor. the metaphor we choose governs what we see.” thus, we turn now to examine the theological resilience of wilding for the life of the church in a secular age. theological reflections on wilding knepp’s transformation strikes a chord in the wider world not least because it represents a very different anthropological stance to the land and environment. the land is no longer a utility, an object whose value is purely in its potential and ability to provide a yield, a product. the environment has a value in and of itself; it is not for anything but is allowed to be. human agency can thus explore a new relationship alongside and in conversation with rather than over the environment on the basis of its prior being. this relationship is mutual and explored by conversation in which humility and an openness to discovery is embraced. judeo-christian anthropology has been accused of bolstering an anthropocentric and utilitarian attitude to creation (white 1967). genesis 1:28 along with a tradition of interpretation that assumes a language of subjugation and rule play a key part in this narrative. rowan williams (2000), however, argues that the creation narrative’s historical context is that of exile, a context in which dominance and agency have all but disappeared. for williams the exilic language of second isaiah and, in particular, god’s summoning of creation to enter into the life of god represents a truer understanding of the creation narrative. williams (2000, 68) cites in particular isaiah 48:13 (esv): “my hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens; when i call to them, they stand forth together.” similarly, richard bauckham e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 42 (2000, 45, emphasis mine) reasserts the christian tradition of humans “joining in the praise offered by other creatures.” this tradition is represented by liturgical texts such as the benedicite, a greek addition to the book of daniel, which in the protestant tradition is placed in the apocrypha but which (at least in the church of england) continues to have a prominent place in the liturgy. the tradition of the benedicite is firmly within the biblical tradition of creation’s praise, e.g. isaiah 41:10; psalm 69:34, 96:11–12, 103:22, 150:6; phillipians 2:10; revelation 5:13. as bauckham asserts (bauckham 2002, 47), “the benedicite makes no theological statement not already made in psalm 148.” the benedicite calls on all creatures, heavenly bodies, weather phenomena, other living creatures and (only in conclusion) human beings to join in the song of praise to god. this tradition provides “the strongest antidote to anthropocentrism in the biblical and christian tradition” (bauckham 2002, 48). worship of god the creator therefore provides the context in which humanity’s relationship with fellow creatures and the environment can enable a creaturely solidarity that mitigates against hierarchy, anthropocentrism, or anything becoming the object (or idol) that validates or affirms our identity and our agency by means of exploitation and utility. the wilding movement may well have found its milieu in a secular age seeking to affirm the unity and connectedness of all things, and may be more comfortable with a (g/g)od-within panentheist perspective. however, christian anthropology argues for the distinctiveness of creatureliness as fundamental to a nonexploitative posture towards creation. it is only in relation to the intrinsic self-giving nature of god, who needs nothing in return to affirm god-self, that creatures are free to be creatures, and humans to be human. only in this freedom as distinct creatures are we able to love and give without instrumentalizing any act in service to an agenda (r. williams 2000, 67–75). it is within the self-giving flow of the life of god that humanity finds its truest relationship with creation. affirming, from the perspective of christian anthropology, a position of solidarity in relationship to creatures and their paul bradbury—wilding the church 43 environment expresses itself in a posture of humility in terms of humanity’s engagement with creation. from the moment the knepp estate invited an expert in to come and observe the trees of the estate, those at knepp embarked on a journey of humble discovery, embracing a lack of knowledge, open to surprise. they were joined by a host of researchers from the world of conservation who named, counted, sampled, and joined them for conferences and conversations as they sought to understand the narrative unfolding before them. it is the embracing of uncertainty and unknowing and of the hospitality of creation that provides particular theological resonance with the shift described between the mobilised and applied model of church engagement with the world in a modernist context and the emergent paradigm of the secular age. the gospels provide ample support for a posture of open engagement in the act of being sent into the world.5 likewise, as the church emerges in acts there is little sense of a community clear about its identity and scope, rolling out a plan or applying a strategy. the very identity and mission of the christian church is discovered through conversation between the jewish tradition of its early adherents, their contexts and the experience of the death and resurrection of jesus in the power of the holy spirit (bevans and schroeder 2004, 30–31). clare watkins’s work, as part of the theological action research network,6 has developed an ecclesiology that is deeply conscious of the theological nature of practice and experience and therefore of the provisional and vulnerable nature of church. she expresses this posture in terms of “fragility,” arguing for its adoption as a “virtue” needed for the development of church life. watkins roots this posture in a willingness to embrace the “negativity” of theology, a stance which is not simply an accommodation to a 5. see for example, jesus asking for a drink from the samaritan woman at the well (john 4:7), his conversation with canaanite woman (matt 15:21–28), the sending of the twelve in a position of dependence on the hospitality of others (matt 10:9–11; luke 9:3–5, 10:4–8). 6. https://theologyandactionresearch.net/. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 44 postmodern sentimentality but a more truthful self-understanding which mitigates against world-shirking or world-dominating fundamentalist positions. watkins describes a “double negativity,” that is, an apophatic disposition both in terms of the intrinsic nature of god and the revelation of god through practice (watkins 2020). however, such a stance is not wittgensteinian, that is, taking us to a place of silence. on the contrary, it invites conversation, or more specifically a conversational mode of theological discovery in both philosophical and practical spheres. the church is thus, in its truest expression, “a community of discerning conversation” (watkins 2020, 247) engaging in the world without imposition and entering into a praxis of conversation in solidarity with other human beings and creation. engaging with the world in the humbler posture of a conversation partner opens up a more centripetal perspective. the margins become important places where new avenues of life and vitality emerge. at knepp it was commonly understood that the estate lay on marginal land for arable farming, but until the decision to rewild, engagement with the land continued with an approach modelled on more suitable land elsewhere. eventually the reality of their context had to be faced. marginality in the process of rewilding was reframed as an asset. furthermore, the marginal habitats which were created, as former arable land became scrub edging onto ancient woodland and a river course, became the context in which biodiversity thrived. the margin rediscovered its character as a locus of emergence and innovation. steve aisthorpe notes the edges of a field yield up to 25 percent less than the center, a statistic that drives the move toward the scrubbing of hedgerows to create larger fields (aisthorpe 2020, 197). this downplaying of the innate gift of margins therefore has its logical consequences. conversely, when the edges are seen as crucially valuable places for emergence, innovation, and diversity a different attitude and approach to them is taken. theologically speaking the value of marginality is a rich theme. the story of the people of god takes place in the tension between a settled destination or locus for the presence of god paul bradbury—wilding the church 45 acting as a focal point for his people and their common life and the revitalizing life of a nomadic and marginal existence. the old testament narrative reflects most critically perhaps on the exile as that marginal period of israel’s story which nevertheless “evoked the most brilliant literature and the most daring theological articulation in the old testament” (brueggemann 1997, 3). likewise, as the church emerges from the ministry of jesus (a figure from the margins of a marginal roman territory), the narrative of luke-acts describes a movement constantly emergent through new experiences of liminality as the conversation between the tradition of judaism, the revelation of god, and the contexts into which the message of the gospel was brought takes place (bevans and schroeder 2004, 10–31). marginality is a strong theme in al barrett’s work, which draws on the work of socio-political writer romand coles. coles uses the term “ecotone” to refer to the boundary between different ecological communities. he draws the distinction between economy rooted in the words oikos (home or habitation) and nomos (law) with “ecotone” where tonos brings in the notion of tension. thus ecotones are “special meeting grounds” that “often harbor a greater variety and density of life than either of the two distinct communities alone.” (barrett 2017, 145) embracing this marginality for barrett, as a vicar on an outer urban estate, represents a turn from assertive ecclesiocentric missiologies such as “resource church planting,” or radical visions of transformative eucharistic communities, towards a greater openness to voices at the edges. this has the effect of “inviting the ‘centers’ of the church to learn from, and be transformed by, a passionate (and non-penetrative) engagement in the abundant resource-full ‘edges’” (barrett 2018, 89). it is precisely at the point at which an assertive and programmatic approach to land management is dropped that significant new voices start a new conversation at knepp. isabella tree begins her story not with the decision to sell the farm machinery and cease arable farming, but with the visit of a tree expert. ted green “came to stand still under the canopy of the old oak” (tree 2018, e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 46 15). the visit became in retrospect “an epiphany” (tree 2018, 32) as the results of ted green’s attentiveness led to a reappraisal of their engagement with the land and with nature in relationship with it. this epiphany worked to de-objectify the land and provided the first step toward a new relationship of co-agency between the farm, the land, and nature, a relationship in which nature was consciously given space and time and to take the lead. knepp’s story therefore plays out as a parable of the kingdom, of the eschaton coming to meet us by the holy spirit, and of the posture the church is invited most fruitfully to take in this unfolding narrative.7 it helps reimagine the primary role of the church not to expand into the world, or as the solitary builder of the kingdom, but as a living witness of and participant in the eschatological vision which the spirit is realizing. the “purpose of the church is not the church itself,” rather “the point of the church is to point beyond itself, to be a community that preaches, serves and witnesses to the reign of god” (bevans and schroeder 2004, 7). this is a missional ecclesiology where, as former missionary and bishop john v. taylor (1972, 133) put it, “our theology would improve if we thought more of the church being given to the spirit than of the spirit being given to the church.” this in turn provides a more ec-centric locus for the church by placing the church as co-agent with the spirit in the flow of the emergence of the kingdom. this co-agency is necessarily asymmetric as the church is invited into the overflowing and reconciling life of god that flows firstly within and beyond the trinity. the church is thus “the eschatological creation of the spirit” (moltmann 1977, 33), continuously called and formed by this flow of god’s reconciling life. 7. organic metaphors abound within the parables of jesus regarding the kingdom of god (e.g., parable of the yeast, mustard seed, sower, wheat and tares). other parables reassert an anthropology that places human agency within the limits of the sovereignty and nature of god. for example, in the parable of the growing seed (mark 4:26–29 niv), the kingdom is likened to a man who scatters seed. agency is given to the man but this is tempered first by humility (“the seed sprouts and grows though he does not know how”) and second the freedom and life of the kingdom (“whether he sleeps or gets up . . . all by itself the soil produces grain”). thus, human agency is reframed with the freedom and agency of god and his kingdom. paul bradbury—wilding the church 47 the wilding of the church? i have drawn on charles taylor’s description of the emerging “secular age” and moltmann’s three paradigms of the church to argue that the church needs to explore a radically different “ecclesial imaginary,” a renewed way of seeing itself as christian community in the context of western society. there are rich theological resonances with wilding which provide a basis of confidence for inviting an engagement with it as a pathway into this new ecclesial imaginary. wilding’s power as a metaphor lies in its subversion of the modernist assertion of rational control and agency over creation and a consequent subversion of our objectification of creation into a resource for our own ends. wilding affirms a thoroughly christian anthropology that places us as human agents in conversation with nature and with the land, alive to the mysteries of nature, attentive to the space between things, conscious of the limits of our knowledge, and attentive to the deep connectedness of the creation of which we are a part. wilding thus provides a parable of the shift from a newtonian view of the world to an emergent one. from a world of cause and effect, inputs and outputs, and predictable systems where humanity assumes control through power and knowledge to a complex and fluid world where connectedness, relationships, and conversation provide the environment in which life emerges. it is a parable that ejects humanity from an anthropocentric “age of mobilisation” where any engagement with the world must work through human agency and organization into a new age where human beings and organizations can operate with a more humble, collaborative kind of attentiveness to the world. wilding may therefore provide a means by which the church can reimagine itself away from an objectifying posture in the world, where context is a resource to be instrumentalized toward its own missionary aims, toward a doxological posture in which its whole life is oriented toward the flow of creation’s praise to god (paas 2019). e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 48 this approach places the church in a more ec-centric locus in the world, a position in which voices and agents on the margins receive attention as potential partners in the church’s mission and the growth of the kingdom. it is a locus where liminal boundaries of belonging and engagement can be fostered—a church thus more able to engage with the “expressive individualism” and restless spiritual searching of so many trying to find their way in the secular age. in my own ministry as a pioneer minister8 in the church of england this perspective has increasingly been expressed in a missional disposition that is marked by an attentiveness to the spirit at work in the world and a more emergent approach to the form and nature of new ecclesial communities. it is also expressed by an openness to humble dialogue with those networks and individuals seeking to express their spirituality in a variety of ways. this posture, common to other pioneer ministers (see for example ross and baker 2015), comes into significant tension with the inherited institution, where the normative ecclesial imaginary assumes church formation to quickly involve attendance and membership through the application of mission projects and programs. within this tension pioneer ministers feel a pressure for measurable results which can foster a utilitarian attitude to their context. however, where space and freedom are given to allow pioneer ministers to explore a more emergent approach something akin to the blossoming of diversity experienced at knepp shows signs of taking place. for example, in the diocese of bath and wells the appointment of nine full-time pioneer ministers, free from the demands and responsibilities of the inherited church, alongside a program designed to train and release further volunteer mission leaders, is beginning to generate a new environment for contextual 8. the term “pioneer ministry” became a normative term with the publication of the church of england report mission shaped church (archbishop’s council 2004). the church of england now defines pioneer ministers in the following way: “pioneers are people called by god, who are the first to see and creatively respond to the holy spirit’s initiatives with those outside the church; gathering others around them as they seek to establish new contextual christian community” (church of england 2021). paul bradbury—wilding the church 49 mission and ecclesial formation. in this environment process takes precedent over project, attentiveness to context and to the leading of the spirit are prioritized over predetermined outputs or results, and conversation and partnership are fostered. in the beginnings of this project what is emerging within the conversation between those facilitating the project, missional leaders, and their context at the margins is often surprising and unplanned. much more work needs to be done to research the effects of such ministries and projects on the church. if wilding and the story of knepp point to a deeper understanding of the reality of god’s mission of creation and new creation and to the kind of change within his mission that we are invited to participate in, we need to listen attentively to our own “wilding projects” already at work. further research is needed into the shape of mission practice for church leaders to embody the kind of ec-centric ecclesiology i describe here. such research could also explore how such an ecclesiology can relate to the inherited ecclesiologies in which church ministers and leaders work and how these different perspectives might work together. the metaphor of wilding has the potential to subvert an ecclesiocentric imaginary which sees the flow of god’s life through the church and into the world, and to create a more ec-centric imaginary where the church joins in with the flow of god’s life already present in the world by the spirit (see fig 1). it is a metaphor which opens up a rich way of “seeing” the church as “emergent phenomena” (duerksen & dyrness 2019) and of engaging with the constantly unfolding conversation between cultural context, tradition, and scripture which has always been the foment of the church. wilding helps envision the reception of the holy spirit as the prime agency and conversation partner in the mission of god and the realisation of the eschaton, the spirit which flows from the future, inviting the church to join in with the growing song of praise to god which is the coming and fulfilment of the kingdom. bibliography aisthorpe, steve. rewilding the church. edinburgh: st andrews press, 2020. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 50 archbishop’s council. mission-shaped church. london: church house publishing, 2004. barrett, al. “interrupting the church’s flow.” phd diss, vu university amsterdam, 2017. ———. “interrupting the church’s flow: hearing ‘other’ voices on an outer urban estate.” practical theology 11.1 (2018) 79–92. bauckham, richard. “joining creation’s praise of god.” ecothelogy 7.1 (2002) 45–59. bevans, stephen, and roger schroeder. constants in context: a theology of mission for today. new york: orbis, 2004. brierley, peter. the tide is running out. london: christian research, 2000. brown, andrew, and linda woodhead. that was the church that was. london: continuum, 2016. brueggemann, walter. cadences of hope: preaching among the exiles. louisville ky: westmister john knox, 1997. church of england. “what do pioneers do?” 2021. https://www. churchofengland.org/life-events/vocations/vocations-pioneer-ministry. doornenbaal, robert. crossroads—an exploration of the emerging-missional conversation with a special focus on missional leadership and its challenges to theological education. delft, netherlands: eburon, 2012. duerksen, darren t., and william a. dyrness. seeking church—emerging witnesses to the kingdom. downers grove: ivp, 2019. flett, john. 2010. the witness of god. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2010. goodhew, david. growth and decline in the anglican communion. london: routledge, 2016. gov.uk. “landmark agriculture bill becomes law.” 2020. https://www.gov.uk/ government/news/landmark-agriculture-bill-becomes-law mcfague, sally. metaphorical theology; models of god in religious language. philadelphia: fortress, 1982. mcgilchrist, iain. the master and his emissary. new haven: yale university press, 2009. moltmann, jurgen. the 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79 joyful disciples: a study of a missing link in considering spiritual disciplines and corporate missional habits mike harrison suffragan bishop of dunwich in the diocese of st edmundsbury & ipswich in the church of england. before this mike was director of mission & ministry in leicester diocese for 10 years and previously was a parish priest, most of his ministry being in south london. his doctoral studies were in the field of doctrine and his interests include christian formation and leadership for christian formation. email: bishop.mike@cofesuffolk.org abstract this essay takes up some suggestions for christian formation found in the ‘life model’, a contemporary ecumenical project proposing attachment with god, inner healing prayer and healthy interpersonal relationships as key elements to promote psychological and spiritual change. in particular the significance of joyful relationship with god is considered, along with practices to cultivate this joyful relationship. two practices are described which foster joyful attachment and thus provide ways in which character is shaped to enable christian formation. however it is acknowledged that such formation also depends e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 80 for its full flourishing on other factors such as healthy ecclesial community and relational brain skills. the essay concludes by suggesting that joy-generating practices which can be developed as easily pass-on-able habits are a promising avenue by which to further enable christian formation. keywords: joy, spiritual disciplines, formation, character, neuroscience introduction thirty years after he penned celebration of discipline (1981) richard foster wrote that while the task of reviving the conversation about christian spiritual formation had been achieved, a second task of incarnating this reality into the daily experience of individual, congregational and cultural life had not been realized. the next 30 years, he argued, need to focus on this latter task. easier said than done. many are dissatisfied with the level of transformation they have actualized as a christian community and as individual christians. and while the glossy publications, the spiritual advice and the papers(!) on following christ more closely keep coming, it seems that for the majority there are at best modest results. nietzsche’s old sneer that “i might believe in the redeemer if his followers looked more redeemed” points to the relevance of this for missionary discipleship, as well as the long-term nature of this challenge. how can we grow the kind of christian character that we find in the new testament? how we can stay our mind on god, abide in christ, set our minds on things above, set our minds on the spirit, bring every thought captive to the obedience of christ, glorify god in our bodies, renew our minds, have christ formed in us and the like? research in this area is growing, not least through advances in neuroscience and experimental psychology. here we will explore the place of christian joy in growing such character, triggered by some suggestions presented by the ‘life model’, a contemporary ecumenical project proposing attachment with god, inner healing prayer and healthy interpersonal relationships as key elements to promote psychological and spiritual change (see for example wilder et al., 2020: 49–64). this approach is rooted in developing christian character through promoting joyful affective-relational experience which is strengthened by awareness of god’s presence in daily life and the cultivation of an intentional, communicative relationship much like a close supportive adult relationship. this approach is not new but finds its place in a long tradition stretching back to wesley, teresa of avila, brother lawrence and pierre de caussade and beyond, and we will utilize some of their insights accordingly. mike harrison—joyful disciples 81 the significance of joy why the privileged place of joy? first, the christian narrative of creation, incarnation and incorporation into the fellowship of christ’s body tells us that god desires us, as if we were god, as if we were that unconditional response to god’s giving that god’s self makes in the life of the trinity. this life of the trinity is one of joy and it is this communion of persons bound together in mutual love, peace and gladness that we are invited to share in. we are created to be caught up in this, growing into the wholehearted love of god by learning that god loves us as god loves god. if joy is god’s life, a life of incomparable beauty, goodness and gladness, then to be rooted in this joy and live from it is our calling as god’s creatures. indeed, ecclesiologically rowan williams suggests that “the life of the christian community has as its rationale – if not invariably its practical reality – the task of teaching us this: so ordering our relations that human beings may see themselves as desired, as the occasion of joy” (williams, 1989: 3). moreover, as david kelsey (2009: vol. 1) shows, god relates to us in three interrelated but distinct ways which all elicit joy; as one who creates, grounding our reality, our value and well-being; as one who promises us eschatological consummation and draws us to it; as one who reconciles us in our multiple estrangements. giftedness marks god’s engagement with us and gift recognized as such, gratefully embraced affectively as joy. hopefully it will be clear from this that we are not proposing a pelagian soteriology or elevating human agency as the means of realizing joy, which would be to lose sight of god as subject and with it the very relationship in which our joy is rooted. when the sister of thérèse of lisieux, pauline, says that at the end of her life she will appear before god empty-handed, a prospect which saddens her, thérèse responds: you are not like me, then, though we are both in the same position. even if i had performed all the deeds of st. paul, i would still consider myself an unprofitable servant; i would find that my hands were empty. but that is precisely the cause of my joy; since i have nothing, i shall receive everything from the good god. (balthasar, 1992: 255–56) thérèse, a doctor of the church, gets it right – she is so bowled over by the good god’s graciousness as to see being a recipient of this graciousness as her joy, her earthly labour being of no account in comparison. and unsurprisingly, a by-product is her little way which has been a huge inspiration to countless christians. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 82 second, work in neuroscience and interpersonal biology by those such as allan schore (schore, 1994) have identified the centrality of joyful attachments for healthy individual and group formation and the development of character. for the brain, attachment love is central and attachment develops through joy. joy based in the love of god is a more complex affective-relational experience than the analogues that have been the focus of secular positive psychology research (e.g. subjective well-being or optimism). schore showed how healthy systems involving joyful attachments informally model and teach positive interpersonal relational skills which promoted the formation of stable selfrepresentations. such skills helped community members handle suffering and relational conflict more effectively and tended to be self-propagating in healthy families and absent from more dysfunctional families. what is more, missing skills could be acquired in adulthood through establishing healthy relationships with securely attached individuals. third, assumed here is the approach as outlined by buber, levinas and others, which argues that human persons begin with and in encounter with others or in charles taylor’s pithy saying that “we are human only in conversation” (carrithers, collins & lukes, 1985: 278). it matters greatly then what quality and nature that conversation has because the genesis of the human mind is not something we accomplish individually but dialogically. indeed as susan grove eastman points out, for a young child “the experience of being imitated communicates a sort of recognition of oneself as distinctive and worthy of attention” (eastman, 2017: 74). if a person is primarily constituted in personal exchange, such that other-relation mediates and grounds the person’s self-relation, then if that relationship is one of joy (in being created, in being redeemed, in eschatological blessing), then one can begin to see how as christian persons we might be transformed pneumatologically by means of intimate relationships created by the spirit with god (abba), jesus and fellow believers. of course, this joy-fuelled transformation involves deformation as well as reformation, and paul for example demonstrates precisely this reintegration of the whole person within a new intersubjectively constituted identity in relationship to christ when he speaks of christ’s crucifixion as his crucifixion to the cosmos and the world’s crucifixion to him (gal. 6.14) and when he regards his own circumcision and membership of the tribe of benjamin as excrement (phil. 3.5; 3.8). close readings of paul show that this transformation is primarily corporate – it is not a matter of individual ontological change but rather of participation in a relational interchange larger than the self; as eastman puts it “the newly constituted person ‘in christ’ is intersubjective all the way down, in mike harrison—joyful disciples 83 relationship to christ and in relationship to others” (eastman, 2017: 173). this is the arena in which change happens (e.g. rom. 12). fourth, joy-in-relationship as a focus prevents the divine–human relationship (and associated spiritual disciplines and corporate habits) being reduced to means of addressing human failure and correlatively of god being assumed to be the one whose utility consists merely of “saving” such beings by making them morally worthy. the latter view is inconsistent with the assumption that god relates to all that is not god, including human beings, in ways grounded in god’s free, wise and generative love and not in human moral qualities. this avoids a potentially manichean view of nature, anthropocentrism and a narrow soteriological focus on overcoming sin and making human beings acceptable. fifth, joy is intimately connected to mission scripturally. mission can easily be spoken of as an additional burden to an already tired church. yet scripturally missionary discipleship was never a last-gasp desperate measure to prop up a dying institution, nor an exhausting corporate effort to keep jesus’ teaching going for future generations, in fact often it’s not the disciples’ work at all really – rather it’s the fruit of a curiosity of outsiders provoked by a distinctively joyful and peaceful way of being among jesus’ followers, rooted in lively relationship with the god of creation, reconciliation and promised consummation. what is joy? if one asks in more detail, just what “joy” is, then one could say joy is a mode of being where, contrary to western dualisms, we appreciate that thinking is acting, being is acting and, completing the circle, thinking is also being – which is to say that to think differently is to act differently which is to be different. joy is a mode of being which is the result of experiencing and reflecting upon a level of goodness that is unmistakeable and irreducible in its unmatched ability to transform even our darkest hours. unlike happiness which is conditional joy has the power to rise above and overwhelm any condition. this joy can be seen immanently in infants who respond with joy to being held, fed and stroked, as well as being experienced ourselves as simply as when welcomed with a smile. joy is all the more deeply realized in relation to the fount of all goodness, that community of joy par excellence, the trinity, in whom we find purpose, meaning and hope; so 1 pet. 1.8-9, or again jn 17.13. joy is not individualistic; rather, joy is attachment relationship, a good illustration being john the baptist leaping in the womb at the proximity of jesus e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 84 in mary’s womb. in infancy joyful interactions with primary caregivers shape the structure, chemistry and function of the brain, profoundly influencing our identity and relationships as we grow. contemporary neurobiological models support loving attachment as the mechanism for maturity development and healthy interpersonal skills and the emotional energy behind loving attachment that develops both the attachment and the nervous system in the infant is joy. few people can control this joy voluntarily and joy is amplified by the intersubjective interaction of two minds – relational joy rather than individual happiness builds attachments and emotional capacity. neurologically, joy activates the brain’s relational circuits in the middle of our identity centre, joy which can be realized in responding to the god who is with us, for us and glad to be so, interacting with our minds. god’s initiating love enables us to receive his grace with appreciation and joy, generating a joyful identity. indeed neurologically, the brain’s joy centre – the right orbital prefrontal cortex – is the only section of brain which never loses its capacity to grow – so our “joy strength” can continue to expand through life. however, observation suggests that while most christians agree that god is a god of love who loves them, this belief is not reflected in the manifesting of relational joy or character transformation. yet when a baby is loved by the mother, and that relationship between mother and baby is healthy, one can see the baby’s character taking shape as a joyful, responsive, loving infant. saints like brother lawrence echo this infant-like response to the mother in their response to god, lawrence imploring us from his own experience to treasure the presence of god more than anything else. the consequences of such treasuring, treasuring like a baby treasures their mother’s presence, like a lover treasures the beloved’s presence are attested by other saints too – st clare of assisi for example asserting that we become what we love and who we love shapes what we become (wilder, 2020: 74). the issue then is cultivating the relational loving attachment. there is a difference between abstractly understanding god’s love for us, and a conscious experience of a relational loving attachment fuelled by joy which shapes and re-shapes us. a focus on right belief, right doctrine and right choices, important as they all are, will not alone transform character and the rationalizations explaining this away (e.g. lack of faith) miss the point – character transformation depends on joyful attachment relationships of love. when we share joy, we become attached. mike harrison—joyful disciples 85 character formation before going further let us briefly examine the idea of “character”; a rough description might be “the settled way of being and responding that a person has developed over time that becomes characteristic of them” (copan, 2016: 8). mcgilchrist in his the master and his emissary points out how the right hemisphere of the brain operates faster than the left hemisphere and is responsible for producing reactions to circumstances before we have a chance to consider how to react; thus the right hemisphere is a leading source of our character in that our reactions reveal the “natural”, “settled” or “immediate” way of being and responding. so, simon peter revealed his character in the garden of gethsemane when he cut and ran. jesus knew he would do this – simon peter had thought otherwise, or perhaps the left hemisphere of his brain had told him otherwise. the left hemisphere gets the details but not whole picture, operating like a flashlight, only seeing a bit at a time. peter saw his virtuous fidelity to jesus, consciously focusing his attention on such comforting possibilities while forgetting to monitor the rest of his character. (inevitably, the hemispheres are deeply interrelated and we should not make simplistic assumptions about their respective roles – for example both hemispheres generate emotions, but analysis suggests the emotions generated primarily by the left hemisphere are caused by thoughts and beliefs whereas right hemispheric emotions include basic responses to life – thus joy and relationship can (re-)shape the latter while truth and action can (re-)shape the former.) the trouble is that what we are utilizing right now as we think about this is by-and-large our left hemisphere, and getting at the right hemisphere by analytical thinking is a bit like trying to talk to a french child in swahili. so what is the mechanism for building and changing our character in the highly influential right hemisphere? sullivant suggests that because the right brain operates at a supra-conscious speed, the only way to engage with it and build it up is by relational/experiential/emotional/spiritual means. this is why many of the personal, physical, and relational practices seem very simple – even remedial – to many when they first begin to employ them. (sullivant, 2018: 86–7) so for example writers such as brother lawrence suggest with disarming simplicity the transformational significance of a conversational relationship with our lord: e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 86 the most holy practice, the nearest to daily life, and the most essential for the spiritual life, is the practice of the presence of god, that is to find joy in his divine company and to make it a habit of life, speaking humbly and conversing lovingly with him at all times, without rule or restriction, above all at times of temptation, distress, dryness, and revulsion and even faithlessness and sin. (lawrence, 2009: 59) one way of realizing brother lawrence’s recommendations concerning practising the presence of god is, following “neurotheologians” such as jim wilder, to develop “mutual mind”. technically these states occur when dyadic resonance permits the intercoordination of affective brain states in the context of relationship, awareness and interest. (note here eph 2.10 with its description of human beings as god’s poiema, where poetry in scripture does not rhyme sounds but thoughts – as god’s poetry our thoughts can rhyme with those of our heavenly father.) more prosaically, consider the experience of knowing what someone is thinking. people you know well in your family – you can tell when they are amused, irritated, touched or bored stiff – you don’t need them to tell you. of course sometimes they will deny it, but that’s the left hemisphere trying to hide what the right hemisphere, always moving at a faster pace, has already disclosed by body language and other signals. this experience some call “mindsight”. now when two people tune their mindsight on each other it creates a state of “mutual mind” – an intersubjectivity (as schore describes it) – an example being that synchronicity with another’s mind that we can see in a son and daughter as they glance at one another across the bed of their dying mother and don’t need to say, or even consciously think, anything more at that moment. experience shows that this kind of mind sharing is generally limited to people in a bonded relationship when they are face-to-face and open to emotional exchanges. (indeed visual cues and voice tone are much more important than words for fostering such mind sharing.) mutual mind state synchronizes brain activity and chemistry in a matter of seconds and runs too rapidly to be controlled by conscious thought or choice (which is why trying to hide your irritation with your beloved is usually futile). although mutual mind states are mutually produced, the influence of the stronger brain can hold sway. take the storm on the lake – the disciples had a mutual mind state together that they were about to be drowned so they woke jesus. but he was relaxed and over time mutual mind with jesus, a stronger mind, began to have an effect on the disciples. so mike harrison—joyful disciples 87 the next storm story, peter could (briefly!) walk on the waves when he had his eyes on jesus. this mutual mind state is reserved only for those with whom we have a deep bond – and we cannot always tell in this state if it is our thought or theirs. in these states new aspects of our identity can be activated and shaped. it is a useful model for explaining how god acts without over-riding our freedom, as well as a way of responding to the apostolic injunction “let the same mind be in you which was also in christ jesus” (phil. 2.2, 2.5). it is a deeply relational state which is reserved for “my people” – the people with whom i identify and to whom i am close. this sense of our group identity can be hugely influential and identity-forming with the power to change character because it operates in the fast track on the right spot in the brain. “my people” could be one’s family, church or other group, though given how our face to face interaction has been massively reduced in recent decades, the opportunity for mutual mind states has also reduced. applying this to christian character transformation, the idea is that we are to enter into a mutual mind state with god if we are to realize the kind of character transformation we aspire to as disciples. there is a big difference between thinking about god and thinking with god about reality – the latter is mutual mind state – and thinking with god might just change even our initial reactions – thus changing our character. these mutual mind states are established between us and our beloved, so to begin with we need to ensure loving attachments. how do loving relationships grow? well if we observe how a baby’s loving attachment grows, it does so from joyful and thankful, appreciative interactions. (notice again brother lawrence wrote of the practice of the presence of god as one that is to “find joy in his divine company”.) so if we are serious about character transformation in christ, the place we need to start and strengthen is these high-joy, loving relational interactions with christ. many of the saints understood this, as in teresa of avila’s words (ladinsky, 2002: 76); just these two words he spoke changed my life, “enjoy me”. what a burden i thought i was to carry – a crucifix, as did he. love once said to me “i know a song, would you like to hear it?” and laughter came from every brick in the street e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 88 and from every pore in the sky, after a night of prayer, he changed my life when he sang “enjoy me”. one easy practice that can assist here is interactive gratitude (see wilder et al. 2020 for more detail on this and the next practice of immanuel journalling). practice 1: interactive gratitude 1. start by recognizing god’s presence at this moment. find something specific for which to give thanks to god, write it down and stay with the appreciation for 2 minutes or so, describing it in detail to god. notice how your body responds to thankfulness. 2. ask god what he would say to you and write this down. be open to thoughts, images and sensing. 3. read it to a (perhaps weekly) group you consider safe and trustworthy (and the number one rule for the group is to treat every weakness tenderly). the interaction between god and us in this exercise is the defining difference between interactive gratitude and what we commonly consider as appreciation or giving thanks. it is part of building a mutual mind state with god – think of the analogy of taking a ball of yarn, holding one end and throwing it to someone who throws it back, repeatedly. as the ball goes back and forth the connection grows thicker and stronger. furthermore, a handy tip to ensure the right brain stays involved is to be aware of body sensations and to feel some sort of connection with god in one’s memory. increasing joy through effective gratitude practices can actually help us reset our default state more to joy over time – for example try repeated exposure to a state of gratitude three times a day for five minutes recalling gratitude memories and observe the results. this practice is purposely simple and modest. and, as with the next practices, there will be some nervousness about this exercise that we are putting words and thoughts in god’s mouth and indeed sometimes we are, and it is important to check our impressions against scripture and jesus’ teaching and character, whether it brings good fruit (mt. 7.20), whether it results in shalom and/or gratitude (col. 3.15). other checks could be listed and while we are mike harrison—joyful disciples 89 always fallible, the possibility of misunderstandings should not deter us from seeking joyful conversational interaction. sharing with others is crucial, encouraging others and tutoring one another in recognizing god’s voice. hearing oneself articulating gratitude also increases the likelihood of future recognition of gift. furthermore, articulating gratitude completes the process with positive relational interaction and it builds memories of god’s goodness that convey a sense of being loved. our working assumption here is that our identities are formed primarily not by choices but the relational bonds we experience and reflect upon – so that who we share mutual mind states with will shape our choices much more than the other way round – think for example of anyone in love and how they will be ready to change schools, politics, friends, religion – the brain is much more concerned with what we love than our freedom of choice. it seems that the right hemisphere, the major domain of attachment relationships, can have a much more direct control and influence on our identities and character than the left hemisphere – and that our identities and emotions are only indirectly influenced by the thoughts and choices generated by the left hemisphere. rather what really shapes character and identity is it seems in the right hemisphere, the appreciation, joy and shalom (or lack of them) that grow from attachments and relationships, those to whom we are attached shaping our character and identity as a result. the habit of interactive gratitude strengthens our relational bond with the divine and this issues in joy and joy builds our loving attachments, which attachments arguably influence our character development more than anything else. a second practice here which further strengthens the attachment relationship with god is immanuel journalling. critical here is how we are assuming god sees us; this approach presumes god is present, is truly good and perseveres in seeking good for us, just as for example when god tells moses that he sees, hears, cares and is with his people and will do something for them (exod. 3.7-8). practice 2: immanuel journalling begin writing as god simply says back to you what god sees and hears from your speech and actions (e.g. i hear you crying quietly, unsure about what to do, doubting me). e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 90 continue with god recognizing unspoken words (e.g. i hear you judging yourself, your quiet resolution). write as god understands how big (hard) this is (e.g. i can see how sad you are about this). write as god is glad to be with you and treats you tenderly (e.g. i am with you, for you and glad to be here in this with you; indeed, we grasp that god is “as-glad-as-glad-can-get” to be with us, joy grows). write as god saying we can do something together about this (e.g. i am with you and know we can move forward in this together). (this is all about ‘thought rhyming’ with god where god restores our relational circuits using the sequence i see you, i hear you, i understand how hard this is, i am glad to be with you, i can do something about what you’re going through. there is attention, validation, comfort and peace). the final step is sharing such a journal entry within a small group setting. the aspiration is that when we share stories of appreciation and god moments in journalling we move into a deeper group identity. by telling others what we appreciate about god’s presence we are keeping our relational circuits on, tutoring and being tutored on god’s presence and sharing joy which builds group identity. of course, there needs to be group guidelines to such sharing, the number one ground rule being to treat every weakness tenderly, our own and that of others. one way of discerning god at work here is by considering whether the fruit is shalom. we have all had stories told us that have drained our joy, failed to bless us and not been helpful. one way of weighing a journal entry’s readiness for group sharing is via a shalom check. testing for peace might include looking for (a) a shift in perspective that ‘feels’ closer to god’s reality, (b) what is written matches scriptural principles c. consideration of a simple question such as “when i think of jesus in this moment do i feel an authentic sense of his love for me and a growing desire to serve others?” this second practice is about both joy and peace. along with high-energy joy there is joy’s sister, peace. we cannot sustain a high-energy state for long and neurologically experiences of joy call for a time of rest to follow – joy followed by shalom. shalom is that powerful rest that comes when we know everything “fits”, there is nothing to worry about, shalom in god’s active presence to us in jesus through the spirit. neurologically joy is a high energy state that builds our strength and stimulates growth, while shalom is a low energy state that quiets us when everything is just right and we can rest (mt. 11.28-30). joy gets things done. shalom lets us be still and it entails flourishing and wholeness. shalom mike harrison—joyful disciples 91 is where everything is in right relation, the way things ought to be, and god is pleased. indeed, the sharing in this practice is akin to passing the peace – a sharing which ideally involves the three ingredients of gratitude, noticing what god wants me to know and describing what’s changed. this practice suggests we do not come by shalom by believing the right things or by solving problems so much as by sharing god’s mindsight. an outstanding example is the martyr stephen as he was being killed. when we look at stephen, paul or a host of other christian witnesses we find certain elements of this approach, not least (a) god is always with us; (b) god actively interacts in our lives; (c) connecting with god comes before focusing on upsetting experiences (in our case) or traumatic experiences (in paul and stephen’s case such as imprisonment or martyrdom); (d) full processing of such experience requires upset and relationship with god to be active in mind at same time, the latter reshaping the former. this is of course not easy; to be asked in the middle of our strop, sulk or spite to recall god’s presence, closeness and what god had done for you till you become thankful – that’s tough. one hint for cultivating shalom here is going slow; as brother lawrence puts it, we must do all that we do with thoughtfulness and consideration, without impetuosity or haste, both of which show an undisciplined spirit; we must work quietly, placidly and lovingly before god, and pray him to approve our toil, and by this continual attention to god we shall break the demon’s head, and make his weapons fall from his hands. (lawrence, 2009: 59) peace of course does not mean we will not suffer, only that no suffering will separate us from the love of god (rom 8.35-9). the wider context the two modest practices mentioned here are not stand-alone; their effectiveness depends on considerable maturity among the members of groups in which they are practised and healthy ecclesial community. space does not permit further exploration but in environments where people are heavily defended, selfjustifying and wearing masks to protect weaknesses, a low-joy environment beckons. weakness is essential in joyful, ecclesial community because mutual joyful bonds require vulnerability. self-protection is rooted in fear, not joy, and e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 92 it does not grow joyful community. character grows when, for example, we build joy with one another in weakness. low-joy communities are usually those where weaknesses are hidden, disguised and indeed despised. furthermore, in christian community it’s not “weakness is bad and with god we can be strong” but that god’s power makes it safe to be weak while god is strong. other roots of low-joy include a lack of development around the “big” emotions such as fear, anger and shame, unresolved trauma and lack of face-to-face interaction. another key element to the effective working of the practices mentioned is what might be termed relational brain skills. again, space does not allow much further discussion but take for example the skill of “sharing joy”. we learn “sharing joy” from people who are glad to be with us, whose eyes shine as they look at us – their body language, tone of voice and words all convey “it’s a delight to engage with you”. relational joy empowers, motivates and fuels us. we feel a reward with this joy – the neurotransmitter dopamine playing a part in this. the brain’s reward circuitry releases this dopamine also when we eat, exercise, have sex and give generously. and the same dopamine tells us we then need a breather, to rest and recover. and after we catch our breath it is time for the serotonin to recharge us for joy. you may say this skill is “easy” but it’s not that apparent that our christian communities are filled with this skill of sharing joy. very often when our joy levels drop we don’t employ this skill but instead substitute behaviours, experiences, events, people and substances that hijack the joy mechanism of the brain and artificially regulate our feelings, stimulating the dopamine etc. you can tell the difference because this dopamine leaves us restless and empty. we can substitute joy with activities, sports, films, laptops, busyness and endless distractions. surely many of these things aren’t bad but good, but we should realise we are missing out in not developing this skill. it is also embarrassingly easy to enhance this skill. one minister decided to introduce this skill together with the returning to quiet skill by training welcomers to express joy with their face and voice, and also to recognize when people felt overwhelmed. so welcomers could provide joy or shalom as needed. the results were remarked upon after just a few sundays, people speaking of services being “life-giving” and refreshing (wilder et al., 2014: 116). another skill is “returning to joy”, restoring our desire and ability to be with others when things go wrong and we are suffering or in pain. returning to joy comes from strong attachments to others and a deep sense of who we are that will not get lost when we are in pain. while we are still distressed and not “joyful” there is a sense of quieting distress and being with caring other(s). mike harrison—joyful disciples 93 concluding remarks “joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of god,” wrote léon bloy (1937: 57), a french catholic philosopher. fostering the mode of being that is joy through habits of relational attachment is arguably one of the missing pieces in enabling our formation as christ followers. it is not a stand-alone element however – shallow relational attachments, weak ecclesial community, lack of brain skills and low joy rooted in upbringing and bad habits are all obstacles to realizing god’s gracious invitation to joy. the two practices mentioned here focused on joyful interactive conversational relationship are stimulated by engagement with wilder et al.’s life model and they are suggestions to provoke discussion – what joy-generating practices can we shape and communicate as easily pass-on-able habits which can be undertaken together in ways which are genuinely transformative? the joy we speak of is not primarily a psychological competency whose mastery is a necessary stage in our self-actualising project, neither is it some evolving product of a hegelian historical-cosmic process, or any of a number of other modern possibilities rooted in voluntaristic human agency or natural dynamics. rather joy’s possibility is rooted in the god of joy who relates to us in creating, redeeming and drawing to eschatological consummation in ways which generate joy-in-relationship which can manifest even in situations which hold few possibilities for well-being in community, as demonstrated by paul, francis of assisi and others. what is more, this joy suggests participation in the joy of the triune god, the shaping of christian community and character as the new testament advocates, and promising missiological effectiveness through such a distinctive way of being together in god’s presence. references balthasar, h. u. von. 1970. two sisters in the spirit: thérèse of lisieux and elizabeth of the trinity. san francisco: ignatius press. bloy, l. 1937. letters to his fiancée. new york: sheed and ward. carrithers, m., s. collins and s. lukes (eds.). 1985. the category of the person: anthropology, philosophy, history. cambridge: cambridge university press. copan, v. 2016. changing your mind. cambridge: lutterworth press. eastman, s. g. 2017. paul and the person. grand rapids: eerdmans. foster, richard. 1981. celebration of discipline. new york: harper & row. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 94 kelsey, d. h. 2009. eccentric existence vols 1 & 2. louisville: wjk press. ladinsky, d. j. (ed.). 2002. love poems from god. new york: penguin. lawrence (brother, of the resurrection). 2009. the practice of the presence of god. london, hodder & stoughton. mcgilchrist, i. 2009. the master and his emissary. new haven, ct: yale university press. schore, a. n. 1994. affect regulation and the origin of the self: the neurobiology of emotional development. hillsdale, nj: lawrence earlbaum associates. sullivant, m. 2018. thinking biblically about the life model. indiana, deeper walk international. wilder, e. j. 2020. renovated: god, dallas willard and the church that transforms, colorado springs, co: navpress. wilder, e. j., et al. 2014. joy starts here: the transformation zone. illinois: shepherd’s house. wilder e. j., et al. 2015. joyful journey: listening to immanuel. los angeles, ca: presence and practice. wilder, e. j., et al. 2020. “a christian multi-modal approach to therapy utilizing inner healing prayer: the life model.” journal of psychology and christianity 39 (1): 49–64. williams, r. 1989. the body’s grace. london: lesbian and gay christian movement. _hlk95485040 _hlk96334497 _hlk91151276 _hlk99228587 _hlk92923612 _hlk92923636 _hlk72870314 sample _hlk102057148 _hlk102058336 _hlk102058373 editorial nigel rooms problems with “pioneering” mission: reflections on the term “pioneer” from germany, south africa and the uk setting god’s pioneers free? the need to release lay pioneers from the church of england’s narrative of resourcing and equipping james butler discipleship, mentorship and training which empowers african women for ministry in the diaspora naar m’fundisi-holloway communal maturation and missional discipleship: a congregational study nick ladd joyful disciples: a study of a missing link in considering spiritual disciplines and corporate missional habits mike harrison we want the good life now: insights from lived religion for a whole person and communal approach to salvation in the twenty-first century dejan aždajić book reviews kwiyani, harvey. 2020. multicultural kingdom: ethnic diversity, mission and the church. london: scm press. reviewed by sabrina müller roxburgh, alan j. 2021. joining god in the great unraveling: where we are & what i’ve learned. eugene, oregon: cascade books. reviewed by steen olson susan lucas (ed.). 2020. god’s church in the world: the gift of catholic mission. norwich: canterbury press. reviewed by luke larner olsen, steen, 2020. jacob’s ladder: missional church in the 1970s. st. marys, australia: sa & rl olsen. reviewed by patrick r. keifert 11 parklife – listening to stories as a deep missional practice sally mann a pioneering missional leader in east ham, east london and the senior minister of bonny downs baptist church. sally is a senior lecturer in sociology at the university of greenwich, focusing on issues of social inequality and co-director of red letter christians uk, a relational network for those who want to live for jesus and justice. https://redletterchristians.org.uk/. email: s.e.mann@greenwich.ac.uk abstract this paper offers missiological reflections on a sociological research project the author undertook during the 2020 covid lockdown, called parklife (mann, 2021). the fieldwork for this involved listening to the stories of those experiencing homelessness during the pandemic. this paper reflects on this experience and suggests that a deeper understanding of how stories work may serve to strengthen the creative, and potentially transformative, art of missional listening. to this end, it brings findings from the parklife project into a conversation with ricoeur’s notion of the narratological self, interrogating the role that stories have in identity creation. it offers a set of working propositions for consideration in other missional contexts. mailto:s.e.mann%40greenwich.ac.uk?subject= e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 12 keywords: homelessness; covid; identity; listening; paul ricoeur; stories introduction i am a missional minister in the east end of london and a jobbing sociologist. these roles synchronized in a small-scale research project called parklife that i undertook to explore experiences of homelessness during the pandemic (mann, 2021). now, as i reflect on the methods and findings of parklife, i believe there are important implications for missional leadership. here i suggest how and why inviting people to share their stories is a powerful missional practice, especially among the most marginalized communities. when we think of stories and mission, perhaps the power of storytelling is most readily appreciated. we may even emphasize this side of the dynamic: a missional ecclesiology demands a new story. the best response to the challenges in a complex world is to tell the stories of the church … in a certain sense, the whole enterprise of christian theology is about storytelling … leaders are storytellers. they know that stories make life possible (niemandt 2019: 143, emphasis added). telling stories is an essential part of forming a missional community (roxburgh and romanuk, 2006: 71). contextualizing and weaving together the cosmic gospel with local stories is an artform (hirsch and ferguson, 2011: 1343-4). missional communities are ‘story-rich’ and our narratives invite others to join and find their place in a communal story (morisy, 2004). but what precisely happens when we invite someone to tell us their story? does this have its own intrinsic power? reflecting on the stories curated in the parklife project convinces me that soliciting and truly attending to stories is a concrete example of what sam wells calls ‘being with’, a practice of ‘incarnational mission’ (2018). here, i suggest that a deeper understanding of how stories work may serve to strengthen the creative, and potentially transformative, art of missional listening. to this end, i interrogate what happens when we share stories in the light of some of paul ricoeur’s philosophical notions. i offer the parklife stories and the peculiar philosophy of ricoeur to those considering the importance of biographical stories, who want to think this through at a deeper level and are up for a little speculative philosophy to achieve this. ricoeur’s work, and in particular his sally mann—parklife 13 later book time and narrative (1984), has been described as offering “the finest example of contemporary philosophical hermeneutics and is one of the most significant works of philosophy published in the late twentieth century” (wood, 1991: xiii). i have more modest aims. i plan to develop some intriguing ideas ricoeur has about narratives, time and identity. i have found these useful in discerning how and why stories are transformational. ricoeur suggests that stories are the primary way that we make sense of our lives and the means by which we come to understand and represent our identities. storytelling shapes the shared world between the listener and the storyteller. for ricoeur, human speech and actions operate in a similar way to texts. this means that a story can take on new meanings and work within those who have heard them long after the storyteller has finished speaking. stories are generative. mining the parklife project for its missiological content has deepened by appreciation of missional listening as ministerial practice. it has also led to some working propositions which might be helpful to other missional leaders and communities. the original parklife project i am a co-vocational baptist minister and lecturer in sociology. i have been researching experiences of homelessness for several years to explore how grassroots communities can assist transitions from street sleeping. my research includes the contribution of my own church’s advocacy project.1 during the 2020 covid lockdown i found myself working from home and spending the permitted hour of outdoor exercise in my local park. i noticed that a group of street drinkers and others i knew to be homeless had taken up daily residence there. despite the shifting demographics of the park, they had maintained ownership of a circle of six benches around a cenotaph. i observed how this group were ostracized within the increasingly busy park. to my sociological imagination, my local park became a site rich with forced interactions between widely differing cultures. the park became a place to contend for space, to label those who felt threatening, but also a place for communality and care. i recognized 1 my church set up a separate community organizing charity almost 30 years ago www.bonnydowns.org and a bespoke project to address homelessness in our borough www.newwayproject.org. see looking for lydia: encounters which shape the church in 2019, available from amazon or www.bonnydownschurch.org. http://www.bonnydowns.org http://www.newwayproject.org http://www.bonnydownschurch.org e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 14 many of those passing time at the six benches in my role as a volunteer advocate. i knew them as regulars at my church’s midweek community meal. covid restrictions had changed the way these projects operated. spending time in the park with this “street community” altered the context of our relationship. to my missional eye, the park became a place ripe with the possibility to “be with” a community of vulnerable people i now had less opportunity to “do for” – to borrow sam wells’ excellent definitions (2018). after an initial period of pondering about what i was witnessing, i asked for ethical clearance from my university and set up an ethnographic research project called parklife. at first, i simply observed interactions and chatted to people. later, when i had become a familiar figure, and formal research agreements were in place, i began to invite the regular bench sitters to share stories with me. my methodology was participatory and narratological: i curated stories. to anyone passing, i was just choosing to sit on the same park bench for an afternoon every week and chat to people from the “street community”. if they agreed, i would jot down notes about the stories they told me and invite them to tell me more. undoubtedly, being a familiar face helped foster trust and i adopted the stance of moderate participation of “participant observer” (howell, 1972).2 my opening gambit was usually to introduce myself as someone who was interested in stories and ask whether they had one to tell me. the parklife project involved six months of fieldwork. it offered the opportunity to study huge numbers of everyday interactions and some exceptional ones. it was a snapshot of urban life which may well have been replicated internationally during covid lockdowns while confined to the particularity of a certain place and the stories of a certain group. i found that stories were currency at the six benches. the park was rich with stories. twelve participants, nine men and three women, were formal participants. two of the women had their children with them. all twelve had experienced homelessness in the last eighteen months according to the uk government’s definition (gov.uk, 2021).3 four were in the “roofless” category for some of the time during the project. of these, three had spent some months in hotel accommodation as part of the 2 i reflect on my subjective position as an activist academic in mann, 1999. 3 the uk government definition of homelessness includes: rooflessness (without a shelter of any kind, sleeping on the street); houselessness (with a place to sleep but temporary, in institutions or a shelter); living in insecure housing (threatened with severe exclusion due to insecure tenancies, eviction, domestic violence, or staying with family and friends known as “sofa surfing”); and/or living in inadequate housing (in caravans on illegal campsites, in unfit housing, in extreme overcrowding). sally mann—parklife 15 everyone in pandemic response in london, which saw 40,000 people affected by homelessness offered immediate, temporary accommodation in hotels and bed and breakfasts. one of the participants had refused to engage in the scheme and remained roofless or “sofa surfing” for the duration of the project. of the remaining eight, six were “houseless” for most of the project, living in temporary hostel accommodation. another two were currently living in insecure housing. for example one woman and her child were living with her grandparents and sister in a two bedroomed flat. nine of the twelve participants reportedly spent at least part of everyday (defined as more than five times a week) at the park. the rest spent at least part of more than one day a week there. most were recurrent contributors, meeting me repeatedly and adding to their stories or sometimes just passing time and watching people use the park with me. alongside the formal participants were a wider group, mainly of “street drinkers”, whose housing classification i did not come to know. the majority of them appeared to be migrant workers who came to the park after their shifts. this group did not give formal consent to participate but had stories to share, which due to ethical guidelines could not be included in the research project. this group were sometimes an audience for stories and this shaped how they were told. most of the stories were told just to me and these were often returned to over a period of time, either being repeated or expanded. how they were retold became an important feature of the parklife study. in terms of research design, the original parklife project was broadly an emic approach in that it investigated how the street community thought and interpreted events. parklife was intentionally set up to allow the participants to lead and shape the scope of the conversations and sought to understand the stories from within street culture. this later reflection is more etic in approach as i consider the original findings and draw conclusions from my own perspective as a missional leader, which is a different cultural perspective. reflecting on the stories of parklife: stories of victims and heroes the stories curated in parklife were as surprising as they were illuminating. many of stories i listened to had recognizable themes. i heard many tales of victimization, of battling “the system”. i was struck by the personification of organizations and governmental departments – “the social”, “the housing”. often these narratives pitched the storyteller against a personified adversary, one bent on denigrating them. sometimes the storyteller would return over the e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 16 course of the weeks and bring paperwork to show me, official letters presented as evidence. folded and well-worn, these were offered as the objects which framed the plot – the letter from “the housing”, the court summons, hospital appointments.4 “see … [shows me a letter which appears just to be an appointment schedule] i had evidence. i have it here. they should have talked to my doctor.” i ask for clarification, “who should have?” “the housing. they were bang out of order. i have all the evidence. see there’s this one back in 2005. i have this from years ago. i have proof. look. i was under the hospital. they had no right.” or another time: “they don’t give a fuck. they do it to get me down. they’d probably like it if i give in and just fucking do it.” “do what?” “who doesn’t care?” i ask. “just fucking top myself. here in the park. i could. i could. i won’t though. but they want me to.” “who wants you to?” “the housing. those. those people. they don’t give a fuck.” and later, “don’t tell the social i’m here.” “they didn’t win. i got that claim.” 4 in places, the storytellers used strong language. this language is retained in order to accurately reproduce the reality of the stories (editor). sally mann—parklife 17 over the years, volunteering in a church-led advocacy project, i have heard many such stories. encounters with statutory systems seemed to frame many of the life-stories i was told. less expected were the frequent heroic narratives. these included stories of intervening in fights, getting people out of trouble, overcoming the odds: “it was kicking off here last night. fucking mental. it was. it was. [laughs] it was the full moon or something. fucking mental … he was well out of it. no-one could get him straight. he was all for having it out with [anonymised]. i don’t know what would’ve happened if i’d not been around … see him? i saved his life!” “you know [anonymised]. she’s had it rough. honest sally she’s been right through it. all these fuckers taking her stuff off her and all. not a penny … she would not have survived without me.” “i told him. i did. i got him down there [to the hospital] and i said ‘he’s not leaving ‘til someone sorts this!’ … i stayed with him. probably saved his life.” “they’ve not won. they’ve not won. i’m not letting this go.” “who?” i ask. “the social. they’ve not won. i’m not letting them off with this. they don’t know who they are messing with.” the stories seemed larger than life and were often retold to me as others arrived in the group and provided a new audience. sometimes people were invited to validate the story: “i did, didn’t i?” at other times there was somewhat of a contest around who was telling the story, a battle for ownership: “who’s telling this? who’s telling this?” alongside the victim and hero stories were other stories of loss and bereavement. there was a quietness to these, and they were usually told to me on my own. these stories were often prefaced with “do you remember…” or “you know… [this person]?”. it was clear that the loss might only be shared if i knew e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 18 who they were speaking about. i heard stories of three deaths in the duration of this project – of people’s close friends, all of whom seemed to have died from the long-term health effects of problematic substance use. these stories seemed less rehearsed, and i could not tell how they were being incorporated into any larger system of meaning. they were sad stories. i did not experience these stories being cast as victimization narratives. the deaths were not explained in that way, but simply as sad losses. the context of these deaths needs to be situated in the fact that homelessness and street life too often have fatal consequences. the uk office for national statistics (ons) estimated that 726 people experiencing homelessness died in england and wales in 2018. this is a 22% year-to-year increase and the highest since estimates began in 2013. data suggests that most deaths among people experiencing homelessness were caused by drug-related poisoning, suicide, and alcohol-specific deaths (aldridge, 2019). there were many other stories gathered from the six benches. a few were childhood and teenage recollections, sometimes prompted by the presence of children among the group. but the prized stories were the ones about taking on systems, and of being a “face”, a known figure who resolved others’ problems and kept things in order. using thematic analysis to explore the parklife stories, the primary theme was “victimhood”. the next theme was “tragic”, stories that could be grouped together as tragedies which happened to others. however, stories of “pleasant” events and memories featured next and a surprising number of these featured “heroic” personal content. we all use self-authoring narratives. in thinking through stories from a missional standpoint, it may be useful to think about the relationship between stories and identity more closely. i suggest that paul ricoeur’s general framework, and his particular notion of “emplotment”, helps us to appreciate the extent to which a person attempts to make sense of their identity, their relationship to others and their place in the world, through telling stories. this suggests that inviting and attending to a story encourages the process of identity formation and can even shape it. to this end i offer a summary of ricoeur’s broad framework and some of his key ideas which might shape how we perceive missional listening. sally mann—parklife 19 the broad philosophical context of ricoeur’s ideas for ricoeur, stories are an act of mimesis. stories are mimetic as they attempt to reproduce events from one time or place within another. in ricoeur’s words, they are “the imitating or representing of action in the medium of metrical language” (1983/1984: 33). ricoeur draws from aristotle’s understanding of stories and understands story as mimesis. he adopts the idea of emplotment to theorize how mimesis occurs. every storyteller is therefore also an editor, choosing which elements to bring together or leave out, inferring or explicitly commentating on events, shaping the plot, bringing it to a resolution. “emplotment” is one idea within ricoeur’s understanding of narratives and identity. in a three-volume work called time and narrative (1984-88), ricoeur described the relationship between narrative discourse and human experience. he finds that to be human is to tell stories. stories are “the privileged means by which we re-configure our confused, unformed, and at the limit mute temporal experience” (ricoeur, 1984: xi). at the end of the third volume, ricoeur announces that his philosophical exploration has been in search of an answer to the question “who?”, “who am i that i can be spoken of in so many different ways?” (1988: 274). he considers narrative and time to address an existential question of selfhood. for those conversant in this field, ricoeur’s notion of the subject is not essentialist; he speaks of the self in terms of act and potentiality rather than substance. the subject’s identity is not fully stable and tangible, but neither is it completely incoherent. ricoeur’s concept is not the completely decentred subject posited by foucault and other postmodernists. neither does ricoeur fully situate the subject within language as derrida does. the difference, philosophically speaking, is how ricoeur handles issues of agency and being. the self, as ricoeur understands it, is the idea and reality of a person capable of testifying to their own existence and acting in the world. this self has agency but is also acted upon, one that can recount and take responsibility for its actions. telling stories is one way to exert this responsibility and agency. it an act of active interpretation. through the stories we tell about ourselves we aim to discover rather than impose a narrative identity. ricoeur’s understanding of narratives has encouraged me to interrogate the nature of storytelling and attend to how a person attempts to make sense of themselves and the world through this. this approach asks me to set aside the desire to check out the veracity of the story. to use theological language, this is a true expression of “being with” a person (wells, 2018). a deeper understanding e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 20 of how this works can strengthen missional listening skills. even the most exaggerated and unlikely narrative need not be cast as “telling stories” but as the important act of story telling. ricoeur: emplotment and the storyteller as an active interpreter as we tell a story, we organise events in ways that generate meaning, creating an intelligible whole from many parts. its’ telling “pursues and reveals meaning” (ricoeur 1983/1984: 65). we choose where to position ourselves within the story and this is how we discover a sense of selfhood. ricoeur recognizes that this sense of identity is not written on a blank slate. we have a pre-existing idea of how reality is organized, “a preunderstanding of the world of action, its meaningful structures, its symbolic resources, and its temporal character” (ricoeur, 1984: 54). moreover, in telling stories we actively shape and interpret this realm. we tell stories to make sense of the world, but this also involves fitting events, imagined or memorialized, into the framework of our worldview. we fit together the parts of a story, the “what, why, who, how, with whom, or against whom” (55) into “meaningful structures” (54) which pre-exist our telling of this particular story. sometimes, this is very apparent. “once, upon a time …” invites us into a certain imaginary, but pre-existent, mental space. so does, “you’ll never guess …”. these structures also open possibilities for future landscapes. many of the “victim” stories at the six benches took place in a world where systems were, at best, uncaring, but were frequently described in terms of their imagined malevolence. this is not my pre-existing worldview. listening closely to the stories it was obvious that early criminalization and experiences of social welfare systems framed the lives of many of the participants. this was the world within which they were attempting to make sense of themselves. it was not just the parklife stories which seemed rooted in social marginalization and multiple deprivations. interactions within the park were also shaped by invisible power structures. in the parklife stories i found the primary interaction between other park users and the group at the six benches was one of outright avoidance. occasional rowdiness and acts of deviance were perhaps reactions to ostracizing practices by the other park users. sally mann—parklife 21 paths criss-crossed the circle of six benches, but these were rarely used by other park visitors. the circle of benches acted as a shibboleth. as well as circumventing the physical space, other avoidance techniques included not looking in the direction of the benches, passing by quickly, and avoiding eye contact. these were very apparent to me but not commented on by any of the bench participants … i witnessed ostracising practices many times in the park. perhaps the very act of gathering as a loosely defined group countered this to some extent? it is much harder to ignore a group of a dozen or so people. i wondered if the loud greetings among the group, which seemed exaggerated at times, and the frequently shirtless chests of the men, went some way to counter feelings of invisibility. (mann, 2021: 131-2) on reflection, the story’s “spectacle” or setting may provide an insight into why “victim” stories featured so regularly. perhaps those at the six benches knew how others viewed them and were attempting to make sense of how this had happened. personifying the structural causes of marginalization might be one way to explain feelings of persistent battle and threat. this “emplotment” technique situates the storyteller’s identity into a world of battle and contest. the street homeless are not the only community to personify adversarial powers. might there be some theological resonance here? an example of the personification of negligent social institutions appears in walter wink’s analysis of naming the powers. of course, the social context of marginalization was also a context for the “heroic” stories. these narratives confer dignity and status. they might be appreciated as similarly imaginative responses to marginalisation, as attempts to shore up identities for those experiencing social invisibility. there was often a palpable feeling that the storytellers were trying to make sense of the things which had happened to them. some stories jarred and shifted in subjective positions and grammatical tenses. the stories would ricochet in different directions if others joined at the bench, suggesting that the audience did indeed shape the story (a point i will return to in a consideration of how a story’s meaning is co-created). sometimes “emplotment” involves dissonance as well as coherence. this too is telling. ricoeur invites us to notice the “concordant discordance” as elements of a story fit into meanings and others resist them (1986: 66). this is surely how many of jesus’ parables work. they lead you along a known path and then subvert where you arrive with a discordant element (for example e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 22 lk. 10.25-37; 14.15-24; 15.11-32). in terms of autobiography, dissonance may flag up shifts in identity creation. elements of the story which seem to jar with the overarching sense of meaning may point to shifts in the way the storyteller positions themselves as they tell the story. perhaps they are aware that they are revealing more then they intend. or that the listener is not reacting as they expected. i recall one parklife story about a fight which had this subjective shift. it had begun as a glorification of the participant’s role in a fight but shifted to describe how they held someone else back and “saved their life”. was this dissonance between aggressor and hero due to the storyteller’s awareness that i was unimpressed by boasts of violence? did they adjust their identity in the story because of this, or because they saw an opportunity for a more heroic narrative? riceour invites us to pay attention to stories as windows into the ways an individual attempts to sense of the world and their place within it. we should expect this to be ongoing and their sense of identity to be plural. constructing a sense of self through narrative identity is “an open-ended, incomplete, imperfect mediation, namely, the network of interweaving perspectives of the expectation of the future, the reception of the past, and the experience of the present” (1986: 207). working propositions to consider in other contexts: 1. learn to see the power of “story telling” inherent in even the most unlikely stories. where it’s appropriate, stop interrogating for accuracy, and listen for the authentic account of how the storyteller attempts to discover a sense of selfhood. 2. attend to the frameworks of pre-existing belief implicit in stories. these tell us where a person is at as much as the events they recount. also listen out for the dissonances – these are places where change might be emerging. sally mann—parklife 23 ricoeur: stories bring the past, present and future together stories are very interesting in terms of how time works within them. ricoeur is a dense read on this, but it is worth the mental stretch. in time and narrative he takes issue with all preceding philosophical accounts of time, from aristotle through augustine, kant, husserl and heidegger. he offers instead, and with planned provocative confidence, a hypothesis that “narrative is the guardian of time” and that “time becomes human time to the extent that it is organized after the manner of narrative” (1984: 3). ricoeur’s argument is complex. he argues within a tradition which has struggled to conceive of time in terms of how we experience it (a phenomenological approach). he suggests a definition which takes seriously how identities are constructed through narratives and how these create illusions of unitary time by bringing past, present and future together in a transitory moment. he sees this happening at historic levels, for example in the creation of national identities through the stories a society chooses to tell about itself. it also happens at the level of an individual life. this is where, as a missional leader, i find his ideas most compelling. ricoeur brings time, identity and narrative together: what counts here is the way in which every day praxis orders the present of the future, the present of the past, and the present of the present in terms of one another. (1984: 60) the past is present in a story through the obvious fact that we are re-presenting events, but beyond this, there is the non-linear work of symbolism at a subtextual level. the story is not merely experienced as linear, even if the narrative appears chronological. telling a story draws on preexisting meanings from deeper, past stories. the meaning of a new story is drawn from ideas and themes in other periods, and they become present too. we recognize this in the presence of archetypes in stories – such as how we speak about heroes and villains. repetition of recognizable stereotypes, inference and connotation to myths are present in the most everyday stories (hall, 1999). they are not merely shorthand. they bring the past into the present, and vice versa. biblical parables, and all stories with twists, are especially interesting in terms of how time works within them. we are invited to rethink them from their endings. so, “to understand the story is to understand how and why the successive episodes led to this conclusion” (1986: 66). once we have heard them, e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 24 we may have to rethink how we heard them. ricoeur describes this as gaining the ability to “read time backwards” (1986: 66) a process which involves coming to see that the end is present at the beginning and the beginning becomes meaningful at the end. we make sense of events in an autobiographical story by pulling together a character which represents ourselves. this might be the narrator. we situate this subject within a moral universe where choices matter, and meaningful connections are made between events and effects. emplotment is a “reading back into events” that opens up the possibility of reading forward into the subject’s actual future choices and actions. there is the potential for stories told today to change tomorrow’s choices and the way we understand ourselves. the parklife stories victim or hero stories may not be wholly accurate, but they can be transformative. choosing to tell a story in, for example, a heroic way opens new and real potentials for how an individual may go on to act in future. stories shape our future “being in the world”. telling stories is a process of mentally organizing the past and understanding future potentialities. stories also work by making the future present in the story as they invite the consideration of how the story unfolds. i think of this as the “promise of sequels” that is evident in how the story is told and to whom it is told – its “speculation” as aristotle says. if i tell you a story about myself as a victim, i may invite your protection and intervention. if i tell you a story about my acts of violence, i invite subservience or contest. both of our futures are potentially present in these stories. they are generative. missional listening and appropriating meaning when we listen to a person’s story and begin to try and make sense of it, we enter the story and the act of interpretation. ricoeur calls this “appropriation”. meaning is co-produced depending on how we receive the story. it is an interaction rich with the invitation of encounter. appropriation, application and persuasion are involved as we tell and listen to stories (1986: 52-3). just as the storyteller is active and generates meaning, the listener does too. listening to another’s stories involves taking up a subjective position in the story ourselves. this is most obvious if we accept the invitation to identify with a character in the story: “well, what would you have done?” “do you know how that feels?” but it always happens as we imagine the scene and pick a perspective. in this, the listener is also concurrently producing a sense of themselves. are they persuaded? can they identify? where do they see themselves in this story? what sally mann—parklife 25 ideas are they appropriating and what sense do they make of the story they are listening to? hence my sociological parklife project was also a lesson in missional listening. it taught me to mentally note repeated phrases, how a retold story grew and developed, or boiled down to its essence. i learnt to pay attention to the use of hyperbole, the oration, the invited response and how the story changed given its “speculation” and audience. i realized that if i listen well, i might discern that something is happening in that moment, with the potential to observe and even participate in the creation of a sense of self. the storyteller is trusting me to see how they pull together a sense of who they are as they try to make meaning from the events of their lives. they edit and i pay attention to how they do this. listening to a story is a space for “being with” (wells, 2018). it takes time and the willingness not to cast yourself as a heroic character in this person’s story. perhaps the potentially transformative power of narratives is most present in the stories people tell in liminal spaces. liminality is present at borders where an individual is both losing and gaining identity. liminality can occur through being physically displaced, which was a very common experience during the everyone in pandemic-motivated offer in london of immediate temporary accommodation, although often in other parts of the borough or much further afield. where this initiative was successful, everyone in offered the chance to undertake a process of change; to lose the identity of being “one of the homeless” and begin to see what else might be possible. but we are foolish to reduce homelessness to rooflessness. as many have demonstrated, and i have attempted to explore elsewhere (mann, 2019b) a sense of belonging, of being a known character in a community, is a key pull factor to transition from the chaos of street life to a new identity in a settled community. it is almost impossible to make this journey unsupported and isolated. during parklife i noticed the pull of this familiar place in the park and how some would make long bus rides or walks to spend part of every day here. being a known person in a familiar place shapes the stories we feel able to tell, the processes of “emplotment”. of course, it is not just physical displacement that creates liminality. it can also happen as a person begins to cross into a new identity – for example from street homelessness to settled living. the stories told during these times can help or hinder future choices. i noted this in an earlier research project which involved spending a day walking around sites where one man had lived on the streets for five years (mann, 2019b). as we walked and i listened i noticed that the subject of the story, the way this man “dean” spoke about himself, fundamentally shifted when he began to recount volunteering in a local community project as their “tea angel”. he had heard e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 26 himself described this way and it now featured in how he described himself – as a person who was important in the work of helping others off the streets. the project he connected with, newway (www.newwayproject.org), was birthed in my own community and has the good sense to avoid replicating the power differentials inherent in the statutory sector. instead, it uses an “alongsiders” approach, inviting people experiencing homelessness to connect through gardening, food growing, football and cooking. the advocacy part of this project is well embedded in community life. dean had found a way to think of himself as a respected volunteer rather than a “service-user” or one of the homogenized “homeless”. this gave him a way to tell his story which was full of “semantics of action” and involved reading meaning back into his own story to see it as one of beating the odds. he was also now part of a larger heroic community, a bigger story, where there was a shared mission to end street homelessness. in an earlier work, ricoeur lays out what he describes as “little ethics”: “aiming at a good life lived with and for others in just institutions” (1992: 172). this resonated with dean’s experience of successful transition. the way dean described himself was full of “concordant discordance” (1986: 66). his story was disruptive. it did not always lead where i thought it might. it challenged my expected appropriation. for instance, being in the places where he had slept out reminded dean of mostly positive experiences. this was interesting as he also told me about the struggle he currently faced living “behind the walls” of his new accommodation. his mental health challenges were more acute now that he was out of the survival mode of street-sleeping. ricoeur understood the discordance inherent in autobiography. he suggested it involves dimensions of both being and not being our former selves. which is why, he suggests, a self is better thought of in terms of the question “who?” rather than “what” a self is. listening to dean’s story and those from the parklife participants changed me. this could be also described as one effect of appropriating of meaning from the stories i heard. once a story is told and is out there “in the world” it is no longer just the product of the narrator. in its telling, another kind of work of identity formation is possible, one that takes place within the listener. my most vivid recollection of how this happened during the parklife project was when one participant interrupted his own storytelling saying “oh i know what you will say. you’ll tell me the story’s not over yet.” i often find myself using this phrase to invite someone to imagine a different ending for the situation they are in. in this case, the storyteller predicted i would do this and interrupted and possibly adjusted their story. recollecting this, i shift my understanding of who i might be. could i be the person who injects the potential for hope, the sally mann—parklife 27 subversion of an expected ending, in other people’s stories? this is potentially transformative to my own sense of self. a working proposition to consider in other contexts 3. appreciate listening to stories as an act of co-production. a listener needs to stay mostly quiet, but where it’s appropriate to do so, they can encourage new and positive emplotment through occasional questions which open new subjective positions: “what would you say to your younger self now?”; “what if this isn’t the end of the story – what would you like to see happen?” 4. reflect on how you have been changed by the stories you have heard. some conclusions: story-rich placemaking parklife gave me the opportunity to listen to stories of those caught up in the crisis of homelessness, observe their marginalization in my local park and witness their communality in a site over which they managed to retain a level of control. there was conviviality and a sense of being known among familiar faces. there was drama. i did not witness violence but, over the course of the project, some participants passed off newly acquired injuries and described physical fights as “one of those things”. many spent some part of every day at the six benches. i became convinced that many people fail to make the transition from street-sleeping because “mainstream” society is lonelier, less liveable, and altogether less inviting than parklife. transitioning from a chaotic life needs an invitation to a better, more compelling “story to find yourself in”, to borrow mclaren’s words.5 statutory intervention alone cannot achieve this. it takes community. and perhaps this is where healthy christian community comes in. could local, missional churches be the story-rich places where people are invited to become a known character and join a heroic mission to transform the neighbourhood, all within a grand narrative of resurrection? i believe i see this in my own missional church and in the work of grassroots projects like newday which are long-term, non-judgmental, radically hospitable and confer 5 from the title of brian mclaren’s book, the story we find ourselves in: further adventures of a new kind of christian (2013). e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 28 new identities. they are not just listening places; they provide advocacy and community organization. they take time to listen to stories.6 it is very hard to “out local” the local church. when it expresses mission through radically hospitable expressions of “being with”, it offers a place for stories to be told and valued. with some training, and an appreciation of the potentially transformative act of listening, these might become more effective in helping others journey well. the local missional church is ripe with drama and the opportunity to become a known character. it is also “placed” and offers familiar spaces to return to. of course, this only happens if they are genuinely hospitable. for those seeking models of “being with” as a missional ecclesiology, ricoeur’s theory encourages us that time spent listening to stories is worthwhile. it is even an act of identity recreation, the transformation of the self. working propositions to consider in a missional community or congregation 5. invite people into in a story-rich community, “remember that time when we …”. local missional communities are ripe with stories and rooted in places where people can become known characters. let’s tell our local stories well and widely. 6. if you are part of a church, think through the stories you tell. do they use dissonance and imagination? do they intrigue, invite and discombobulate? revisit the stories jesus told, and as we retell them, let’s avoid prescribing how they must be understood. if you have sermons as part of your gathering, use local stories to shape them. references aldridge, r. w., d. menezes, d. lewer et al. 2019. “causes of death among homeless people: a population-based cross-sectional study of linked hospitalisation and mortality data in england.” wellcome open res 4: 49 https://doi.org/10.12688/ wellcomeopenres.15151.1. 6 for reflection on remaining as a missional practice, see mann (2022). https://doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.15151.1 https://doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.15151.1 sally mann—parklife 29 hall, s. 1997. representation: cultural representations and signifying practices. london: sage in association with the open university. hirsch, a., & d. ferguson. 2011. on the verge. a journey into the apostolic future of the church. grand rapids, mi: zondervan. howell, j. t. 1972. hard living on clay street: portraits of blue collar families. prospect heights, il: waveland press. mann, s. 2019a. “making it count: learning from a knowledge exchange with voluntary sector workers and software providers, and data from auto/biographical reflection as an activist academic.” methodological innovations 12(3). https://doi. org/10.1177/2059799119889570. mann, s. 2019b. “conducting a walking interview to explore pathways out of persistent and recurrent 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(2021). “parklife: stories and spaces in lockdown” european journal of homelessness volume 15, issue 2 https://www.feantsaresearch.org/public/user/ observatory/2021/ejh_15-2/ejh_15-2_rn1.pdf. mann, s. 2022. remainer reflections: following jesus of nazareth, not jesus of sepphoris. https://williamtemplefoundation.org.uk/temple-tracts/. morisy, a. 2004. journeying out: a new approach to christian mission. london: continuum. niemandt, n. 2019. “missional leadership: transforming stories”, in missional leadership (hts religion & society series) 7: 141-9, cape town: aosis. https://doi.org/10.4102/ aosis.2019.bk108.08. ricœur, p., k. mclaughlin & d. pellauer (1984, 1985, 1986). time and narrative. chicago: university of chicago press. ricœur, p. 1992. oneself as another. chicago: university of chicago press. roxburgh, a. j., & f. romanuk. 2006. the missional leader: equipping your church to reach a changing world. san francisco: jossey-bass. watkins, c. theology and action research network, https://theologyandactionresearch. net [accessed 16/04/21]. wells, s. 2018. incarnational mission: being with the world. norwich: canterbury press. wink, w. 1984. naming the powers: the language of power in the new testament philadelphia: fortress. wood, d. (ed). 1991. on paul ricoeur: narrative and interpretation. london: routledge. now published as a free to access e-book on https://vdoc.pub/documents/on-paulricoeur-narrative-and-interpretation-5q9eu2mu1fr0#. https://doi.org/10.1177/2059799119889570 https://doi.org/10.1177/2059799119889570 https://www.feantsaresearch.org/public/user/observatory/2019/ejh/ejh_13_2/2019_vol13_no2_researchnote-2.pdf https://www.feantsaresearch.org/public/user/observatory/2019/ejh/ejh_13_2/2019_vol13_no2_researchnote-2.pdf https://www.feantsaresearch.org/public/user/observatory/2019/ejh/ejh_13_2/2019_vol13_no2_researchnote-2.pdf https://www.feantsaresearch.org/public/user/observatory/2021/ejh_15-2/ejh_15-2_rn1.pdf https://www.feantsaresearch.org/public/user/observatory/2021/ejh_15-2/ejh_15-2_rn1.pdf https://williamtemplefoundation.org.uk/temple-tracts/ https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2019.bk108.08 https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2019.bk108.08 https://theologyandactionresearch.net https://theologyandactionresearch.net https://vdoc.pub/documents/on-paul-ricoeur-narrative-and-interpretation-5q9eu2mu1fr0 https://vdoc.pub/documents/on-paul-ricoeur-narrative-and-interpretation-5q9eu2mu1fr0 rooms.indb 90 free for mission: missional church and ethnographic fieldwork scott j. hagley associate professor of missiology, pittsburgh theological seminary, pittsburgh, pa shagley@pts.edu abstract working at the intersection of ethnographic and missional theology, this essay argues for the central role of fieldwork for discerning missional identity in congregations. recent developments in ecclesiology and ethnography have clarified the embodied nature of theological knowledge, disclosing the practical wisdom and cultural locatedness of the researcher and congregation. while ethnography has been used to help congregations understand their context and discern a missional vocation, the ongoing theological and formational nature of such practices are often undertheorized in relationship to missional church. drawing from robert jenson’s notion of the spirit as god’s freedom, liberating god and creature for god’s future, this essay suggests ethnographic fieldwork as a liberative practice for the congregation, freeing it to participate in the boundary-crossing and sensemaking work of missional church. in working with congregations, i’m often greeted by some version of the question: “are we (meaning, the congregation i’m working with) missional yet?” the question comes loaded with scott j. hagley—free for mission 91 curiosity and concern. what, they ask, is a missional church, and would we know one if we saw it? even more significant: how will we know when the work we are doing to renew our theological imagination and develop partnerships with our neighbors will pay off? the question comes from a good place, but it also leads into a deceptive trap, for any answer will betray the dynamism that “missional” tries to name (guder 1998, 3–5). and yet, the question also unveils a theo-practical ambiguity at the heart of the missional church. the problem is not just that missio dei theology holds together unreconciled tensions between the god-church-world relationship, but that the boundary-crossing practices that shape the missional vocation of a congregation are viewed instrumentally, as a means to a missional end. congregations, seeking to identify as “missionary by [their] very nature,” and reorient congregational life through practices of missional discernment, can be forgiven for thinking of “missional” as a fixed arrival point (guder 2015, 9). in what follows, i explore the theological significance of ethnographic practices for missional congregations. a staple of many approaches to missional renewal and missional church plants, church leaders and steering committees regularly employ the basic tools of ethnographic fieldwork to better understand their own community and their context or neighborhood (croft and hopkins 2015; roxburgh 2011). in descriptive terms, these practices equip congregants for deep listening, attentive observation, and disciplined curiosity. they also place congregants in new places and with new people, drawing these experiences into congregational reflection and discernment. while neither professional ethnographers nor academic theologians, congregants are given through these practices new connections to neighbors and offered new vantage points from which to reflect upon the life and ministry of the congregation. as such, they are not simply a means to a missional end, but rather practices that already participate in god’s missional future. congregational ethnographic fieldwork can cultivate new social realities which glimpse—and perhaps even liberate—the congregation for god’s mission in its particular context. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 92 of course, ethnographic fieldwork is not a theological practice by itself, nor can missional theology be collapsed into ethnography. at stake in this discussion is how otherness is reconciled with the missio dei, how one envisions the relationship between god and god’s creation, the church and god’s present and coming reign (see swart et al. 2009). drawing from robert jenson’s understanding of the spirit as god’s freedom and god’s future, i suggest a liberative approach to missional church. rather than a fixed identity or a future telos, the missional church is liberated for god’s mission by and through the neighbor, the stranger, the other in and through the ministry of the holy spirit. the church sent into the world recognizes and receives god’s “preferred and promised future” in the concrete relationships cultivated (keifert 2006, 16). ethnography, shaped by this missional intention, becomes an ongoing practice for missional theology, not only a step toward a missional identity. are we there yet? liberating missional church darrell guder says it is “the widespread consensus that the ‘church is missionary by its very nature’” (guder 2015, 9). after the 1952 international missionary council meeting in willingen, vatican ii, the wcc study on the “missionary structure of the congregation,” and (among other things) the gospel and our culture network, guder’s assertion remains uncontroversial. the question, however, is what “missionary by nature” means. in the latter half of the twentieth century, the missionary identity of the church has been understood in relationship to the missio dei, summed up by david bosch as “the classical doctrine on the missio dei as god the father sending the son, and god the father and god the son sending the spirit was expanded to include yet another ‘movement’: father, son, and holy spirit sending the church into the world” (bosch 2011, 399). thus, the missionary church is the church sent into the world by the missionary god. however, besides a general theocentric reframing of mission, the meaning and implications of scott j. hagley—free for mission 93 missio dei for the church remain ambiguous. dwight zscheile and craig van gelder track four different interpretations of missional church across academic and popular treatments of the missionary nature of the church, with different implications for each interpretation (gelder and zscheile 2011, 10–11). according to john flett, the reason for this ambiguity can be traced back to a deficient trinitarianism in the missio dei, in which the gap between god and world is overcome by “sending” as a “second step alongside who he is from all eternity” (flett 2010, 19). in its classic articulation after willingen, missio dei holds together two competing theological strands. on the one hand, karl hartenstein brought a concern for god’s sending agency in mission. the missionary act is in response to the sending activity of father and son. on the other hand, the american confederation brought an explicitly trinitarian rationale for mission which served to minimize the ways mission has been christologically understood. god is at work, not only through the church, but also in historical movements for justice and liberation. jacques matthey calls these two positions the “classical” and the “ecumenical” approaches to missio dei (matthey 2001, 429–30, quoted in flett, 2010, 53–54). however, flett identifies a shared flaw in both positions: neither clarifies the relationship between god and world. mission either extends christ’s work to the world by way of the church or names divine action drawing history toward a more just end. the first approach envisions the church crossing the gap between god and world, and so provides theocentric cover for mission to carry on as it always has been. the second approach dissolves the church into various activist movements without ever identifying discrimen for discerning the shape of god’s mission (flett 2010, 35–57). neither approach clarifies how the life of father, son, and spirit relates to the world: “the problem is not that one is trinitarian and the other is not; the problem is that both draw on an identical and insufficient trinitarianism” (flett 2010, 56). without addressing this ambiguity, the missionary nature of the church is bound to be confused. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 94 flett appeals to barth’s doctrine of reconciliation to situate the missio dei on more firm footing. by doing so, he locates missio dei’s trinitarianism within christology and soteriology. for barth, the chalcedonian formula draws the human creature into the trinitarian communion in a way that protects the otherness of god and the creature. the gap between god and world is thus bridged within the being of god, and not as a secondary sending. as god and creature, jesus christ’s election by the father is also the election of all humanity. thus, god’s economy of salvation, god’s reconciliation of the world to god, is also properly located within the triune being of god. for flett, these doctrines renew and redirect the missionary vision of the church. if mission belongs to the being of god, then it also belongs to the very being or nature of the church. mission is not properly the action of the church or the bridging between god and world, but rather the witness of the church to what god has accomplished in jesus christ: “jesus christ’s resurrection from the dead, the sending of the spirit, and the spilling of his community out onto the streets proclaiming his name to the ends of earth and of time reveal the nature of god’s own perfection in and for himself ” (flett 2010, 248). while offering insightful analysis of problems inherent in missio dei and providing a road map for resolving them, flett’s approach neglects the idiosyncratic nature of congregations and the way in which the missionary nature of ordinary congregations is practiced and expressed. because the gap between god and world is solved within the life of god as a singular and fulfilled act, flett’s barthian approach does not address the experience of narrative surprise and discovery critical to congregational mission. “missionary by its very nature” becomes a statement about ecclesial ontology rooted in the singular act of god’s missionary being. the practicalities of bearing witness in a particular context among a variety of others are not clearly connected to the formal theological argument. when researchers and theologians work from the missional practice of the local congregation, however, the theocentric orientation of missio dei relativizes the various ministries of the congregation, simultaneously empowering the scott j. hagley—free for mission 95 congregation to learn from outsiders and surprises.1 fresh expressions will use a “neighborhood audit” to this end; “the missional network” and “partnership for missional church,” and many others employ similar tools and practices meant to help congregations and church leaders to learn from, open up to, and be shaped by the concerns, interests, gifts, and hopes operative in a particular context (see croft and hopkins 2005; center for congregations 2020; church innovations institute 2020). thus, the surprises and diversities of local missional practice are disconnected from the trinitarian problematics of missio dei, and vice versa. approaches to missional church that lead congregations to ask “are we there yet” rely upon vague notions of missio dei, in which the practices meant to help congregations “become” missional are interpreted as a means to rediscovering our missional nature. but approaching the question without the particularities of congregation and mission in mind only exacerbates the distance. what is needed, i will suggest below, is a different vantage point from which to consider the theological density of missional church practices. beginning with robert jenson’s understanding of the holy spirit as the freedom of god, i suggest a pneumatological frame for considering god’s surprising and liberative work, freeing the congregation for listening and responding to a host of others—god, neighbor, world—as a participation in the mission of god. the spirit and the freedom of god as mentioned above, congregations discern their own participation in god’s mission by attending to and learning from those outside the congregation. encounter with others through the crossing of boundaries is critical for learning about one’s context and learning 1. this is not true of all approaches to missional church. but at least three of the “branches” of the missional church identified by gelder and zscheile have proponents that encourage congregational learning as part of the journey toward missional. only the “discovering” missional publications draws “missional” language without some engagement with the broader conversation around missio dei (gelder and zscheile 2011, 10–11). e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 96 to witness to the gospel in those places. insisting upon the missionary nature of the congregation infuses these practices with the burden of faithfulness—to engage such discernment is central to its very life as church. rather than working from a prior grounding of the missional identity of the church in ontology, robert jenson’s theology offers a “revisionary metaphysics,” which can offer a vision of congregational mission more attentive to boundarycrossing congregational practice (jenson 2004, vii–viii).2 stepping around the usual tensions between being and personhood that guide trinitarian doctrine, jenson approaches trinity with the narratives that disclose the identities of father, son, and spirit.3 in doing this, he highlights the relational dynamism of the trinity revealed as a story involving the action(s) of creatures in history: or, rather, history in god. participation in the story of father, son, and spirit requires an open posture expressed as receptivity to the future and all those included in it. the missionary nature of the church is an invitation to participate, an identity disclosed in retrospect, a promised future granted by the liberating spirit and made concrete in the various others “join[ed] at the body of jesus” (jennings 2017, 8). for jenson, questions about the being and nature of god are resolved in relationship to the narratives attributed to god, what he calls the dramatis dei personae or the drama of the characters of god. jenson’s doctrine of god thus emerges in relationship to the events by which god identifies godself: god is the one who raised jesus from the dead and who has raised israel from egypt. the dramatis dei personae becomes the lens through which jenson understands trinity and god’s relationship to the world. history 2. it is worth noting that jenson never engages missional church (and only occasionally treats mission) in his writing. as such, i am extending his trinitarian theology to suggest a framework for ecclesiology that is not jenson’s. 3. critical to jenson’s theology is a narrative understanding of personhood, where personal identity is rendered coherent in retrospect and in relationship to a series of events by which that person is identified. a person, jenson says, is “a sequence of events that before the event retains the capacity to surprise, yet after the event displays a coherent dramatic sense that has been tightened by that very event” (jenson 2014, 199). scott j. hagley—free for mission 97 occurs not only in god, but “as [god’s] being,” revealing god’s roominess to accommodate otherness in the triune life of god (jenson 1997, 221, 226). drawing together a cluster of metaphors, jenson concludes that the life of the triune god is an event, a person, a decision, and a conversation (jenson 1997, 222–23). because plot development requires multiple agents and coherence to be meaningfully dramatic, the various aporias of trinitarian theology—three and one, communion and otherness, freedom and history—are given dynamic energy and creative room without spiraling into incoherence or settling for oversimplifications. within such a framework, theology offers a “revisionary” and perhaps chastened metaphysics (jenson 2014). god is known within the experience of time and the events of history, rather than through deep structures of normativity or philosophical speculation. it is not just that we know god by nature of the resurrection or the exodus, but that the divine drama is the very life of god. the “triune identity,” as jenson frames it, is known in the dramatic interaction of father, son, and spirit before, among, between, and within god’s creation (jenson 1997, 63ff). “god is what happens between jesus and his father in their spirit. but in the present connection [with creation] we may also say: god is what happens to jesus and the world” (jenson 1997, 221). in jenson’s thought, this point is critical, for it both guards the difference between god and creature and holds open the possibility of creaturely union with god; the roominess of god’s triune life does not blur the distinction between god and creation, but rather discloses the way in which god distinguishes godself “from others by not excluding them but by including them,” beginning in the “act of creation” (jenson 1997, 226). theological interpretation invites interaction with and involvement in the divine story. thus, the contingencies of history, creation, and experience are inevitably part of theological construction. jenson’s narrative approach to trinitarian theology identifies dynamic creativity within god’s own life in the spirit as liberator, or as god’s future and—as james henry says—“freedom in god’s own life” (henry 2018, xxv). jenson distinguishes his position e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 98 from classical theology, where relations of origin describe the triune economy: the son begotten of the father and the spirit’s procession from the father through the son. while fixed in the creeds, relations of origin struggle to distinguish the identity of spirit and son in relationship to the father, which often results in ambiguous approaches to pneumatology (henry 2018, 116–40). jenson addresses this problem by considering the triune economy in relationship to the unfolding of the dramatis dei personae. because history is in god, jenson understands the spirit proceeding from the father but also liberating father and son for god’s own future: as “witness to the son and the freedom of the father” (henry 2018, 124). as the “first fruits” (rom 8:23), “deposit” or “guarantee” (2 cor 1:22) of the reign of god, the spirit’s identity is disclosed in the manifestation of god’s promised future as inaugurated by christ. the delay of the parousia makes the pentecost a “dramatic necessity,” where the spirit poured out on all flesh connects the ministry of jesus to god’s desire to gather the nations to israel (jenson 1999, 178). at the pentecost, the spirit liberates the disciples for god’s future, expressed as communion and connection where it did not exist before. for when the spirit descends, women and men from the nations hear the word of god in their mother tongue and are drawn into a community of eschatological promise. as the word of god is received by the nations, and as the nations are drawn into the story of israel’s god, “a ruptured world begins to grow together” (welker 1994, 230). this dramatic action of the spirit works from the eschatological future, working from the perspective of the fulfillment of god’s promises and intentions. in this way, the spirit is both the spirit of jesus and god’s future. such a view is compatible with broader biblical testimonies to the spirit as the liberator of god’s people for service and holistic witness to god’s intentions for creation, who frees both god and creature for communion. shared by father and son, the spirit is the freedom of god for the reciprocal, roomy, ecstatic love that is the triune god. in the memorable phrase of john v. taylor, the spirit is the “go-between god” (taylor 1972). so also, the spirit frees human persons for participation in the drama of god. we scott j. hagley—free for mission 99 become, in christ and through the spirit, dramatis personae in the story of god. gathered as the body of christ, we become— by god’s spirit—witnesses to the future of god. liberated by the spirit for participation in the life of god, the church encounters and contributes to the “force field” of love that is spirit poured out on all flesh as a witness to the future of god and god’s creation (welker 1994, 230ff). thus, participation in the life of god means participation with the characters of the drama of god by the power of the spirit, to be caught up in the “field” of the spirit’s action (welker 1994, 230). the roominess of god is made manifest in the action of the spirit (jenson 1997, 25). in this way, the “event” and “conversation” that is god includes the creatures and historical events by which god has identified godself (jenson 1997, 222–23). acting from god’s future, the spirit liberates creation for participation in god, and so the identity of the spirit is revealed in the liberation that makes possible the ends of god. thus, the spirit is “god as the power of his own future, god as beyond himself to be life and act, god as his own goal” (jenson 1978, 54). in this way, we can see jenson’s dramatis dei personae as another way of understanding what is at stake in a theology of the missio dei. as both agent and end of mission, the triune god draws, frees, and invites creatures to participate together in god’s life and reconciling work. as dramatis personae in the story of god, the missional church is free in christ and through the spirit to receive and recognize its future in partnerships with other characters in the divine drama. it is here, within jenson’s understanding of the spirit as the power of god’s own future, as the liberator of god and creature for relationship, where fieldwork can be envisioned in terms of god’s mission, and where missional theology invites ethnographic research. for while the spirit is god’s power to be god’s own goal, the drama of god that the spirit draws to a conclusion includes (through the son and in the father) all the other dramatic characters liberated and gifted for participation in the divine drama. congregational participation in the triune life, then, is necessarily tied up with the creativity of spirit. as pentecost makes clear, the e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 100 creational scope of the spirit’s liberating work invites and involves boundary-crossing movement, and such boundary-crossing movement directs the disciples to recognize new implications of the death and resurrection of christ. in congregational mission, eschatological hope finds concrete, though incomplete, form in the partnerships between congregation and community as it is animated by the spirit of god. free in the spirit to listen and learn from one another, god, and neighbor, the congregation encounters a world of characters/actors and (sometimes) surprise that invites it to retell and revise its story as a participant in the broader drama of the triune god. thus, for the liberating spirit to free congregations for renewed missional identity, the congregation needs to be open to what might be genuinely new or surprising, an openness disciplined and practiced in ethnographic inquiry. the missionary nature of the church, i suggest, is not only grounded in the being of god but also liberated by the spirit of god for surprise, and so fundamentally open to that which is other. where it is engaged with what i will call a missional sensibility, ethnographic fieldwork can be understood as participation in god’s “preferred and promised future” (keifert 2007, 16). to the question—“are we missional yet?”—ethnographic fieldwork provides a provocative answer: “have you been surprised? have you found yourself in new places and with new mission partners?”4 free for mission: fieldwork and missional sensibility in recent years, a cadre of scholars from several different disciplines have gathered around the simple idea that ecclesiology requires the study of actual congregations (ammerman 1998; ward 2012; scharen 2015; james 2018). drawing from ethnography, congregational studies, and practical theology methodologies, these scholars articulate how it is that ethnographies of congregations do legitimate theological work. while not exclusively about 4. thanks to john ogren for noticing the primacy of these questions for a missional sensibility. scott j. hagley—free for mission 101 ecclesiology or ethnography, the two terms envision theological dimensions to fieldwork and a fieldwork dimension for theology; or, as natalie wigg-stevenson has said, an “ethnographic theology” (2014). by considering the integration of ethnography and theological inquiry, ethnographic theologies envision body and place as generative and even necessary for theological construction, underscoring the embodied nature of theological inquiry. that is, ethnography helps attend to the ways in which the experience of the body in the world, the location of bodies in relationship to one another, and the basic dimensions of creaturely limitation and hermeneutic perspective all shape theological reflection. drawing from the work of natalie wigg-stevenson and mary fulkerson, i offer a missional twist on ethnographic fieldwork as a participation in the liberating work of the spirit. no longer instrumental toward some missional end, fieldwork both draws the congregation into disclosive relationships and clarifies the congregation’s own missional possibilities. in ethnographic theology, natalie wigg-stevenson draws from pierre bourdieu’s conception of habitus to suggest the body as a “vector” for theological knowledge. she argues that ethnographic theology discloses what the body knows in relationship to god and world along with the narratives and sources of one’s theological tradition. in bourdieu’s thought, habitus names bodily dispositions and perceptions sedimented in persons by nature of their participation in particular fields of practice. relative to a cultural field, a habitus both reflects and constructs or reproduces practices: “in short, the habitus, the product of history, produces individual and collective practices, and hence history, in accordance with the schemes engendered by history” (bourdieu 1977, 82). as a field of practice, congregations both reflect and construct a particular habitus, and so does the theologian. within such a framework, the cycles of experience–reflection–action proposed by practical theology and the disciplinary distinctions observed in congregational studies miss the point. the knowledge and histories reflected in the congregation are not exclusively practical or ideational, but also habitual and dispositional. the use of social e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 102 science interviews or participant observation, then, cannot help but shape our theological work, and any theological reflection we do inevitably reflects dispositional attributes of class, gender, race, education, etc. habitus renders the disciplinary distinctions of both social scientist and theologian problematic. because it addresses inherited, structural, and embodied dimensions of cultural participation, bourdieu’s theory of practice invites theology to attend to its own reflexive and embodied dimensions. the theologian herself inhabits a particular habitus in relationship to various fields of practice—church, academy, judicatory, etc.—while her theological work contributes to and participates in various processes of cultural production, all of which is produced by, reflective of, constructive for the life of faith in the world. in its shape and outcome, the work is inevitably placed and “carnal” (scharen 2015, 91–110; see also wacquant 2005). thus, bourdieu’s habitus functions both prescriptively and descriptively for theology. recognizing the inescapability of the body (one’s own and others) for the interpretation and production of knowledge, bourdieu helps theologians attend to the communities of faith that shape one’s own theologizing, as well as the communities for whom one seeks to produce theology. wigg-stevenson builds bourdieu’s theory into her methodology, developing a collaborative approach to theological construction with an adult education class at first baptist church in nashville, tn. concerned with issues of theological agency and production, wigg-stevenson offers short lectures and introductions on significant christian thinkers and topics—scripture, trinity, calvin, contextual theologies—before inviting the class to respond to and interact with these topics and thinkers. as an ethnographic theology, wigg-stevenson imagines herself as an “objectified participant” in theological production (wigg-stevenson 2014, 59–62). she both leads and participates in the discussion, while also attending to (objectifying) her own choices, experience, dispositions, etc. she sees herself embodying a bridge between academic and everyday theology, and she attends to how it is that theologies are produced at places of disruption and difference. scott j. hagley—free for mission 103 she is not, in her own view, a detached observer of the congregation, but rather one whose embodied presence and formation brings particular wisdom and insights into the adult education class, while also soliciting particular responses from the class. in her research, she both shares in the habitus of the congregation and makes it visible through reflection and conversation (wiggstevenson 2013). at stake is a post-cartesian vision of theology which cultivates processes of attentiveness and practices of reflection before it worries about producing theological materials or essays. theological reflection, in her view, attends to the body as necessary for theological knowledge, because human knowing is both social and bodily, expressed in communities of practice and sedimented as a habitus. it is not that essays or academic theology are unimportant, just that without reflexive collaboration with communities of practice the theologian misses an important source of knowledge. she says: “ethnographic theology, because it is conscious of the fact that it rises from embodied practice as much as if not more so than from texts, is able to see embodiment as a vector of, not an obstacle to, knowledge” (wigg-stevenson 2014, 140). the ethnographic theologian, that is, not only attends to bodies but also recognizes one’s own embodied presence and experience as partially constructive of theological knowledge. the “vector” of knowledge that is the body is thus situated through ethnography in a particular world of practice and interaction and memory and history, which—through the questions and attentiveness of the ethnographer—performs a particular theological understanding.5 in her approach to ethnographic theology, wigg-stevenson draws from the work of mary mcclintock fulkerson’s work in places of redemption, which connects post-modern place theory and bourdieu’s concept of habitus to articulate the theological importance of place as a necessary element of embodiment. placetheory provides for fulkerson a means of extending bourdieu’s 5. in this, she is working with kathryn tanner’s work to find a vocation for the academic theologian in relationship to the construction of “everyday theology” (see tanner 1997). e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 104 conception of practice to the life of a congregation. the congregation, for fulkerson, is not only an organization sustained by practices and rituals, but also a place: “a gathering of meanings” that “[endure] through practices” in the bodies, habits, social imagination, and artifacts of the congregation (fulkerson 2007, 36). places, according to fulkerson’s construction, both constitute and are constituted by the communities, narratives, and practices gathered there. extending bourdieu’s habitus, we know place as a dense gathering of meanings, as bodily dispositions, and a way of moving through the world. so also, we make places by our movement, interpretations, and interaction within a locale. for theology, place-theory provides a robust frame for the interconnectedness of sociology and theology in understanding the dimensions of faith and a faith community. someone located somewhere constructs theological knowledge; through ethnography and other fieldwork practices, the body and place and not only sites for such knowledge, but collaborators and contributors to theology (fulkerson 2007, 52). by making place and embodiment visible in her theological work, fulkerson challenges approaches to practical theology that imagine a discrete moment of theological reflection apart from questions of place and attentiveness to social phenomena. within the rush of experience and data, theologians operate with a “nonfoundational sensibility” that functions in the background, alerting the theologian to “what deserves attention—of what is out of place, of what is broken and needs to be fixed, as well as of what is good and compels thanksgiving” (fulkerson 2007, 14). this sensibility, of course, reflects the theologian’s own cultural and theological formation, and reflective of her own habitus and sense of place. in fulkerson’s own work, she identifies a dual sensibility for the ethnographic theology: attention to the “place of the wound” in communities with an interest in “the logic of transformation” (fulkerson 2007, 14, 22). both approaches chart significant directions for theological inquiry beyond fact-value, mind-body, and subject-object dichotomies. wigg-stevenson’s reflexive and collaborative approach scott j. hagley—free for mission 105 to ethnographic theology begins to imagine a different role for the theologian in relationship to congregations. the theologian, in wigg-stevenson’s work, not only attends to the everyday life of faith, but invites congregations into public performances of theological construction. and, while fulkerson emphasizes collaboration less, she draws into focus the theological dimensions of social science tools because of the embodied, placed nature of human knowing. bodies, practices, places, and communities, in both proposals, are envisioned as theologically constructive. communities of practice place both theologian and community, forming and informing the theologian because embodiment—and the dimensions of place and movement that embodiment suggests—is a “vector” of theological knowledge (wigg-stevenson 2014, 140). this is true for both the theologian and the community in collaboration. the reflexive tools of ethnography clarify for the theologian her own presuppositions and “sensibility” operating in the background (wigg-stevenson’s “objectified participant”), sedimented as part of the habitus and reflective of one’s own participation in various communities of practice. ethnographic practices help to clarify where it is that the theologian is working from. but they also bring the particularities of the community into the open as well. however, ethnography for a “worldly church” remains, in the end, focused on the church situated in the world rather than missional nature of the church for the world (fulkerson 2007). ethnographic theology tends to describe human experience of god as mediated through the practices and narratives of an ecclesial community. as fulkerson suggests, the conditions for transformation are cultivated when theology makes visible the situation of a congregation. but one also brings to the descriptive task any number of assumptions rooted in one’s social location and theological interests. fulkerson’s interest in transformation within a diverselyabled, interracial congregation helps her articulate the place of the wound as situating her ethnographic theology. following fulkerson, but with an interest in how the congregation can discern its participation in god’s mission in its context, a missional sensibility for fieldwork will attend to the spaces and relationships where the e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 106 status quo of congregational life is challenged or provoked by new relationships or unexpected partnerships. drawing additional guidance from wigg-stevenson, such a sensibility will attend to the places of difference, disruption, and surprise. for god’s mission, as i’ve argued elsewhere, precipitates a crisis for the congregation, because “the arrows in mission do not point in only one direction, but rather come back to shape the church sent out into the neighborhood” (hagley 2019, 51–52). echoing fulkerson and wigg-stevenson’s insights, then, i suggest that a missional sensibility in relationship to ethnography emerges from and attends to boundary-crossing movements of the congregation; ethnography becomes missional theology at the place of disruption and difference, at the intersection and interaction between congregation and community. attending to boundary-crossing movements in relationship to the neighborhood and practiced by members of the congregation, a missional sensibility within fieldwork is a liberative practice which embodies possibilities for god’s future. the focus on boundary crossing focuses ethnographic attention on the dense network of relationships within which the congregation is located. this act of understanding and interpretation is inevitably theological, since the congregation engages fieldwork from within a christian habitus, which situates attentive study and interpretation within strands of the scriptural narrative and the broad hopes of christian eschatology. similarly, because ethnographic fieldwork requires boundary-crossing movement, it can help facilitate a missional sensibility. the ethnographer, through participant observation becomes an “objectified participant” in the boundary-crossing movement of church and possible neighborhood partners (wigg-stevenson 2014, 59–62). in this way, the bodies at the intersection between congregation and neighborhood are a “vector” of theological knowledge, a source of disruption and surprise in the missional discernment of the congregation (wiggstevenson 2014, 140). for these reasons, approaches to missional church involve the congregation—and not only theologians or pastors—in various scott j. hagley—free for mission 107 ethnographic practices. because missional church assumes a fluid, dynamic, and contextual ecclesial identity, missional congregations are encouraged to pay attention to their particular context. drawing from ethnographic practices, missional congregations are encouraged to cross boundaries and interview, observe, and learn from neighbors and neighborhood partners to discern missional vocation. they attentively cross boundaries with a missional sensibility. by crossing boundaries to understand its context, persons in the congregation place their bodies in new places, embodying new theological possibilities before the congregation articulates or conceptualizes a missional future. placing congregants in new places and with new people with a discerning posture, ethnographic practice with and for a missional sensibility practices and points toward future possibilities for the congregation. such attentive boundary-crossing opens the congregation to new surprising possibilities while also embodying new possible partnerships. conclusion the question “are we missional yet?” betrays uncertainty about the missional-theological nature of various processes and practices designed to help congregational missional discernment. while ethnographic fieldwork has helped theologians attend to the embodied and local dimensions of theological construction, and while it has been utilized in helping congregations to understand their cultural context, the theological dimensions of its boundarycrossing practices are not always clear. because fieldwork with a missional sensibility places congregants in new settings, equipping them for observation, participation, and reflection, it offers a set of practices that can surprise the congregation, freeing it for new possibilities of congregational life in relationship to its concrete setting. fieldwork, in the life of the congregation, participates in the liberating work of the holy spirit, preparing the congregation for god’s “preferred and promised future” by disciplining persons in the congregation to cross boundaries with open hearts and minds (keifert 2006, 16). thus, the fieldwork of the congregation e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 108 is not in service to a missional identity, but partially constitutive of that identity. it is not a means to a missional destination, but a ready participation in it. bibliography ammerman, nancy t., ed. 1998. studying congregations: a new handbook. nashville: abingdon. bosch, david j. 2011. transforming mission: paradigm shifts in theology of mission. american society of missiology series 16. maryknoll, ny: orbis. bourdieu, pierre. 1977. outline of a theory of practice. new york: cambridge university press. center for congregations. 2020. “the missional network.” online. http://www. themissionalnetwork.com. church innovations institute. 2020. “what’s god up to?” online. https://www. churchinnovations.org. croft, steve, and bob hopkins. 2005. listening for mission: mission audit for fresh expressions. london: church house. flett, john g. 2010. the witness of god: the trinity, missio dei, karl barth, and the nature of christian community. grand rapids: eerdmans. fulkerson, mary m. 2007. places of redemption: theology for a worldly church. new york: oxford university press. gelder, craig van, and dwight j. zscheile. 2011. the missional church in perspective: mapping trends and shaping the conversation. grand rapids: baker academic. guder, darrell l. 2015. called to witness: doing missional theology. grand rapids: eerdmans. ———. 1998. missional church: a vision for the sending of the church in north america. grand rapids: eerdmans. hagley, scott. 2019. eat what is set before you: a missiology of the congregation in context. skyforest: urban loft. henry, james d. 2018. the freedom of god: a study in the pneumatology of robert jenson. lanham: lexington/fortress academic. james, christopher b. 2018. church planting in post-christian soil: theology and practice. new york: oxford university press. jennings, willie j. 2017. acts. belief: a theological commentary on the bible. louisville: westminster john knox. jenson, robert w. 1997. systematic theology. vol. 1. new york: oxford university press. ———. 1999. systematic theology. vol. 2. new york: oxford university press. ———. 2014. theology as revisionary metaphysics: essays on god and creation. edited by stephen j. wright. eugene, or: cascade. scott j. hagley—free for mission 109 ———. 1978. visible words: the interpretation and practice of christian sacraments. philadelphia: fortress. keifert, patrick r. 2006. we are here now: a new missional era. eagle, id: allelon. matthey, jacques. 2001. “missiology in the world council of churches: update.” international review of mission 90: 427–43. roxburgh, alan j. 2011. missional: joining god in the neighborhood. allelon missional series. grand rapids: baker. swart, jannie, et al. 2009. “toward a missional theology of participation: ecumenical reflections on contributions to trinity, mission, and church.” missiology: an international review 37: 75–87. scharen, christian. 2015. fieldwork in theology: exploring the social context of god’s work in the world. the church and postmodern culture. grand rapids: baker academic. tanner, kathryn. 1997. theories of culture: a new agenda for theology. guides to theological inquiry. minneapolis: fortress. taylor, john v. 1972. the go-between god: the holy spirit and the christian mission. london: scm. wacquant, loïc. 2005. “carnal connections: on embodiment, apprenticeship, and membership.” qualitative sociology 28: 445–74. ward, pete, ed. 2012. perspectives on ecclesiology and ethnography. studies in ecclesiology and ethnography. grand rapids: eerdmans. welker, michael. 1994. god the spirit. translated by john f. hoffmeyer. minneapolis: fortress. wigg-stevenson, natalie. 2014.  ethnographic theology: an inquiry into the production of theological knowledge. new york: palgrave macmillan. ———. 2013. “reflexive theology: a preliminary proposal.” practical matters 6: 1–19. 123 susan lucas (ed.). 2020. god’s church in the world: the gift of catholic mission. norwich: canterbury press. isbn: 978-17-8622-240-4 reviewed by luke larner university of roehampton lukelarner@hotmail.co.uk anglican polity and mission remain heated topics if arguments on social media and articles in the press are anything to go by, sometimes reaching fever pitch among the adherents and opponents of movements such as “fresh expressions of church” and “save the parish”. a book seeking to elucidate a distinctly catholic missiology for the twenty-first century seems, therefore, highly relevant. this book’s chapters are largely drawn from a 2018 conference resulting from the “improbable” collaboration between representatives of forward in faith and anglican catholic future (p. ix). that the book is seeking to engage these ongoing debates is made clear in that by the second page of the introduction, it has already critiqued mission shaped church (2004), a publication criticized by many prominent voices from mailto:lukelarner@hotmail.co.uk e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 124 the catholic wing of the church of england. the book seeks to argue for a distinctively catholic understanding of mission “in a language in which catholics of all ‘tribes’ in the church of england would feel at home” (p. x). the book does offer useful perspectives on mission, particularly the final chapter, “catholic mission in historical perspective”, which traces the history and identifies some useful core principles. i would, however, argue that the book does not reach the potential of its proposal to represent mission from “the breadth of catholic integrities in the church of england today” (as the back cover claims). organized into a clear structure, the book offers chapters on a variety of important aspects of mission from a catholic anglican perspective, including prayer (ch.1), the trinity (ch.2), the sacraments (ch.6), social justice (ch.7) and more. these chapters give practical perspectives on mission through exploring the history, theology and practice of the catholic movement in the church of england. largely argued succinctly and clearly, the book offers a useful introduction to mission in this tradition. contributions and conversations from either side of the big “divide” over the ordination of women weave well together and don’t feel forced. the book’s greatest weakness, i would argue, is its claimed breadth of “catholic integrities”. simply representing both those for/against the ordination of women is just not enough. an example of this is that the authors are all exclusively white, and are all clergy (with the exception of one professed religious contributing to ch.4). this seems highly problematic given the diverse make up of catholic anglicans, especially for a book entitled “god’s church in the world”. a second major issue related to the first, is that there is absolutely no engagement with the relationship between christian mission and the ongoing legacy of racism and colonialism. this lack of breadth and engagement is highlighted through some particularly problematic passages which fail to intelligently engage missiology in the diverse, postmodern and multi-faith context of twenty-first-century britain. references to “tough black boys from estates” (p. 63) and “harder to reach estates and people groups” (p. 109) feel decidedly distasteful in a book written by elite-educated white people. indeed, the general tone of the book seems to fail to engage with a twenty-first-century english context where the church must learn to accept a very different place in society and national life. i would suggest, therefore, that this leaves room for further published work on catholic mission in the anglican tradition which engages a broader and more critical perspective. 111 percy, martyn. 2021. the humble church: renewing the body of christ norwich: canterbury press. isbn: 978-0-19-067364-2 reviewed by kristine stache wartburg theological seminary, dubuque, ia kstache@wartburgseminary.edu martyn percy, a former dean of christ’s church who spent years teaching at oxford university, provides for readers in this, his most recent book, an alternative way of thinking about ecclesiology in response to the current state of the church and the world. the church, he states, “often lacks strategic patience, and is too keen to react rather than reflect” (xv). percy utilizes a missiological lens to shape his ministerial and academic work and centers his ecclesiology on who god is and what god has and continues to do in christ. jesus is “the actual expression of god-in word, deeds, actions, silences, walking being-of what god is doing” (2). this starting point of who god is provides for percy a way for the church to “see the world differently, and therefore ourselves and our neighbours in a fresh light” (xxviii). mailto:kstache%40wartburgseminary.edu?subject= e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 112 the humble church: renewing the body of christ is an interesting blend of a wide variety of ingredients. percy uses grammar to make a christological case for a missional ecclesiology (“jesus is the verb of god” (2)), and throws poetry and a bit of math in for good measure (“to be a church of multiplication, not division” (4)). from the beginning, percy invites the reader to “allow god to resume god’s place in our life, faith, and world” (xviii), which ultimately leads to the renewal of the body of christ. percy covers a lot of territory in less than 200 pages (almost too much). after an introductory chapter that sets the stage for using humble as a preferred word to describe the church, percy organizes his argument into three sections, each with three chapters, and ends the book with a bonus study guide for groups or individuals. he then closes it with additional resources and further reading. in the first part of the book, titled culture and change, percy provides a critique of the church growth movement, making a case that the church must move from a focus on increasing numbers to becoming counterculture. growth and mission (and thus the renewal of the body of christ) for percy are more akin to farming, and the flourishing of the seeds (26). “the church does not exist to grow. it exists to glorify god and follow jesus christ” (26). counting and numerical growth are not the way to measure the church. instead percy asks us “to see as god sees, count as god would count … all matter” (45). it is in this flourishing of mutual relationships that we create a co-dependency on one another. “we are invited to humble ourselves and recognize our mutual dependencies” (56). in this process all are included and we continue to be shaped and formed into the body of christ. the second part of his book, challenge and church, percy sketches the ever-changing landscape that continues to shape christian beliefs and practices (63). the first chapter of this section focuses on generational differences, the second proposes appropriate responses to abuse by clergy and those in authority, and the third chapter identifies discrimination practices based on race, gender and disability and how they continue to prevent the church from flourishing. the challenge i found with his addressing so many huge, yet important, topics is they get lost (almost trivialized) with such a cursory introduction and left this reader craving more explicit connections to his proposal for the church to be humble church. christ and christianity, the third section of the book, lays out a theological argument for the church as an inclusive body for all. “jesus is an expression of god’s heart for humanity. he is the body language of god. the kingdom for all” (113). this then shapes mission and evangelism in a humble church as one that has historically “listened deeply and lived its faith, faithful and unassumingly, kristine stache—the humble church 113 rather than brashly promoting its brand” (121). the church’s response as a listener then leads to kenosis, to be come a “self-emptying church” (140). in order to do this we all must take on “the vocation of humility” (143) argues percy. percy’s critique of the church and church structures is neither surprising nor new. while his argument for a humble church has potential, his chapters are a bit too disconnected to make a case for the church to be more than just a listening community. percy’s work on the missio dei is spot on, recognizing god’s activity in and through the world to and through the church, however its connection back to the role of the humble church remains a bit fuzzy. if one agrees that we are called to be the “verb of god”, then listening is merely the starting point. humbleness and humility are not merely postures but actual lenses to interpret the listening and action. this book, i believe, could be a good conversation starter for groups that care deeply about the relationship the church has with the world. such conversations could take percy’s insights and ideas to push, pull and interpret further. listening and reflecting is ultimately about learning. i think percy himself would agree. “we cannot know everything, and nor should we assume we can. which is why a humble, grounded church that listens, and is receptive and adaptive, is the key to the church recovering its vocation, and revitalizing its mission” (10). 1 editorial nigel rooms church mission society, oxford, uk and the queen’s foundation, birmingham, uk nigel.rooms@churchmissionsociety.org it is with great pleasure i can write this editorial knowing it will be published online and open access along with all the articles through the radboud university press and open journals in the netherlands. we were extremely grateful to the good people at wipf & stock who originally published us and helped us get our ‘foot in the door’ as an international journal. however, after a tip off from stefan paas, who is on our editorial board, and via frans wijsen from radboud university who has kindly joined our board we can now offer the journal as “diamond open access” with our new publishers. all articles, including the back-copy from the first two volumes, will be made available online – free to write for authors and free to download for readers. do spread the news far and wide about this fantastic new opportunity. this issue brings together some critical questions in our field addressed by a diverse set of authors from britain and europe. i hope this won’t always be the case, and the international association of mission studies quadrennial conference that is happening in sydney in july will no doubt help, but it is interesting to have a full set of articles addressing questions of ecclesial futures in the western world, all gathered in one place. there are significant overlaps and interactions between the articles as they are presented here; use of the metaphor ‘pioneer’; how disciples are formed and grow into leadership; the forces ranged e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 2 against such personal and communal maturation; the importance in all this of embodied spiritual practices (and therefore neurotheological insights into the how the right hemisphere of the brain can help us) which all adds up to a very different understanding of ‘salvation’ from that which we inherited from our immediate forbears. the first article is a collaborative piece between four reflective practitioners in the uk and germany, ben aldous, luke larner, adrian schleifenbaum and rajiv sidhu, who have crossed cultures and sometimes borders in their learning and practice of mission. it addresses the question of the aptness of the metaphorical term ‘pioneer’ for what happens when new worshipping communities or ‘fresh expressions’ of church are formed. this is contentious ground, but a journal like ours must not shy away from such questions – and indeed if anyone would like to offer an article defending the term in response i would gladly consider it. i have often wondered about this metaphor, not least since visiting the national historic oregon trail interpretive centre near baker city in oregon which showcases what is perhaps the origin of the term in modern era. alongside the colonizing question within the pioneer metaphor which both the authors here and the interpretive center fully address – what i learnt there was the communal nature of the movement of tens of thousands of highly vulnerable women, men and children to a new life on the oregon trail over decades; many of them never survived the journey. whereas we, i think, rather imagine the pioneer much more as those who originally ‘blazed the trail’ in some individualistic and heroic fashion. all metaphors need to be ‘taken and broken’ for us to find their truth and their limits, and the four authors find ‘pioneer’ wanting on several counts. they also helpfully offer an alternative in the biblical notion of ‘pilgrim’. time will tell whether this might stick or other alternatives be taken up. james butler in the next paper, which rather asks to be laid alongside the first, assumes the metaphor and label of pioneer when researching what is happening in the field amongst ‘lay pioneers’ in the church of england i.e. those grassroots people who do not receive ordination but find themselves nevertheless starting and leading fresh expressions of church. equally critical of the ‘organization’ and how it has responded unhelpfully to the grassroots nature of the emergence of lay pioneers, i also wonder whether his critique of the unidirectional nature of what has been happening and the deficit nature of how lay pioneers are understood supports the critique of the label ‘pioneer’ in the previous article. just as pioneers tend only to flow in one direction and assume they are to fill a space that is largely empty, so butler discovers in several reports and documents an assumption that laity need ‘resources, equipping and training’ in a one-way flow from the centre to the edge. returning to the nigel rooms—editorial 3 founding document of fresh expressions, the mission-shaped church report of 2004, butler calls for a ‘mutually enriching relationship’ between these grassroots practitioners and their organization and outlines some principles for what this might look like. the next three articles all started life as presentations at the 2021 online gathering of the international research consortium which was loosely hosted by the uk membership. we held a fascinating and wide-ranging ‘open day’ conversation on ‘missional discipleship’ with several more papers than those that have made it into the journal – though this is the reason they are all ukbased. i deliberately start with the contribution from naar mfundisi-holloway, who works with the salvation army in britain and is part of the zambian diaspora. naar has conducted a small qualitative study amongst women leaders in uk-based african diaspora churches. what strikes me, as editor, is both the overlaps and the sharp differences with the questions that james butler was raising about formation of leaders in the previous article. especially suggestive to me is the assumption from mfundisi-holloway that what these women require is discipleship and mentorship as well as, at some level, basic training (e.g. one of the research participants knows she needs to discover how to conduct a baby’s dedication service). perhaps if we framed all ministerial formation, of whatever kind and for whatever end, as discipleship this would have radical implications for the way we go about it. the participants show that their reliance on the holy spirit and an entrepreneurial outlook within their networks means they more often than not find the formation they know they require from those around them. nevertheless, the routes these women took into leadership have many gaps too, not least in contextualizing their mission and ministry in the uk beyond their own communities. mfundisi-holloway therefore offers some helpful suggestions and signposts about how these gaps may be filled. nick ladd in the next article also connects in interesting ways with james butler’s work – since the question of lay formation is also one he starts with. nick shares with us some important aspects of his doctoral research in a single congregation which was on a journey towards a missional way of being church. nick ably demonstrates what i have come to realize is a deadening and even ‘crustingover’ of the fire of love for god and neighbour that occurs in western christians within their churches over time. it is not that connectivity is not at all possible, just that the culture and behaviours that are learnt over time seem to shut down any initial enthusiasm and motivation for growth and maturation beyond a certain level. and the answer isn’t, as it seems to be in some places, more of what i have come to call ‘high-energy discipling’, which ultimately also exhausts and even burns out its adherents. ladd’s research subjects, going on the missional e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 4 and spiritual journey, move outwards from an individualistic framing of christian faith inherited from modernity. he shows how intersubjectivity is formed through appropriate spiritual practices which negotiate the space between the self and the other, especially in public mission; this is how ongoing maturation in community occurs. the traditional ‘communal vehicles’ such as homegroups simply are not sufficient to carry the complexity of the public nature of faith in a missional church. a new framing of these groups was required to carry forward the vision of the church now described as ‘sharing life’. it is not a big step forward then to imagine that once the churchy crust that has covered over the fire of god in a christian has been broken open, joy may ensue! mike harrison places joy at the centre of his article since joy is also at the heart of the life of the trinity of love. drawing on such diverse sources as neuroscience, neurotheology, the long christian tradition and contemporary writers such as dallas willard and jim wilder, mike shows how joy ensues when we intentionally cultivate ‘relational loving attachment’ with god and which then flows out naturally into our other relationships. moving away from the behaviours and assumptions of modernity about right belief through doctrinal assent two particular spiritual practices are outlined here, following jim wilder: ‘interactive gratitude and immanuel journaling’. what is worth noting in this article is that the practices are both personal and communal as well as being simple rather than simplistic – as all good spiritual practices are. that the work of finding an ecclesial future for the western church is found in particular simple spiritual practices is surely to be celebrated and welcomed – especially in a journal that could easily become caught up in theory over practice. in fact, the final article in this issue underlines much of what has already been said and picks up the importance of embodied spiritual practices in the contemporary church. however, dejan aždajić from the freie theologische hochschule, gießen in germany starts with the wider question of how salvation plays out in western world. he offers a very helpful overview of the state of the ‘secular age’ and where the disconnects are in how churches engage in contemporary society. he is clear that we must move away from just words in the head to engaging with whole person, and in particular the body. such a move also brings us very much into the here and now of the present moment, which is of course where prayer and spiritual practices take us – and where god is available to us, thus underlining the point mike harrison was making. in addition, just as nick ladd showed, salvation, if it is anything is both a personal and a communal event and process and dejan underlines this aspect too. participation in intersubjectivity, as ladd put it, is also key for aždajić’s understanding of how good news can be lived out. _hlk95485040 _hlk96334497 _hlk91151276 _hlk99228587 _hlk92923612 _hlk92923636 _hlk72870314 sample _hlk102057148 _hlk102058336 _hlk102058373 editorial nigel rooms problems with “pioneering” mission: reflections on the term “pioneer” from germany, south africa and the uk setting god’s pioneers free? the need to release lay pioneers from the church of england’s narrative of resourcing and equipping james butler discipleship, mentorship and training which empowers african women for ministry in the diaspora naar m’fundisi-holloway communal maturation and missional discipleship: a congregational study nick ladd joyful disciples: a study of a missing link in considering spiritual disciplines and corporate missional habits mike harrison we want the good life now: insights from lived religion for a whole person and communal approach to salvation in the twenty-first century dejan aždajić book reviews kwiyani, harvey. 2020. multicultural kingdom: ethnic diversity, mission and the church. london: scm press. reviewed by sabrina müller roxburgh, alan j. 2021. joining god in the great unraveling: where we are & what i’ve learned. eugene, oregon: cascade books. reviewed by steen olson susan lucas (ed.). 2020. god’s church in the world: the gift of catholic mission. norwich: canterbury press. reviewed by luke larner olsen, steen, 2020. jacob’s ladder: missional church in the 1970s. st. marys, australia: sa & rl olsen. reviewed by patrick r. keifert 7 report of the christian communities and mission study group iams assembly, morling college, sydney, australia 7-11 july 2022 lynne taylor lynne.taylor@otago.ac.nz jack somerville lecturer in pastoral theology, theology programme, university of otago, aotearoa new zealand nigel rooms nigel.rooms@churchmissionsociety.org church mission society, oxford uk and the queen’s foundation, birmingham, uk the christian communities and mission study group (cc&m) was conceived at the 2016 international association of mission studies (iams) assembly in seoul and later accepted as a study group by the iams executive committee. the meeting in sydney was our first gathering to share papers. as conveners of the group and knowing its connection to ecclesial futures we share this brief report with readers of the journal. the christian communities and mission study group understands local christian communities as (a) the hermeneutic of the gospel and (b) meeting god’s future as it comes towards us in the shape of the reign of god within the particular time and place that we find ourselves. this requires these communities mailto:lynne.taylor%40otago.ac.nz?subject= mailto:nigel.rooms%40churchmissionsociety.org?subject= e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 8 to be constantly adapting and changing as they orient themselves towards god’s preferred and promised future in a rapidly changing world. we believe study and research in how local churches change to be increasingly faithful in their everyday apostolicity is urgently needed. schedule and process cc&m received 40 paper proposals for the (postponed) 2020 sydney assembly, 33 of which were accepted for this study group. of those 2020 papers, 12 were reconfirmed for 2022 and we had 17 more proposals for 2022 of which 13 were accepted. in the end, due to the usual last-minute changes, there were 21 presentations scheduled and 20 delivered. iams was run as a hybrid conference, both online and onsite at morling college. the cc&m conveners put a lot of thought into how the benefits of being hybrid could be maximized for our study group, and potential disadvantages minimized. we decided early in 2022 to use a “flipped classroom” approach to sharing the papers and asked each presenter to record a 20-minute video of their material which could be watched beforehand. as conveners we encouraged participants to view, make comments, and provide questions on the videos, and did so ourselves for each presentation. written papers were also available beforehand. interactive learning was an important priority for us, modelling something foundational to this group – the formation of christian community around god’s mission. thus, we organized the papers into seven different themes and in each session the two or three presenters (from the same theme) offered a short five-minute summary of their paper. then, rather than discussing each individual paper one by one, we encouraged a community of learning to form, inviting “generous, appreciative, inquiring and probing” comments and questions from those in the room and online on all of the presentations. this enabled commonalities and differences to be explored alongside the learnings from each individual paper. appreciative feedback overwhelmingly affirmed this approach, and some commented on the different “feel” and culture it gave to our study group. 9 report of the christian communities and mission study group participants ten countries were represented by those who presented: australia, germany, pakistan, new zealand, myanmar, philippines, south africa, south korea, usa and the uk. of the 21 presenters, five were women: less than one quarter. nine of the presenters were online and eleven onsite. we deliberately mixed online and onsite presentations in each session to help ensure that the onsite group did not dominate. themes as noted above, we pre-organized the papers into seven themes: chaplaincy; missional/attractional church models (especially in south korea); responses to covid-19; community and belonging; war, crisis and justice; indigeneity and decolonization; and partnerships and power. learnings each paper and collection of papers generated creative and critical discussion and a good deal of learning. our final session was a debrief, where we considered the common learnings and insights from the papers. these are outlined next. we recognized that different approaches can be taken to the “other”. some presentations described churches and mission initiatives that had tended to take a deficit approach, identifying problems and seeking to resolve them. other activities and initiatives described were more appreciative in style, beginning with recognizing the good and working to enhance that. the starting point makes a difference to the overall stance and approach taken. we noted the importance of deep listening for the church in mission. such listening is attentive to the complexities of language, including the need to hear people in their own language. while this certainly relates to syntax, it is much deeper than that. listening also needs to be attentive to cultural difference, because listening is itself culturally bound. we affirmed the importance of healthy partnerships and interactions between and beyond churches. mutuality was key here: both mutual partnerships, characterized by humility; and mutual understandings, characterized by respect. the significance and potential of resource sharing was noted, again e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 10 with an emphasis on mutuality, rather than a presumption of a “stronger” group giving one-way support to a “weaker” one. while this was noted in relation to interaction between churches, it can also be extended to the sharing of insights and perspectives between the west and the global south. in relation to this, we noted the need for western christians to give up or let go of their ethnocentrism, taking a decolonizing stance. we also recognized the importance of “bridge people” who have an ability to cross over from one culture or group to the other and connect the two together. stories of intentionally working together ought to be shared and celebrated. we affirmed the learnings from other cultures. two were particularly noted. first, the contribution that māori scholar mason durie’s te whare tapa whā model can make to our understandings of the interrelatedness of wellbeing (durie 1985). secondly, ganjang gejang and the osmotic pressure between crab meat and soy sauce as an evocative image of kingdom renewal. we were aware that deep theology lay behind our discussions, and perhaps the limitations of missional ecclesiology in relation to systematic theology. we were aware that not all theological terms were used in the same way by all participants. this invites careful definitions, while recognizing that consensus is not necessarily possible or required. that said, some foundational things remain: for instance recognizing christ as unifier between us all. we recognized that effective mission, ministry, and change takes time. we affirmed the power and activity of god in our world and in our lives and wondered how to with live with that power, and how might we use it for good. we affirmed the invitation to move to the margins and our expectancy to meet god there. reference durie, m. h. 1985. “a maori perspective on health.” social science and medicine 20.5: 483-6. 107 gorman, michael j. 2018. abide and go: missional theosis in the gospel of john eugene: cascade books. isbn: 978-15-3261-545-0 reviewed by john doss rev. john d. doss, asbury theological seminary, 204 n lexington ave, wilmore, ky 40390 john.doss@asburyseminary.edu the print version of the 2016 didsbury lectures, abide and go presents an invigorating, new reading of the gospel of john as god’s invitation for his people to participate with the mission of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. in chapter 1, gorman defines his task of interpreting the fourth gospel through a missional, participationist lens as well as explains his terminology. the heart of abide and go is chapters 2-5 in which gorman presents the findings of his missional theotic reading of john. in chapter 6, which was not originally part of the didsbury lectures, gorman responds to the oft-leveled criticism that john lacks the ethic of love towards enemies. the concluding chapter summarizes mailto:john.doss%40asburyseminary.edu?subject= e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 108 the findings and contribution of abide and go as well as offering practical implications for christian spirituality. before delving into the meaning of missional theosis, gorman defines his work as “an exercise in missional hermeneutics” (2), which is defined as the interpretation of scripture through the lens of the missio dei with a view to its application for one’s own context. gorman’s basic claim is that the gospel of john centers on the perichoresis or mutual indwelling of the father, son, and holy spirit and invitation for all to participate in this union and mission of giving god’s love and life to the world. much attention is devoted to clarifying the controversial term “theosis”, a favorite of gorman’s. he is careful to clarify that this does not mean believers become divine and offers “participation” as an alternative for those who remain uncomfortable with it. in chapter 2, gorman presents his missional theotic reading of john’s account of jesus’ public ministry (chapters 1-12). he begins with the claim made by some that the fourth gospel advocates a sectarian spirituality and responds by noting the theme of mission throughout the whole of john. from the prologue’s explication of the father’s mission in sending his son, to the accomplishment of this mission in the account of jesus’ works and words, culminating in his death and resurrection, and concluding with the son’s mission of sending his disciples just as the father sent him, gorman’s anti-sectarian reading of john is one of the major features of abide and go. he notes that “the gospel of john is indeed the gospel of life” (48), yet this theme is implicitly missional in that disciples are invited both to participate in god’s love, light, and life as well as to go and share it with others. gorman moves on to the farewell discourse in chapters 3 and 4, which he claims should more appropriately be titled “mission discourse” (77). in particular, he focuses on the foot washing (john 13) and the vine parable (john 15) as prime examples of missional theosis, which is ironic given that these passages are often used in support of a sectarian reading of john. by washing the disciples’ feet, jesus was not only inviting them to the believer’s fellowship in his cleansing death and mutual service towards one another, but also commissioning his disciples to go and participate in his cruciform pattern of sacrificial love to the world. similarly, the vine parable is “the most potent symbiosis of spirituality and mission in the new testament” (102). indeed, the title abide and go is derived from this teaching (cf. 15:6, 16). gorman’s innovation of the “creeping” or “mobile vine” elucidates the missional nature of this metaphor. chapter 4 focuses on a single chapter, jesus’ prayer, and thus affords gorman the greatest latitude to expound on the text of john 17. in the lord’s prayer for himself (v. 1-5), his immediate disciples (v. 6-19), and his future disciples john doss—abide and go 109 (v. 20-26), gorman emphasizes the believer’s participation in the life, the love, and the mission of god to the world. chapter 5 is the conclusion of gorman’s survey of john, focusing on his resurrection account (john 20-21). here the gospel comes full circle as the disciples are now sent by christ into the world to participate in the missio dei just as christ was sent by the father (20:21). gorman’s exposition of john 20:19-23 emphasizes both the disciples’ participation in the peace and forgiveness of the spirit as well as their commissioning to go and share this gift with others. he moves on to the miraculous catch (john 21:1-14) and jesus’ restoration of peter (v. 15-19), emphasizing the connection between theosis and mission in jesus’ commissioning of peter to shepherd his flock out of love for him. in chapter 6, gorman responds to the critique that the gospel of john fails to include the emphasis on loving one’s enemies as in the synoptics. he begins with the johannine theme of god’s love for the whole world, not just the elect, and goes on to discuss examples of this love in the life of christ. in particular, gorman demonstrates how jesus’ ministry to “a jew, a half-jew, and a non-jew” (p. 163) in chapters 3-5, washing the feet of judas and peter (chapter 13), as well as his response to peter cutting off malchus’ ear (chapter 18) constitute an implicit enemy-love in john’s gospel. the final chapter of abide and go shifts to the practical implications of gorman’s missional theosis for the personal and corporate christian life. gorman summarizes chapters 1-6 and then discusses his work in light of contemporary johannine research. lastly, he provides five examples of missional theosis at work in the contemporary church. with abide and go, gorman the pauline scholar has made a valuable contribution to the field of johannine studies. though he is not the first to expound on the themes of mission, participation, and theosis in john, his genius lies in his seamless synthesis and brilliant exegesis of these themes in the fourth gospel. of course, abide and go is not without its weaknesses, chief among them its adaptation from a lecture series. the additional work gorman accomplished to transform the lectures into a scholarly monograph must be highly appreciated. however, would he, for example, have devoted an entire chapter to enemy-love if abide and go had from the outset been a written volume? the implicit ethic of love for enemies is not a necessary element of missional theosis in john but belongs elsewhere (e.g., in a subsequent volume on johannine ethics). at times, gorman’s missional hermeneutic obscures john’s message, e.g., his claim that missional theosis in john is just as “cruciform” as in paul (128). such efforts to establish uniformity between pauline and johannine theology fail to appreciate their unique sitze im leben. finally, abide and go is, in gorman’s own words, “primarily text-centered” (180), and thus its implications for personal e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 110 and corporate christian spirituality necessitate further elaboration. indeed, in the concluding reflection on the practical implications of his study, only one of gorman’s five examples of missional theosis is a church. three are faith-based organizations, and one is a monastic fraternity, which leaves the reader wondering how feasibly gorman’s theology applies to the local church. nevertheless, abide and go remains a helpful resource in johannine studies, particularly as concerns the themes of mission and participation, and will hopefully serve as an inspiration for further academic research in these areas. rooms.indb 95 dreams and visions critical realism, practical theology, and the spiritual experiences of pioneers discerning the missio dei paul bradbury abstract this article develops a narrative framework toward a methodology for my research exploring the call and practice of pioneer ministers in the church of england. i argue for a critical realist perspective as a means of affirming and valuing spiritual experience as a locus for knowledge. drawing on the work of alasdair macintyre and nt wright a narrative framework of “intelligibility” is developed in which to place such testimonies of experience. this framework is then shaped by a biblical pneumatology whereby the work of salvation is driven forward toward the telos of the kingdom by the mediation of the holy spirit. the value of this framework is explored in light of my future research into the experiences of pioneer ministers for whom discerning the missio dei is a key part of their call and ongoing ministry in innovative mission and ecclesial reimagination. attention is therefore given to the implications of this for practical theology and for spiritual discernment as a part of a methodology of empirical research. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 96 introduction the story of the genesis of the franscisan movement commonly hinges around a moment of francis’s life in the church of st damian in assisi. having returned to his hometown from military endeavors, bewildered and humiliated by sickness, francis took to praying in front of the crucifix in the church. one day as he carried out this practice, he heard a voice say “francis, seest thou not that my house is in ruins? go and restore it for me?” (chesterton 1924, 46). on this experience the course and story of his life changed. this one experience brought about a radical movement of christian mission, spirituality and discipleship which renewed the church of the day and continues to provide a source of renewal today. i am currently embarking on research which aims to explore the reality of spiritual experience in the lives of those called to new missional and ecclesial endeavors in today’s church. many have noted the degree to which renewal movements emerge out of periods of significant cultural change (cox 2009; tickle 2012). similarly, the church’s own self-understanding, culture and form undergoes significant reappraisal and change in ways that correlate closely with wider social and cultural transitions. (moltmann 2011). yet, when the lives of those at the center of renewal movements are studied and their stories told there is another consistent theme—divine action in the form of profound and interruptive subjective experience. profound because they are experiences that are initially outside the knowledge field and experience of the individual; interruptive because they interrupt the flow of the individual’s life and take it in a radically new direction. spiritual experience of this kind is therefore an important locus for knowledge about ourselves, god and the world. in wanting to explore this “tradition” of spiritual and ecclesial renewal i am aware of my own investment and place within it. having discerned a call to ordination, my own vocation took a surprising turn during my curacy in a traditional parish church setting. much of the discernment of this turn was rational, paul bradbury—dreams and visions 97 informed by reading and discussion with friends and colleagues. there was however a strong element of the kind of spiritual experience i am seeking to explore—in my case a dream. in the dream i am at a leaving party at the end of my curacy. someone from the congregation asks me where i will be going to continue my ministry. i reach into my bag and take out a vellum scroll. on unrolling it a map of the british isles is revealed with names on it locating the old kingdoms such as wessex and mercia. to the south of the mainland is an area of land where the english channel ought to be and on this new kingdom of land is written the words “resurrected from the sea.” the details of the dream’s interpretation are not relevant here. but the effects are. for the dream ultimately had the effect of affirming and orienting my role in poole around the emergence of new forms of church amongst people with little or no christian heritage or experience. these stories, my own and that of st. francis, draw me into an important reflection on the nature of epistemology in the field of practical theology. in particular, how can the experiences that i have described be embraced as valid knowledge? how might this spiritual experience act as a valid locus of knowledge, in terms of the task of practical theological research? these sorts of experience may be categorized as “religious experiences” or “spiritual experiences.” there is a distinctiveness to such experiences that invites particular attention. yet in the field of practical theology such experiences are given limited attention and at times scant credence. mark cartledge argues, “the theological narratives of those having religious experiences are often given cursory attention, if any at all” (2015, 56). whilst practical theology places great emphasis on experiences, begins in experience, it tends to reduce experience to a shorthand for context, for starting in the midst of the forms structures, language and culture of religious practice. in this reduction the particular nature of spiritual experience can be ignored, perhaps conveniently in view of a preference for theologies that provide little space for experiences of such an unverifiable nature.1 1. root refers to “established practical theology’s allergy to realism” which e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 98 however, cartledge argues religious experience is “essential to the spirituality that informs and permeates religious life” (cartledge 2015, 56). furthermore “human experience in a more general sense is the ‘place’ where the gospel is grounded and an important locus for the work of spirit” (cartledge 2015, 55). to continue in a reflexive mode, this has been my epistemological starting point. my own christian faith has been formed to a large degree by the charismatic wing of the anglican church, a stream of theology and spirituality that links back to the pentecostal movement and the revivals of the early twentieth century. the theological and epistemological framework that i have been grounded in places a good deal of emphasis on experience, on god “coming to us” in various forms, whether through the bible, gathered worship, the words of others, the natural world or even “directly” in terms of the “voice of god.”2 there is a continuation of that stream into the ministry of others like myself, who as “pioneers”3 in the church of england are asked to explore mission and ecclesiology in the secular context of modern britain. for many it is a natural posture of mission and leadership to listen to the promptings of the holy spirit in the development of new initiatives. religious experience in this sense has become normative in a growing arena of the church of england’s formalized ministry. where might a practical theology begin that can welcome religious experience, critical, robustly and fruitfully? has led it to “overdose on the pills of dependant objective reality, claiming in its drugged state that all reality is dependant objective” (2014, 211). elsewhere, root argues that an “overcommitment” to empirical methods drawn from the social sciences has restricted the place of theology within the field (2016). 2. though cartledge asks to what extent any religious experience is unmediated: “in what sense is the holy spirit ever experienced directly at all? even a ‘direct’ voice from heaven would be mediated in some sense via sound waves and ear drums, and an ‘inner’ voice is processed by the brain” (2015, 67). 3. pioneer ministers or “pioneers” are terms generally accepted into the language, local and official, of the church of england for those leading innovative forms of mission and church planting. see, for example, www. churchofengland.org/pioneering. paul bradbury—dreams and visions 99 a way in—critical realism at the heart of the disjunction that i have briefly described between the normative theology of pioneers and the field of practical theology lies the question—what is real? and how might we know that what we believe to be real, is real? the dilemma this creates for practical theology is summarized by root: i believe deeply generative possibility rests in contemplating divine action next to human experience and agency. and yet to do so is problematic, for divine action, if we are to contend that it is real—that is, a reality—is a transcendent mystery. (root 2014, ix) thomas o’dea describes religion as “the symbolic and organizational embodiment of the experience of the ultimate in less-then-ultimate forms” (1964, 31). all experience must be translated, expressed, given form in some way. the work of translation and expression can never be neutral or perfect, leaving a gap into which epistemological doubt enters. this is true of all experience. but perhaps most particularly true of religious experience in cultural context of the post-enlightenment west. indeed, the roots of the dilemma with divine action lie in the enlightenment and the dominance of a positivist philosophy that reduces the real to that which can be proven by measurable experience. despite developments away from this position in the field of academic philosophy, the positivist perspective on reality continues to hold considerable influence over popular opinion which, perhaps informed by a media industry that revels in dualistic debates, maintains a view that there is choice to be made between empiricism and myth, where myth is a byword for nonsense. the internal contradiction of positivism4 led to more postmodern anti-realist perspectives as described by ludwig wittgenstein and jacques derrida (archer et al. 2004). these focussed on ontological constructions in the realm of language. language functions to create reality thus leading to distinct realms of reality 4. that is, the claim that all that is real is that which can empirically verified cannot itself be proved empirically. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 100 according to each arena of language. religion is rendered as one language field, one arena of knowledge, one in which god exists only by virtue of language. the challenges inherent in talking about god in an academic world influenced by the long shadow of positivism made this new avenue for epistemology attractive. as margaret archer, andrew collier, and douglas porpora note, “many theologians find this post-wittgensteinian perspective congenial” (archer et al. 2004, 8) in that it creates a valid arena for talk of god without making any claims about reality. to affirm the validity of transcendent experience requires therefore a perspective that neither brackets out this experience as unverifiable (a positivist perspective) nor relativizes such experience as but one of a plurality of experiences without any claim on reality (a post-wittgensteinian/postmodernist perspective). i seek a perspective that offers a dignified and humble attitude to the “brute fact” of people’s experience of the transcendent and a perspective that does justice to the data of people’s experience by more than simple description. critical realism offers such a perspective. drawing on the philosophy, in particular, of roy bhaskar, whose work was engaged with by archer, collier and porpora, the critical realism that developed the field of practical theology5 affirms a critical assertion about the stratified nature of reality and hence a distinction 5. andrew wright (2012) traces the origins of the various streams of critical realism. the dominant stream within practical theology is associated with the philosophical movement started by roy bhaskar. archer et al. (2004) represent “a second wave of critical realism’s spiritual turn” (wright 2012, 39) and provide the enduring connection between bhaskar’s critical realism and its place within the field of christian practical theology. wright also identifies steams of critical realism emerging from the dialogue between theology and natural sciences (beginning with ian barbour and taken up by key voices such as john polkinghorne, arthur peacock, and alistair mcgrath), a stream initiated by thomas torrance exploring a critical realist perspective on doctrine and a stream applying critical realism to biblical interpretation (ben meyer and nt wright). the latter stream is important for my own purposes of exploring a narrative approach to interpreting experience. thus, whilst the critical realist perspective of meyer and nt wright has developed rather independently of the baskharian stream it provides a complimentary resource in terms of giving a valid and rich means of engaging with and interpreting spiritual experience. paul bradbury—dreams and visions 101 between the empirical (that which we experience), the actual (that which happens independent of our experience of it) and the real (the deeper truth of what lies behind all reality) (taylor 2020).6 in addition critical realism asserts that it is not an a priori assumption about reality (or non-reality) that informs our perspective on the world but an a posteriori interpretation of our lives in the realm of subjective experience. practical action in the empirical realm, our engagement in the world, draws experience which, as relational beings, we seek to share and interpret with others: “it is our doings in the world which secure meanings and not vice versa” (archer et al. 2004, 189). for critical realism, however, these interpretations must remain as postfoundational, held humbly and critically as a lens with which to continue to critique and interpret further experience. critical realism’s perspective is constructed from three philosophical commitments. firstly, rejecting the collapse of ontology into epistemology, it asserts that the real is something that exists independent of our ability to know it fully. it embraces realism as a truth about the way things are but not as a reduction to saying how things are. secondly, rejecting the “epistemic fallacy” of positivism, but acknowledging that there is no such thing as the detached or “objective” observer, critical realism asserts an epistemological relativism. the quest for the real is not a zero-sum game of philosophical conquest, we are not seeking the next candidate for the hegemonic position held by positivism, rather the development of our understanding of the real is through the conversation between different ontological perspectives. any ontology is seen as a 6. andrew root (2014), drawing on christian smith (2010), makes the distinction between the dependant subjective layer (empirical), dependant objective layer (actual) and independent objective layer (real). it is the experience of the real, whether as an infant dropping a cup from a high chair, newton observing the apple dropping from the tree, or francis hearing the voice of god, that propels us into the sharing and interpretation of experience and the seeking of understanding in the actual realm. in this sense all experiences are ontological, they are experiences of the real which are deeper than mere epistemology. “they are greater, more real . . . existing on a higher plane of reality because they encounter us as a real event outside of or ability to describe them” (root 2014, 216). e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 102 provisional “best account” of reality and must be open to critique, dialogue, development or even rejection as the accumulation of data emerging from experience acts upon it. thus “critical realism combines a realist ontology with a relativist epistemology” (taylor 2020, 58). finally, critical realism asserts judgemental rationality as a means by which reason can be applied to argue for decisions over the “fit” of one ontology over another. this is a critical move from the judgemental relativism of more postmodern perspectives and leads to the possibility of “alethic truth” (archer et al. 2004, 2). this is the kind of truth that is commensurate with our experience and that of others to the degree that it is a shared truth that in practical terms is (at least temporarily) a closed case. in critical realist terms such “truth” is provisionally held, open to the future scrutiny and critique of new experience and new argument, willing to enter into dialogue with them in the search for a deeper vision of the truth behind the “truth.” what critical realism therefore offers is a way in to explore the testimonies of spiritual experience in the context of practical theology. it validates practical theology’s starting point of experience, avoiding the trajectory from schleiermacher to cupitt where the primacy of spiritual experience leads to the relativization of all experience (wright 2012, 49). it also validates practical theology as more than a “pseudo-science” or a mere mode of description; rather it is a discipline of enquiry, alongside other theological disciplines, that offers a means of discovery complimentary to the natural sciences. exploring methodology the question remains however exactly how judgemental rationality might be applied in the arena of spiritual experience. such experiences are by their nature particular and personal. what is the difference between someone who professes to being communicated to by a unicorn and someone who hears the voice of god? alasdair macintyre develops the concept of “intelligibility” to describe the way human beings sort actions, statements and paul bradbury—dreams and visions 103 experiences into plausible or implausible fields. the way we do this, our innate methodology, is to place the action or utterance in the context of a narrative: it is because we all live out narratives in our lives and because we understand our own lives in terms of the narratives that we live out that the form of narrative is appropriate for the understanding of the action others. stories are lived before they are told. (macintyre 1981, 246) this narrative structure may well be, initially at least, an experiment, but without any such narrative the data we receive makes little sense. the fit of the data to a story creates “intelligibility” so long as new data continues to fit the narrative that is being told. what develops is an iterative process of testing the narrative structure in which experience is contextualized with any new information that arrives. the process is therefore a dialectical one, a multivalent conversation involving sense-data, narrative and the interpretative tools that help discern whether new experience can be accommodated in the unfolding narrative. judgemental rationality in this methodology agrees with macintyre who argues that humans are like “a story-telling animal” (macintyre 1981, 250). for macintyre, discerning action and experience in the course of life our fundamental question is: “of what story or stories do i find myself a part?” (1981, 250). for nt wright, this renders the typical subject-object frame for epistemology into a frame of story-telling humans and story-laden world. the scientific challenge of verification can be responded to within this framework whereby verification is the test of intelligibility with the theory-story we inhabit. critical realism therefore “sets up as hypotheses various stories about the world in general or of bits of it in particular and tests them by seeing what sort of ‘fit’ they have with the stories already in place” (wright 1992, 45). of course, our theory-stories do not emerge out of nowhere. they are stories we inherit from our communities and the traditions those communities hold. such stories become a key part of our identity to the extent that we are our stories, and without our e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 104 stories we lose sense of our identity. traditionalism (and fundamentalism) is the holding fast to stories despite the intervention of new sense-data that places a fundamental challenge to the story. a living tradition by contrast holds its founding story firmly but openly. it embraces the risk of ongoing conversation about the continued validity and nature of the story in the face of new information.7 however if it is true, and now valued, that all knowledge is embodied knowledge, embodied in particular traditions, stories and cultures, then how are we to say there is any kind of transcendent truth? this anti-realist challenge, whilst demanding a critical perspective on truth claims, cannot however go as far as concluding with certainty that there are no transcendent truths. leslie newbigin states, “the (true) assertion that all truth claims are culturally and historically embodied does not entail the (false) assertion that none of them makes contact with a reality beyond the human mind” (1995, 74). in this sense the commitment to judgemental reality is a necessarily personal one. it is the placing of data within a story in which i have placed a personal commitment. there is no other way in which truth is explored: “i can only affirm the objective of a truth claim which i make my committing myself to live and act in accordance with that claim” (newbigin 1995, 75). it is this framework into which i wish to place the commitment to judgemental rationality. for example, taking my own story, after rejecting the dream initially as “just a dream,” i sensed an invitation to attend to its significance. the story and tradition i inhabit is one where the notion of spiritual experience is normative, and also one where the biblical witness affirms dreams and visions as an aspect of the means by which god speaks, and particularly a means where god provides guidance (e.g., matt 1:20; 2:12, 13; acts 2:17; 16:19). thus the notion of a dream as a spiritual experience can be integrated into my own story by virtue of its embeddedness in the 7. “a living tradition, then, is an historically-extended, socially-embodied argument” (macintyre 1981, 257). paul bradbury—dreams and visions 105 wider story of my own tradition. alternative stories compete for intelligibility and these stories must be attended to. the positivist paradigm argues that dreams are purely brain chemistry and that there is nothing to prove that dreams can have any epistemological relevance beyond this. without doubt the majority of dreams fit perfectly well in the limited scope of this account. but critical realism allows me to contend that there are some dreams that can inhabit a larger story intelligibly and with validity. pneumatology and narratives of spiritual experience nt wright states: “story can help us in the first instance to articulate a critical-realist epistemology and can then be put to wider uses in the study of literature, history and theology” (1992, 32). likewise, story can be put to use in the study of spiritual experience. is it possible, and constructive, though to talk about these narratives of spiritual encounter as particular kinds of experience? i want to argue that such stories like that of st francis and many others contain a particular theological validity because of the particular story that they inhabit. firstly, it is a story with a particular telos. secondly it is a story with a primacy for the agency of the holy spirit. andrew root connects realism and experience through cause: “we experience something as real because we are impacted by its cause. . . .we give epistemological shape to what has delivered cause to our being” (2014, 201). spiritual experiences provide a validity to the realist claims of the transcendent, not only through the sense-date of the experiences themselves, what was seen, what was felt, but through the impact that they cause in those who experience them. nt wright contends that the very validity of the bodily resurrection of jesus christ is to be placed in the story of the disciples for whom the experience of the resurrection appearances and the day of pentecost cause such a radical shift in their worldview and their posture toward the world (wright 2003). e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 106 furthermore, the story of god’s salvation argues for a particular kind of cause, that is a cause that fits with the eschatological arc of the story. nt wright’s categorization of the story of salvation is one of a play of five acts in which the fifth act is still being written, and, though we know the end of the story as the healing of all things, nevertheless there is scope for creativity and “faithful improvisation” within the unfolding narrative. this is the act of the story in which the church is invited to participate (wright 1992, 139–43). a primary agent and actor within this final act of the story is the holy spirit. john v. taylor asserted, “the chief actor in the historic mission of the christian church is the holy spirit” (1972, 3). this assertion can be made from the witness of the new testament where the salvation story is driven forward in the gospels by jesus, who “full of the power of the holy spirit” as he begins his ministry, “can only do what he sees the father doing” (luke 4:1; john 5:19) and therefore discerns how to use his agency in the story by prayerful participation with father in the power of the holy spirit. the promise of “another counsellor” and the breathing of the holy spirt upon the disciples at the resurrection (john 14:16; 20:19–23), in connection with their commissioning as agents of the kingdom in the world, argues for a continuation in the church of this co-agency with the spirit in the ongoing story of salvation. as cartledge puts it: “following pentecost, the praxis of the spirit was determinative for the religious experience of the church in an active rather than passive sense” (2015, 57). the experience of the spirit therefore has a particular telos as the movement from the father, mediated by the holy spirit drives forward the story of salvation with purpose to its inevitable conclusion. this concept of purpose is a critical one in distinction to the dominant philosophical perspectives of the post-enlightenment west. purpose in such schemes are speculative and unreliable. they require a prior assumption of some origin of purpose from outside what is observable. a position which of course is, according to positivism, untenable. michael polanyi however has argued that all knowledge is “personal knowledge” (1958); that is, it requires paul bradbury—dreams and visions 107 a personal investment, a testing of one’s weight. to provide a basis for being and action in the world an epistemology must make contact with reality, it must be tested. that in itself is an act of faith, a move with the ingredient of doubt: “only statements that can be doubted make contact with reality” (newbigin 1995, 52). furthermore, polanyi argued for a “tacit dimension” (1966), the presence of purpose in the scientific method. the ability to shape questions and problems that form the basis for scientific enquiry are expressions of an enquiry that is reaching from the possibilities of pattern and coherence towards a greater reality. confirmed positivists would reject such claims. but the point remains that positivism’s rejection of purpose is not straight forward. furthermore, its commitment to empirical observation, to cause and to certainty, is itself a position of personal commitment, a story of the world that brings its own inherent predispositions. critical realism accepts this epistemic relativism and invites the valid proposal of story as means of discovery and knowledge. it provides scope for a story of the cosmos in which there is a place for purpose and therefore a place in which stories with a telos provide the grounds for the testing of reality. the particular telos of the christian story is that of the eschaton, the age to come. anderson argues that the spirit’s work is future oriented (anderson 2001, 106). the spirit comes “from the future” and mediates the enfolding revelation of the reconciliation of the cosmos made real by the work of christ. likewise, moltmann states that “eschatologically, the spirit can be termed the ‘power of futurity’” (1977, 34). further, “the church is the eschatological creation of the spirit” (1977, 33). through the spirit, the church is created and renewed. god’s spirit is the spirit of renewal, but also resurrection, an agent of radical innovation and the initiator of new chapters in the story. these are the sorts of interventions of the spirit that place strong challenges to our normative theologies and practices. i want to suggest therefore that the tradition, in which spiritual experiences that i have described are embraced, has within it firstly the unfolding of the salvation story “to the ends of the earth” and secondly the promise of radical innovation e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 108 such that the story not only evolves step by step (the “now” of the kingdom) but invites an openness to paradigmatic development (the “not yet” of the kingdom). therefore, we might expect and find fitting those stories of spiritual experience, including amongst pioneers in the church, which invite the church into new contexts and in radically new ways. pneumatology, experience, and practical theological research what might critical realism and an embracing of the presence and ministry of the holy spirit mean for the practice of practical theological research? critical realism takes seriously the location of the observer in the midst of a world of epistemologies in conversation. there is no such thing as the detached observer. consequently, a critical realist perspective is intrinsically reflexive, placing the observer in the midst of the story as a story-telling individual with an identity inseparable from their history and context. for myself, as a christian, a pioneer, formed to a significant degree in charismatic evangelical communities i find myself as both participant and researcher as i approach this project. the missiology of the pioneer ministry movement has drawn heavily on the concept of the missio dei, a commitment to mission being a first step for god, not a second step (bosch 1991, 390–91; flett 2010; moynagh 2017, 146–47). mission is part of the nature of god’s being, not a function of it. consequently, mission is not a second step for the church. it is not something in addition to the being of the church, an optional extra. rather mission is part of the life of god in which the church is called to participate. the apostolic self-giving nature of god is the life given through jesus and the spirit to the church. it is this same life the church is asked to witness to in its own life. life without mission is contrary to the nature of god and the nature of the church. the church’s missional posture is one of “active passivity” (flett 2010, 259). this is a receiving of the life of god which invites a consequent activity in the participation of that same life. a consequence of this commitment paul bradbury—dreams and visions 109 is a growing reemphasis on the spiritual practice of discernment in community. the oft repeated phrase within the fresh expressions movement8 of “seeing what god is doing and joining in”9 points to a conviction first of god’s prevenient action in the world and secondly our invitation to discern that action and participate in it. the concept of concursus dei, that god’s actions can be discerned in and through the action of other agents, is similarly commonly espoused by those in the movement. in this sense the pneumatology of many pioneers connects strongly with the concept of “mediation” described by cartledge. for cartledge, mediation means “the spirit as intermediary mediates the presence of the triune god such that god is recognized as present within intermediate aspects of creaturely reality for the purpose of salvation” (2015, 68). this is not to collapse the work of the spirit into the creaturely or the material, but to recognize the intermediary action of the spirit as working through the mediation of other processes, events and experiences. for pioneers a great significance is placed on discernment of the action of god, by the intermediate action of the spirit, through the mediation of other agents and aspects of reality. this discernment is no different for the researcher, entering (for myself in a new but different way) into the ongoing dialectical conversation within the story of salvation being worked out in any number of different contexts around the country. critical realism creates the framework to take the spiritual experiences of pioneers seriously as the they seek to interpret these experiences in the context of the narrative of salvation. critical realism also validates as a contribution the practice of spiritual discernment on the part of the researcher within that conversation. for root, this is encompassed in terms of “ministry” in the sense of personal, relational, participative 8. fresh expressions is a british ecumenical movement with a vision to promote and enable new forms of church for a changing culture. for more, see www.freshexpressions.org.uk. 9. a quote generally attributed to rowan williams, though with roots in the formal theology of the missio dei, e.g., “the church participates in christ’s messianic mission and in the creative mission of the spirit” (moltmann 1977, 65). e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 110 encounters of love and care as opposed to more clerical or institutional understandings (2014). practical theological research is therefore a ministry, participating in the ongoing sense-making dialectic as the church encounters and participates in the mediating work of the spirit. this argues for a spirituality in practical theology, a posture of discernment in the practice of practical theology, that takes seriously pneumatology, experience and the mediating work of the spirit in all aspects of the ministry of the church. this is not a perspective held strongly within the world of practical theology. cartledge goes as far as to say that “the majority of books on practical theology simply ignore pneumatology altogether” (2015, 44). he references bonnie miller-mclemore’s “map of the field of practical theology” (miller-mclemore 2012) and reflects that the majority of its fifty-six chapters “do not refer to the person or work of the holy spirit” (cartledge 2015, 60). yet it is consistent with the widely held commitment to critical realism to explore the development of a spirituality of practical theological research which embraces the exploration of knowledge beyond empiricism, description, or even hermeneutics. it invites a move toward a “phronetic knowing” (wolfteich 2009, 13). here space is created for knowledge development which can be more conversational and cyclical in nature, drawing on various epistemologies and perspectives (rooms 2012). spiritual discernment can thus find a place within phronesis and contribute to such a conversation. spiritual discernment is however a broad term. are there ways in which the concept of spiritual discernment might become a valid part of the methodology of practical theological research? marc henri lavellee has offered a model for a process by which spiritual discernment can be integrated into the task for the practical theologian. he draws parallels with ignatian spirituality which, in common with practical theology, gives attention to the lived experience of a person or community’s life as a means to “seeing” divine reality. lavellee also sees parallels for the researcher with the role of spiritual director as one who participates in a collaborative paul bradbury—dreams and visions 111 conversation between the person/community and the holy spirit (lavellee 2016). similarly, pete ward argues that one consequence of a critical realist perspective in practical theology is “the call to abide,” that is a commitment to a normativity of “discerning the presence of christ” (2017, 184). again, this is not a detached discernment for the researcher, but a participatory one that invites personal spirituality and attentiveness to the presence and voice of god in the midst of the process of research. this argues for the practice of prayer as a critical element in the arena of epistemology. james butler provides an autoethnographic account of the use of prayer in practical theological research (butler n.d.) and finds close correlation with ashley cocksworth’s reading of the spiritual theology of the fourth-century desert mystic evagrius (cocksworth 2018). evagrius’s theology of prayer spoke of the pray-er as someone “eavesdropping” on a polyphonic conversation already taking place. in this sense practical theology is about practicing the kind of attentiveness necessary to eavesdrop well on the complex conversation already taking place in a community or network in its context where christ is present and active by his holy spirit. which brings us back in a sense to dreams and visions. what was my dream? it was the experience of the real generating new knowledge for me in the realm of my new ministry as a pioneer. in the wake of that experience a process of discernment took place where the dream came into conversation with the stories of scripture, tradition, my church community and the context around me. this context happened to be a coastal town in which much of the land given for new housing development had been reclaimed from the sea over the course of the town’s development. was god inviting me to venture beyond the firmer landscapes of church tradition and trust that something new would emerge? i could not be certain. but it was an interpretation that might well bear my weight in the testing of it. likewise, as a researcher exploring such experiences with other pioneers i am placing myself as an abiding presence in the midst of the conversations between experience and the means by which we interpret them. i am in a sense entering the sea that is the uncertain, ungrounded space that pioneers and e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 2 112 others inhabit discerning the missio dei. i am entering into the fluid conversation of research that trusts that in the wake of such listening and discernment something that begins to look like land, a place that others may come and stand on, begins to emerge. conclusion my argument is for research that can explore spiritual experience and the discerning of the missio dei, generally in exploring ecclesial futures, specifically in seeking to understand the practice of pioneer ministry. critical realism provides a perspective in which these kinds of experience can be seen as valid forms of knowledge. furthermore, the framing of this kind of knowledge in the context of narrative and the use of intelligibility as a means of verification provide a robust means of allowing these stories and experiences to find their voice. pneumatology should lead us to situate stories such as these in the context of a salvation narrative that has a universal telos and in which the holy spirit and the radical newness of resurrection are inextricably linked. furthermore it validates a practice of practical theological research as a participative process of spiritual discernment, inviting prayerfulness and attentiveness on the part of the researcher as they seek to “eavesdrop” on the voice and presence of god in christ, by his holy spirit, in the lives of those people and communities he/she is amongst. bibliography anderson, ray. 2001. the shape of practical theology. downers grove, il: intervarsity. archer, margaret, et al. 2004. transcendence: critical realism and god. london: routledge. bosch, david j. 1991. transforming mission, paradigm shifts in theology of mission. maryknoll, ny: orbis. butler, james. n.d. “prayer as research practice?: what corporate practices of prayer disclose about theological action research.” unpublished paper. cartledge, mark. 2015. the mediation of the spirit. cambridge: eerdmans. chesterton, g. k. 1924. saint francis of assisi. new york: doubleday. paul bradbury—dreams and visions 113 cocksworth, ashley. 2018. prayer, a guide for the perplexed. london: t&t clark. cox, harvey. 2009. the future of faith. new york: harper collins. flett, john. 2010. the witness of god. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. lavellee, marc henri. 2016. “practical theology from the perspective of catholic spirituality: a hermeneutic of discernment.” international journal of practical theology 20 (2): 203–21. macintyre, alasdair. 1981. after virtue. london: bloomsbury. miller-mclemore, bonnie j. 2012. the wiley-blackwell companion to practical theology. london: blackwell. moltmann, jurgen. 1977. the church in the power of the holy spirit. london: scm. ———. 2011. “the holy spirit in the world today.” in the church in the power of the spirit, edited by j. williams, 14–28. london: alpha international. moynagh, michael. 2017. church in life. london: scm. newbigin, leslie. 1995. proper confidence. london: spck. o’dea, thomas. 1964. “five dilemmas of the institutionalization of religion.” journal of the scientific study of religion 1: 30–41. polanyi, michael. 1958. personal knowledge: towards a post-critical philosophy. chicago: chicago university press. ———. 1966. the tacit dimension. chicago: university of chicago press. rooms, nigel. 2012. “paul as practical theologian: phronesis in phillipians as practical theology.” practical theology 5 (1): 81–94. root, andrew. 2014. christopraxis, a practical theology of the cross. minneapolis: fortress. ———. 2016. “regulating the empirical in practical theology.” journal of youth and theology 15 (1): 44–64. smith, christian. 2010. what is a person? chicago: chicago university press. taylor, john v. 1972. the go-between god. london: scm. taylor, lynne. 2020. “making room for the missio dei in missiological research.” mission studies 27 (1): 52–77. tickle, phyllis. 2012. the great emergence. ada, mi: baker. ward, pete. 2017. liquid ecclesiology. leiden: brill. wolfteich, claire. 2009. “animating questions: spirituality and practical theology.” international journal of practical theology 13 (1): 121–43. wright, andrew. 2012. christianity and critical realism: ambiguity, truth, and theological literacy. london: routledge. wright, nt. 1992. the new testament and the people of god. london: spck. ———. 2003. the resurrection of the son of god. london: spck. rooms.indb 11 the missio dei as flourishing life nelus niemandt emeritus professor, department religion studies, university of pretoria, south africa, and principal, huguenot university college, wellington, south africa nelusn@gmail.com abstract the idea of flourishing life has become one of the most important concepts in theological discourse, understanding human flourishing as at the heart of the christian gospel. this literature and document-based research links the concept of flourishing life with the missio dei and presents it as a contextually relevant theological interpretation of the missio dei. the church’s participation in god’s mission includes contributing towards flourishing life, and it concludes that such participation is of particular importance to ecclesiology. missional ecclesiology is interested in everyday life and in faithful presence in everyday communities. the research follows an incarnational approach and argues for a christian lifestyle focussed on the rhythms of everyday life in a way that appreciates the importance of the material life. it proposes attending to created life, sustained life and consummated life. the connection between flourishing life and the missio dei underscores the important role e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 12 of the church in earthkeeping and affirms the church’s calling to take responsibility for creation. the church participates in sustaining life through four principles: conservancy, safeguarding, fruitfulness and sabbath rest. in terms of consummation, the expectation of the end influences the here and now and how the church acts in everyday life. the research demonstrates that the connection between the missio dei and flourishing life does have important implications for the church’s public theology and the challenge to articulate a positive vision of life. it proposes a pluralistic social vision focussed on diversity, unconditional love, jesus christ as the light of the world, the moral equality of all human beings, and freedom of religion. the research concludes by attending to faithful presence as a way to translate the missio dei into church praxis. ecclesial life is located within the mutual concerns of the neighborhood. faithful presence includes practices such as listening to the narrative of your place; enacting god’s peace in neigbourhoods; serving justice and reconciliation, allowing truth to flourish; and faithful reciprocal relationships with the created world. introduction the idea of god’s mission has received much attention in recent theological discourse and in ecumenical debates and publications. mission is understood as an attribute of god; and the focus on god’s movement towards the world, is described as the missio dei. this is essentially a trinitarian theology where the life of the church is grounded in the life and activity of the trinity, and where the mission of the church is to participate in god’s mission. the question addressed in this research is: in what way(s) can the concept of flourishing life serve as a contextual and relevant theological interpretation of the missio dei? a number of questions flow from this. if it is possible (or even necessary) to embrace the concept of flourishing life as an interpretation of the missio dei, how does this interpretation enrich missional ecclesiology? in nelus niemandt—the missio dei as flourishing life 13 what way does the missio dei, as flourishing life, impact the public witness of the church? this contribution combines current ideas on the missio dei with the rapidly developing discourses on flourishing life. missio dei there is substantial theological consensus on the trinitarian theology of missio dei (see niemandt 2019b, 2; guder 2015, 25), and it is widely recognised as one of the most important developments in the theology of mission. niemandt explains that “it introduced a radically new understanding of mission and theology, and mission studies are still grappling with the implications, which stretch far beyond the traditional cross-cultural missionary task of the church” (niemandt 2019b, 2). there is indeed a growing consensus on the trinitarian theology of the missio dei, and flowing from that a re-appropriation of and understanding of ecclesiology. skreslet summarizes: “missio dei language also invites one to conceive of the church itself as a sent community, dispatched by the triune god for witness in the world” (skreslet 2012, loc 798). the message of the gospel is clear—the church witnesses that jesus christ brought salvation to the world. this is also clear when one considers discussions in ecumenical bodies, in partnerships for missional churches and other discourse focused on the missional church. the term missio dei pops up in all of these conversations. but the overfamiliarity of the term poses its own challenges: what exactly do we mean when we say that “the church participates in god’s mission”? changing context will certainly influence ideas in this regard. missio dei must be translated into church praxis. bevans and schroeder (2011, 26) remind us that the church participates in god’s life as communion-in-mission and is in itself missionary by its very nature. the missio dei constitutes the missiones ecclesia (bosch 1991, 370) and emphasises the kenotic and communal character of the church, and the fact that the essence of the church is to participate in the mission of god. the church is essentially missionary. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 14 the missio dei focuses on salvation and restoration, but also explains that “god is by nature a missional god, who is seeking not just to save ‘souls’ to take to heaven someday, but to restore and save the created order: individuals, communities, nations, the environment, the world, the cosmos” (gorman 2018, 4). i appreciate volf and croasmun’s explanation of the arc that can be drawn from the creation of the world to the calling of jesus christ to make all things new, to eventually turn “the entire world into god’s home and our home” (volf and croasmun 2019, 6). this transformation of all creation into god’s home seems to be an appropriate description of the missio dei. or, as conradie concludes, “the mission of the church may be understood as preparing the house for god’s homecoming” (conradie 2015, 231). the church is part and parcel of the preparations and is called to be involved in god’s restorative work. this raises several questions regarding the nature and calling of the church. how does the church prepare the house for the homecoming? what does this entail in terms of our imagination of what the church might be? what does creation, sustaining and consummation mean for the future of ecclesial (flourishing) life? “life in fullness” and “flourishing life” answering the question about the church’s participation in preparing the house for god’s homecoming, involves a description of god’s home. when one attempts to describe god’s home, various images comes to mind. one of the overarching ideas is that god’s home is a place where life flourishes. the idea of life in fullness, or flourishing life has become one of the most important concepts in ecumenical and theological discourse in the last three decades. this flows from the conviction that concern for human flourishing is at the heart of the christian gospel. pennington labels this a meta-theme or meta-concept with staying power and a universal voice “because it addresses what is most basic and innate to all of humanity, despite the diversity of race, culture, and values” (pennington 2015, 1). nelus niemandt—the missio dei as flourishing life 15 marais investigated the rise in the rhetoric of human flourishing and identified the following patterns in the discourse (marais 2015, ii): • human flourishing as piety, joy, and comfort • human flourishing as a fulfilled life, healing, and dignity • human flourishing as grace, happiness, and blessing she observes that the rhetoric of human flourishing is part of the revival in happiness studies, and that this includes theology (2, 7). the rhetoric shifted, however, from happiness to human flourishing, particularly amongst liberation theologians, feminist theologians, disability theologians, and ecological theologians (10). this shift can be observed in theological conferences, academic research into biblical texts that sketch a picture of the flourishing of human beings, and ecumenical meetings. the world council of churches (wcc), in an important ecumenical affirmation on mission and evangelism, together towards life: mission and evangelism in changing landscapes (ttl) (keum 2013), states that jesus christ’s ultimate concern and mission is to affirm life in all its fullness. although the wcc does not represent all the christian churches and traditions, it can be accepted as an important and influential voice reflecting ecumenical diversity. this authoritative text on mission and evangelism, a primary point of reference to understand christian mission in the early twenty-first century (ross 2017, 91), frequently uses terms such as “fullness of life” (keum 2013, 3, 14, 17, 25, 34, 37, 39, 44), “abundant life” (4, 37), “wholeness” (19–20), “affirmation of life” (34, 37), and “flourishing life” (5). ttl explains the theme of life in fullness in trinitarian terms: • “god created the whole oikoumene in god’s image and constantly works in the world to affirm and safeguard life” (keum 2013, 4). • jesus christ is the life of the world and the incarnation of god’s love for the world. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 16 • the holy spirit is described as the life-giver “who sustains and empowers life and renews the whole creation” (keum 2013, 4). to prepare the house for god’s homecoming is to participate in god’s mission to bring life in fullness. the wcc does this when it connects the concept of life in fullness with god’s mission: “god invites us into the life-giving mission of the triune god and empowers us to bear witness to the vision of abundant life for all in the new heaven and earth” (keum 2013, 4). it is clear that the idea of flourishing life is receiving a lot of attention in theological reflection and ecumenical debates. life is indeed a key concept in ttl (see also bevans 2015, 194). god is regarded as the source of life and expanding life is part of god’s being. we are invited to join in god’s life-giving mission. bevans summarizes ttl and says that mission is about the flourishing of the whole of creation, respecting its integrity and working for its life (bevans 2015, 195). he concludes: “it is working with joy for life that gives glory to god” (200). to summarize—the trinitarian god is a god of boundless loving and endless life. mission is participation in the boundless love and endless life of the triune god. mission is deeply connected to the issue of flourishing life. volf is also involved in a far-reaching discourse on flourishing life and affirms that this is at the centre of concern for theology, especially due to the failure in recent decades to attend to this issue. “true, good, or flourishing life is the fundamental human question” (volf and croasmun 2019, 8) and belongs to the core of theology: the flourishing of human beings and all god’s creatures in the presence of god is god’s foremost concern for creation and should therefore be the central purpose of theology. (volf and croasmun 2019, 11) what is human flourishing? kelsey refers to a flourishing human being, as somebody who reflects the glory of god—“the full richness of god’s reality” (kelsey 2009, 310). marais summarizes kelsey’s approach as a description of human flourishing which is nelus niemandt—the missio dei as flourishing life 17 “to blossom” and “to thrive” (marais 2015, 15). to blossom is “to manifest the type of beauty of which a given life is capable by virtue of god’s relating to it,” and to thrive is “to have oneself in hand” (kelsey 2009, 315), thus a kind of life that considers other people and life. pennington explains that human flourishing is the idea that encompasses all human activity and goals because “there is nothing so natural and inescapable as the desire to live, and to live in peace, security, love, health” (pennington 2015, 1–2). thriving therefore has implications for human persons themselves, for nonhuman neighbors and for the broader context in which human beings live (see marais 2015, 16). or, in terms of the images of god’s mission, flourishing life can paint a picture of how we can imagine god’s household. it expresses something of god’s home and god’s preferred future for our reality. for volf, flourishing means “the good toward which humans are meant to strive” (volf and croasmun 2019, 13). he focuses on life and uses the tripartite description of life going well, life led well, and life feeling as it should (volf 2015, loc 28; volf and croasmun 2019, 16). volf mentions two images: one is an image of the verdant garden, beautiful and nourishing, a habitat for humans to “till and keep” and a temple in which to converse with their god (genesis 2). the other is of a universal city that has become a temple, “the new jerusalem” on a “new earth,” rich in the glory and honor of nations and utterly secure (revelation 21). (volf 2015, loc 51) pennington identifies human flourishing as a central part of the bible’s teaching on salvation and redemption. “god is not unconcerned about our well-being and happiness,” says pennington, “peace, happiness, blessedness, health, joy, and abundance of life are the consistent message of scripture and the goal of god’s work” (pennington 2015, 17). the idea of flourishing life is not limited to the christian or jewish religious traditions. volf argues that all major religions are “carriers of compelling visions of flourishing,” and that religions are “fundamentally accounts of human flourishing, of the self, e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 18 social relations, and the good” (volf 2015, loc 64, 41). pennington identifies the meta-theme of flourishing life in ancient philosophy (stoicism, epicureanism, platonism), in religions (such as buddhism, judaism, islam, and christianity), and in modern trends (such as joel osteen’s your best life now and positive psychology) (pennington 2015, 2). in the christian tradition, the focus is on the kingdom of god—one of the dominant images of flourishing life in the bible. the kingdom of god is a dynamic relation between god and the world, a situation “when god comes to dwell in the world and when the world has become and experiences itself as being god’s home” (volf and croasmun 2019, 69). the task of humanity is to serve flourishing life by remaking the world into god’s home, a space where god’s presence with his people and creation can be experienced. volf and croasmun summarize god’s mission as the world “with god as a residing ‘owner’ rather than absentee ‘landlord,’ the world having come truly into its own and flourishing by having become god’s home” (volf and croasmun 2019, 70). the concepts of flourishing life, human flourishing and the theological importance of god’s life-giving mission relates to many of the traditional theological loci, but is of particular importance to ecclesiology. god’s mission and the affirmation of life has cosmic meaning, and the church must affirm all life, and the whole oikoumene, “as being interconnected in god’s web of life” (keum 2013, 5). this is especially important in the case of missional ecclesiology, as the life and existence of the church is understood as a life in the trinity. the mission of the church is embedded and flows from god’s mission. god’s mission involves abundant life. the church, being called to participate in god’s mission, and embedded in the inner life of the life-giving trinity, is “commissioned to celebrate life, and to resist and transform all life-destroying forces” (keum 2013, 4). this obviously has far-ranging implications for the imagination of church life and praxis. the good news is to proclaim abundant life. the church points to and participates in the reign of god, and this involves flourishing life. the church equips and inspires nelus niemandt—the missio dei as flourishing life 19 members to be faithfully present and to search and serve flourishing everyday life. to summarize—the idea of life in fullness or flourishing life represents a compelling discourse in theology. it may not, at this stage, have the same spread of consensus as the idea of the missio dei, but most certainly raises the question of the possible relationship between the missio dei and flourishing life. flourishing life serves as an apt description of god’s home, and god’s present and preferred future. this has important ecclesiological implications. missio dei and flourishing life—convergence the question has been posed whether it is possible to embrace the concept of flourishing life as an interpretation of the missio dei, and how does this interpretation enrich the theology of mission and missional ecclesiology? this section entertains the possibility of understanding flourishing life as a particular, powerful and contextually relevant explanation of the missio dei, and explores the convergence between missio dei and flourishing life. recent discussions explain that missional hermeneutics is grounded in four theological assumptions: • god, who is love, is missional and therefore has a mission— the missio dei • scripture bears witness to god’s mission • the church is called and sent to participate in that mission in godlike, or god-shaped, ways (gorman 2018, 2–3) • the purpose of the bible is to equip the church for its witness one can say that a missional hermeneutic is to read scriptures with a missio dei-lens. it is what mburu calls an incarnational and contextualized approach (mburu 2019, 5–6). gorman follows this route. he explicitly asks the missio dei question in his book on paul: “what is god up to in the world? what is the missio dei, e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 20 the mission of god?” he answers: “for paul the answer is clear: to bring salvation to the world” (gorman 2015, loc 635). gorman also connected the idea of the missio dei with life in fullness, or flourishing life. in his exploration of the gospel according to john, he explains that a single word summarizes the divine mission, and that is “salvation,” or, in the johannine idiom, “life.” the missio dei, says gorman, is “the son’s mission on behalf of the father in doing signs and giving life” (gorman 2018, 40). gorman suggests that the most appropriate over-arching theme for the gospel of john is “eternal” or “abundant” life (gorman 2018, 44). “life” is central in john; he argues that jesus does not merely disclose something, he delivers something, and that something is life. he concludes that god’s missio is giving life and that the gospel of john is “the gospel of life” (see gorman 2018, 45–47). gorman reminds us that god’s liberating, life-giving work is not only the liberation of humanity, but the liberation of the entire cosmos (gorman 2015, loc 654): “because god’s love is universal it is inescapably missiological” (gorman 2018, 124). god is on a mission to liberate humanity and the entire cosmos from the powers of sin and death. it is thus not only possible, but rather compelling, to see the connection between flourishing life and the missio dei, and the implications for any imagination of the missional church. one can only agree with volf and croasmun that “all things were created by god; all things continue to exist through god; and all things are destined to become god’s home” (volf and croasmun 2019, 70). this impacts on our imagination of what the church might be, and creates an agenda for the church to prepare the house for god’s homecoming. ecclesial flourishing life is about creation, sustaining creation and consummation. the creation, sustenance and consummation of all created life is part and parcel of the missio dei. “god’s mission,” says wright, “includes the whole of creation” (wright 2010, loc 233). the triune god created life, sustains life and is on a mission to bring all life to a new place, to god’s home, where all will “live in nelus niemandt—the missio dei as flourishing life 21 peace with god and creation, and all inhabit a space of joy” (volf and croasmun 2019, 79–80). the creation, sustenance and consummation of all life is to gift and bless life in such a way that life can flourish. this includes liberation from sin and the restoration of the whole cosmos to a better and complete new reality. jesus explains his mission: “i have come so that they may have life, and may have it abundantly” (john 10:10). this is also evident when jesus identifies his mission as giving life, and this is strengthened by his “i am” statements: “‘i am the bread of life’ ([john] 6:35, 48); ‘i am the resurrection and the life’ (11:25); and ‘i am the way, and the truth, and the life’ (14:6)” (gorman 2018, 49). the gospel of john explains a convergence of the mission of jesus, sent by the father, and abundant life. jesus’ mission is to reconcile, to redeem, to introduce and bring life in fullness—abundant life. this convergence does have important implications. volf and croasmun explain the purpose of theology: it is to discern, articulate, and commend visions of and paths to flourishing life in light of the self-revelation of god in the life, death, resurrection, exaltation, and coming in glory of jesus christ, with this entire story, its lows and its highs, bearing witness to a truly flourishing life. (volf and croasmun 2019, 61) in conclusion: theology as such is interested in and focussed on flourishing life. this also impacts on ecclesiology and missional ecclesiology. missional ecclesiology is particularly interested in everyday life. a trinitarian approach implies that the father and son sent the spirit to guide his church in the realities of everyday life and to be faithfully present in everyday communities. one of the core concepts in missional ecclesiology, is the concept of incarnation—incarnation means following christ in the rhythms of everyday life in a way that appreciates the importance of physical and material life. one of the ways in which missional ecclesiology might engage with the idea of flourishing life, is to attend to the following facets of everyday life: e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 22 • created life • sustained life • consummated life created life god’s mission started with the creation of life—the act to create reality outside the reality of the trinity, and to engage in a relationship wider than the inner relationship between father, son and holy spirit. the gospel, and the essence of the missio dei, begins with the good earth and all of creation god made through jesus. when one asks the classic missional question, “what did god do?” (see niemandt 2019a, 133), the first answer must be that the triune god created the world and all of creation. that is where the missio dei, inaugurated in the inner discourse of the trinity, became reality. in terms of life in fullness, or flourishing life, as an expression of the missio dei, the understanding of creation as a gift of the triune god puts the doctrine of creation in the orbit of mission studies and reflections on the missional church. when one asks the second classical missional question, “what does god wants to do?” (see niemandt 2019a, 133), it raises the ecclesiological issue of the church’s involvement in created life, and the task of the church in earth-keepings and participating in god’s continued creation. in a certain sense, the church’s answer to the question is that god wants us to take responsibility for his creation in everything we do, and the church provides theological language and clarity of calling in terms of creation. sustained life what did god do? god shared the mission of taking care of creation with humanity. “human beings are people with a mission,” argues wright (2010, loc 679). god’s instruction to fill the earth, to subdue the earth and to rule over the rest of the creatures is an nelus niemandt—the missio dei as flourishing life 23 invitation to participate in god’s sustenance of creation. god is delegating god’s own kingly authority over creation, but then as a benevolent king who loves and takes care of his creation: “we are given the mission to rule over creation, but we are to do it in ways that are modeled (sic) on the character and values of god’s own kingship” (wright 2010, loc 708). it is important to remember gorman’s perspective, namely that god is already active in the present, working to liberate humanity from sin, through the “sin-defeating and life-giving death and resurrection of his son” (gorman 2015, loc 659). conradie (2015, 16) argues that earthkeeping is an integral dimension of the mission of the church. as wright explains: “ruling and serving creation is humanity’s first mission on earth, and god never repealed the mandate” (wright 2010, loc 729). volf and croasmun refer to the “home of god”—or the dwelling place of god—as the overarching metaphor for developing a theology of flourishing life (volf and croasmun 2019, 149). conradie (2015) also prefers to refer to creation as the home of god, and to describe the task of the church as participating in housekeeping or earthkeeping. what does god want the church to do? god wants the church to imagine a praxis of housekeeping and earthkeeping that includes ministries of healing, justice and reconciliation, and most certainly proclaiming the good news of new life in jesus christ. dewitt formulated four principles for the stewardship of creation that can shape and inform reflection on the “sustain” aspect of flourishing life (see dewitt 2008, 89): • the conservancy principle: we should return the service of creation to us with service of our own. • the safeguarding principle: we should safeguard the lord’s creation as the lord safeguards us. • the fruitfulness principle: we should enjoy the fruit of creation, but not destroy its fruitfulness. • the sabbath principle: we should provide for creation’s sabbath rest. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 24 for the church to be faithfully present, the church needs to focus on and enhance the calling to be earthkeepers, to be faithfully present in a way that seeks the welfare of creation and promotes flourishing life. consummated life the importance of an incarnational approach has already been explained in the argument for attention to flourishing life. however, the incarnation must be seen as the inauguration of the eschaton. any discussion of life in fullness must attend to the new creation that breaks into the present reality: “eschatology brings together the past and future into the present in a new creation” (niemandt 2015, 6). conradie emphasizes the cosmic scope of god’s salvation and argues that it implies a loving concern for the whole of god’s planetary household (conradie 2015, 263). the question “what does god want to do?” implies a focus on the future and consummation. the future brings hope and shapes church praxis. this leads to the question: how can a vision of hope for the earth be articulated? what does god want to do with his creation. what is the goal of god’s mission? this is a rather complex issue, demanding considerable reflection and theological debate. in terms of the flourishing life as part and parcel of the missio dei, i appreciate conradie’s advice: “my intuition is that the key to telling the story indeed lies in the end of the story. the expectation of the end influences, now already, the way in which the story is told and how the plot is structured” (conradie 2015, 264). according to conradie (265), the consummation is the presumed final chapter of the story of god’s house-holding, and the church participates in the preparation of god’s house for god’s homecoming. the idea of flourishing life presupposes that the final chapter is one where all of creation enjoys the life in fullness jesus promised. this includes, in the words of gorman, to follow jesus the lamb “into a new heaven and new earth liberated from the effects of our sin and even from sin itself, nelus niemandt—the missio dei as flourishing life 25 alive with the perpetual presence of the living god, in whom we can be both lost and found in eternal wonder, awe, and praise” (gorman 2011, loc 4469–71). missio dei as flourishing life through faithful presence the next section attends to the question: how does missio dei translate into church praxis? the interaction between flourishing life and church life can be explored by attending to the idea of faithful presence. sparks et al. (2014) developed the idea of faithful presence to clarify missional praxis. the church is deeply connected to a specific place or parish, and must be faithfully present. this means that ecclesial life is located within the mutual concerns of the neighborhood. it is an incarnational approach that takes bodies, location and community seriously, following the clue of christ’s incarnation and god’s presence in our reality (niemandt 2019a, 49). i argue for an appreciation of the fundamental importance of the incarnation as a movement towards where people are (place). place and location form the basis of a missional ecclesiology (niemandt 2019c, 3). to be faithfully present is to enact a transformational presence that makes god’s kingdom visible in everyday life and in everyday locations. this echoes newbigin’s characteristics of a missional congregation when he describes a community that does not live for itself but is deeply involved in the concerns of its neighborhood (newbigin 1989, 238–44). faithful presence is to listen to the narrative of your place. sparks et al. explain: “listening to your place through the narrative of god’s dream awakens you to what the spirit is already up to and what good news really looks like in the place you live” (sparks et al. 2014, 125). being faithfully present implies the church is god’s gift of peace by bearing the kingdom in its own life, in neigbourhoods. the local church is itself be a new social order. it is to be a foretaste of the kingdom of god (niemandt 2019a, 46). the church proclaims the good news of flourishing life, but also enacts the good e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 26 news by facilitating flourishing life. the presupposition is that god is already present and working, and that neighborhoods are transformed “by identifying and connecting the dreams and assets of the people, associations and institutions that are already there” (sparks et al. 2014, 130). life flourishes where justice rules. faithful presence includes a ministry of reconciliation and justice. the church brings life where it attends to reconciliation to assist people to deal with the challenges of pain, suffering, murder, and everything that diminishes flourishing life. justice restores and reconciles, and in this process life can flourish again. faithful presence is to be a community of truth. life flourishes where truth flourishes. truth starts with being in christ. communities of truth reflect the internal truthful relationality of the trinity, and from there also extends to include honest and truthful relationships with others. faithful presence is to promote flourishing life in communities. the congregation must have a faithful reciprocal relationship with the created world, a relationship where place matters and where congregations value a dependent relationship with their neighborhood. such congregations attend to place, and ask: “what might god be saying to us through this neighborhood? what do the buildings and zoning legislation reveal? what are the streams, air, forests, fields, parks, and even the resident animals, birds, insects, and fish saying?” (sparks et al. 2014, 146). faithful presence is to be a community of hope, orientated in terms of the consummation, and involved in discerning god’s preferred and promised future church, community and creation. the implications of missio dei as flourishing life for public theology the connection between the missio dei and flourishing life does have important implications for the church’s public theology. mission is god’s turning to the world. the ekklesia is a theo-political category (hoekendijk cited in bosch 1991, 377). bosch explains nelus niemandt—the missio dei as flourishing life 27 that we can think of the church as an ellipse with two foci: the source of its life is recognized in worship and prayer; and the church engages and challenges the world (bosch 1991, 385). the church is at the same time called out of the world and sent onto the world. this echoes volf ’s observation, citing alexis de tocqueville: “when ordinary people, most of them religious, enter the political arena, they take religion with them” (volf 2015, 65). this raises the question: what is the public mission of god? the convergence of missio dei with flourishing life, provides mission studies and church witness with a compelling alternative to what the good life might be, especially in a consumerist society. it also challenges the missional church to articulate a positive vision of life that calls us forward: “the core of our response toward moral decline—where and when it exists—should be to articulate a positive vision of life that calls us forward” (volf and croasmun 2019, 53). a missional creation theology will attend to the idea of the consummation, approached as the telling of a hopeful story of what flourishing life might look like. what does the house where god comes home to look like? in the words of the public declaration of the accra confession (warc 2004, 5): “now we proclaim with passion that we will commit ourselves, our time and our energy to changing, renewing and restoring the economy and the earth, choosing life, so that we and our descendants might live (see also deut 30:19).” what is god’s preferred and present future? how can the local congregation participate in faithfully retelling the story of what might be at the end of the story? and how can the local congregation be faithfully present so as to be a hermeneutic of the gospel—a place where the last chapter is already being enacted. how do the congregation members participate in the remaking of the world into god’s home? how do we choose life, so that our descendants might live? volf and croasmun propose a pluralistic social vision as part and parcel of the public witness of the church that may contribute significantly to the vision of flourishing life. they attend to: e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 28 key elements of a christian account of the flourishing life that allow those who embrace it to live in peace and pursue common good in pluralistic settings, and to do so not only notwithstanding its claim to be true for every human and the entire world, but also largely because of it. (volf and croasmun 2019, 105) they propose the following “pillars of a pluralistic social vision”: • trinitarian monotheism is the source of diversity, and difference is not secondary, subsequent to unity; difference is equiprimordial with unity (105). • god is the god of unconditional love. “god’s law is but a mode of god’s love. even when humans fail to live according to the law of love, god seeks to mend the world and bring it to its intended fullness so it can become what god created it to be: our home and god’s home in one” (105). • jesus christ is the light of the world. “the truth about flourishing life that christ proclaimed is for all people” (105). “all truth sought and found anywhere takes us, ultimately, to christ as its origin” (106). • there is a distinction between god’s rule and human rule. “the christian church is (or at any rate ought to understand itself as) a loose international network of communities whose primary allegiance isn’t to the states of which they are citizens or to some yet-to-be-created global superstate but to the one god of all people” (106). • the moral equality of all human beings. everybody is made according to god’s image. “all people have equal dignity; all have the same rights and the same moral obligations; all have fallen short of those obligations” (106). • freedom of religion and areligion. a person is free to follow the gospel, or not. one believes with the heart (106). nelus niemandt—the missio dei as flourishing life 29 conclusion the concept of flourishing life can indeed serve as a contextual and relevant theological interpretation of the missio dei, and flourishing life expands and gives a particular depth to the missio dei. the interpretation of missio dei as flourishing life enriches the theology of mission and missional ecclesiology, and this research proposed “creation, sustenance, and consummation of all created life” as essential elements in the discussion of the missio dei. this approach may provide the missional church movement with new ideas, especially in terms of church praxis. church praxis must attend to faithful presence as a way to make god’s kingdom visible in everyday life and in everyday locations. the convergence of missio dei with flourishing life, provides mission studies and theology in general with a compelling alternative to what the good life might be, especially in a consumerist society. croasmun and volf formulated “pillars of a pluralistic social vision” that might represent a positive vision of life. bibliography bevans, stephen b. 2015. “life, joy, and love: together towards life in dialogue with evangelii gaudium and the cape town commitment.” international review of mission 104(2): 193–202. bevans, stephen b., and schroeder, roger p. 2011. prophetic dialogue: reflections on christian mission today. maryknoll, ny: orbis. dewitt, calvin b. 2008. “to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth (i).” in mission in the 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http://tifwe.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/03/pennington-a-biblical-theology-of-humanflourishing.pdf. ross, kenneth r. 2017. “together towards life, missional formation, and transforming discipleship.” international review of mission 106(1): 89– 100. skreslet, stanley h. 2012. comprehending mission: the questions methods, themes, problems, and prospects of mission. maryknoll, ny: orbis. kindle. sparks, paul, et al. 2014. the new parish: how neighborhood churches are transforming mission, discipleship, and community. downers grove, il: intervarsity. kindle. volf, miroslav. 2015. flourishing: why we need religion in a globalized world. new haven: yale university press. kindle. volf, miroslav, and matthew croasmun. 2019. for the life of the world: theology that makes a difference. theology for the life of the world. grand rapids: brazos. kindle. world alliance of reformed churches (warc). 2004. “covenanting for justice in the economy and the earth.” paper presented at the 24th general council, accra, ghana, july 30–august 13. online. http:// d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/unitedchurchofchrist/legacy_url/395/ covenanting-for-justice-in-the-economy-and-the-earth.pdf?1418423759. wright, christopher j. h. 2010. the mission of god’s people: a biblical theology of the church’s mission. grand rapids: zondervan. kindle. ef2-2.indb 52 business analogies at church a hermeneutical study into the use of analogy for missional church leadership ian robinson ian robinson has held a wide range of ministry roles in new south wales and western australia, most recently as alan walker lecturer in mission evangelism and leadership at the united theological college. he has published on all those topics as well as on australian desert spirituality. contact: robinson.iandt@gmail.com abstract a significant weakness in leadership studies is the free use of cross-sector analogies without a hermeneutical standard. churches need new approaches from other sectors but may respond with little critical method, either too freely or too narrowly. many reject any need to learn from outside the church. the practical goal of this paper is to provide a way to learn without risking the church’s own character. this is the work of analogy. while referencing the theological and missiological histories of this method, the argument is based on analysis of the hermeneutical principles in jesus’ parables compared with the epistemology of analogy in education and interdisciplinary studies. an analogical hermeneutic is then ian robinson—business analogies at church 53 applied to two business examples. the analogical hermeneutical spectrum, i propose, can nourish the wisdom of church leaders and enhance a church’s collective efficacy. in conclusion, further research avenues are suggested. the need for new analogies the mainstream churches in western countries continue to decline in numbers and influence despite half a century of resources being directed towards the challenge. one response to decline is to seek new sources of wisdom (e.g., taylor and nash 2008). it is common for writers on church leadership to use anecdotes from “analogous” organisations or “parallel situations,” including from the sectors of the military, sports, biology, education, or business. they often assume seemingly without evidence that the comparison is valid. the stories told are compelling. however, they may also mislead the reader and carry assumptions that weaken the comparison or clash with the church’s particular goals. on the other hand, others reject the need to do this. they stake their future on continuity with the received structures of their church, and the exclusive nature of the church having no need of wisdom from corporations. consequently, successful leaders in one field, say finance, who may be drafted into another relevant field, say church mission strategy, may find that their past successes are not understood or (oppositely) adopted disastrously. taking either too much or too little, the lack of a valid hermeneutic by which to approach business analogues results in bad outcomes in an era when fresh insights are needed. this paper is a proposal for a spectrum of hermeneutical principles that interrogate the effectiveness and fidelity of organisational analogues, to foster a more nuanced missional imagination. in this paper, i use brief examples to frame an interdisciplinary proposal. i will conclude by outlining further work that might be done. despite jim collins’s warning to churches and social sector leaders—“why business thinking is not the answer” (collins e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 54 2006—naïve readers of business analogies are easily misled from their own core purpose. i recently attended a church leadership research conference. i heard a church executive repeat jim collins’s famous maxim, “get the right people on the bus” (collins 2001, 41). this maxim means, in short, to fire incumbents who cannot soon deliver the directives of the new management. by using this one phrase and making the narrow application of one business principle, they explained a decade of high turnover in the church’s structures. each step was deleterious to the church in the losses of corporate knowledge, educational expertise, missional experience, international excellence, and widespread loss of trust in management. they also lost the membership of grieving friends and family members of those who were fired without adequate process. while we can easily find such anecdotes, this paper offers a constructive alternative. moving beyond our anecdotes, three research projects interrogated a popular set of business principles, namely the “five practices of exemplary leadership” by barry posner and james kouzes (kouzes and posner 2013). in workshop form, the authors of the five practices claim “from academia to government, healthcare to technology, faith-based to community advocacy organizations, the leadership challenge workshop has proven to be a catalyst for change” (kouzes and posner 2013). the five “exemplary leadership” practices make compelling reading: 1. model and make the way for others, 2. find and hold to the core purpose, 3. challenge the current process, 4. enable teams to act, and 5. encourage the heart. this research was based on seventy-five thousand responses, thousands of interviews working in twenty languages and linked to a book that has sold some two million copies. the workshop boasts high association with business growth. many church leaders ian robinson—business analogies at church 55 have adopted this compelling set of business-based practices. but is it a good analogue for churches? three recent studies suggest otherwise. first, burton (burton 2010, 117) interviewed seventy-six senior pastors in two north american protestant denominations. he concluded that “none of the five leadership behaviors were found to be significantly related to church population growth” (burton 2010, 5, 101). similarly, stewart (stewart 2012, 119) and hines (hines 2012, 125) found no statistical difference between the five practices and the size of church, the growth of the church and the educational status of their ministers. these three empirical studies show how easy it is to make inept interpretations about transformational leadership.  despite this misuse of business analogies, there is a major opportunity. in recent decades of global change, the sectors of business, education, and the military have all undergone radical internal change. all three sectors have not only experimented with leadership models but also researched the effectiveness of that work. if the church can translate soundly from research on turnaround in those sectors, that is, if they interpret analogous situations into high-order learning, then leadership-change insights may offer valuable learning for the church. in this paper, i analyse the use of analogues, and compare them with the interpretation of biblical parables, in order to construct a tool of cross-sector interpretation which holds theological integrity. a definition of “analogy,” from the greek analogia, describes a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject (the analog, or source) to another (the target), or a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process (online etymology dictionary). it differs from the forms of simile or metaphor. it is ordinarily (as here) a simple figure of speech, but post-war elaborations of the concept of metaphor in critical discourse have broadened this term (ortony 2012, 1) in ways that this paper will not pursue. by comparison, an analogy holds a wider field of view, including multiple points of comparison. only the act of interpretation can determine how many points there are. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 56 analogue is not as thoroughgoing as allegory, a form that implies a near-complete and detailed valid comparison. for example, to say that the milky way is like a saucer is a simile or metaphor, validly holding true with a single point of comparison: shape. to say the milky way is like the internet makes an analogy referencing massively numerous and complex separate users, uses, physical centers, and types of influence. however, it fails as an allegory because it lacks what the simile gave: the physical shape of an entity organized by greater forces. it lacks a sense of boundary that helps us work with the concept of a galaxy since the “centers” of the internet are much more numerous than stars and galaxies and growing daily in number. observing these limitations leads us to ask how analogy works. the track record of analogy in theology at a basic level, an analogy builds understanding thus: “what does this remind you of?” and “how is this (the source) like that (the target)?” analogy is a method widely used by teachers, proving to be powerful in many subjects and at all levels. one critical study observed, “the most dramatic and visible role of analogy is as a mechanism for conceptual change, where it allows people to import a set of ideas worked out in one domain into another. analogical reason is patterned thinking, not deductive” (forbus 1998, 231–57). the analogical approach is not new to the field of theology. the influential alexandrian theologian origen (184–253 ce) used analogy as a higher-order interpretive device, preferring allegorical interpretation to historical exegesis because it was more ascetic (some say “mystical”). more recently, the american catholic theologian david tracy traced the long history of systematics and observed twin counterpoised methods—analogical imagination and dialectical analysis. neither should be an overlord of the other, he claimed (tracy 1981, 421). ian robinson—business analogies at church 57 this paper cannot pursue this history. instead i simply note that christian theology has always employed the rationality of analogy. hence, there can be a deep confidence that this form of interpretation is germane to the faith of the church and goes beyond the invention of small illustrative devices. further confidence in the use of analogy is evident in the field of missiology. in the mission of the church, interpretation across cultures is also not a new question and not an easy one. the church has, since its beginning, translated the gospel from one culture to another (luke 4:27; john 3–4; acts 17). that task has proven very fruitful for the church as she has taken root in so many new language groups (e.g., donovan 1982; bevans 1992, 57–62). cross-cultural transmission of the gospel is not simply a verbal message, but is always “incarnate,” always embodied, always within a culture (bevans 1992). ethnic cultures are unique patterns of thinking, acting, and feeling that sustain the richness of their life and faith. not just for expansion but for insight, it has been a two-way process. each new culture uncovers hidden treasures in the gospel by bringing a different light. for example, liberation theology came out of south american barrios and now informs mission in suburban australia. the tools of contextual theology can also be applied to professional cultures, such as business or education. this is because business sectors and even single companies develop strong local cultures or strong overarching cultures. they can be complex and nuanced. as in all contextualization theory, some new things can be seen in those cultures as god-given while some things could be challenged with the gospel (goheen 2014, 287). this influence is two-way, like all contextualization, and the hermeneutical work in both directions can only be discovered with careful engagement. to avoid the risks of engagement is to consign the church either to irrelevance or loss of integrity. it can be said in missiological terms, then, that churches may be practicing an incautious syncretism in their use of power, definitions of purpose, forms of participation, and so on. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 58 the cross-cultural task is always attended by fears of syncretism. henning wrogemann cites the indian scholar m. m. thomas’s advocacy to take the risk: “it is vital bravely to step out in faith and to adopt and adapt such elements and forms” (wrogemann 2016, 336). mike goheen advocates a model he calls “faithful contextualization” (goheen 2014, 284–86), balancing effectiveness in the world with fidelity to christ. these missiologists encourage critical examination of analogues that might resource the church in mission, and the need for this task is almost universally accepted, the risks, as well as the expectation of enrichment, well observed. how analogy works given this brief examination of analogical interpretation in theology and mission, let us uncover how analogy works. several principles will be identified then summarized. analogy works when the analogy says, “this (complex area) is like that (simpler picture)”; it has restricted the field of view from the full complexity of this in the real world. it also relies upon a comparable pattern between the two referents in that aspect only. that is, analogous reasoning only works when the comparable pattern of concepts thus generated is made to interact with a wider conceptual frame. people learn from analogy only when that pattern is restricted in some ways. analogy therefore works well only when in view of a wider context and in view of the particular stage or focus of learning. the philosopher david chalmers confirms the “sensitivity to context” that is critical to the argument of any analogy (chalmers 1991, 20–24). adding to these two principles, several more describe how analogy works in learning. first, analogies serve a particular purpose. interpreters must identify the core purpose within which the analogues are framed, and the prior awareness of the audience about the analogue that illuminates the target at this stage of learning. this is not a simple metaphorical process, because the object of the learning is to move beyond pre-existing perceptions. they ian robinson—business analogies at church 59 expose gaps in knowledge and provoke the need for a new thought or movement into action. second, analogies are used to bridge a gap or conflict in paradigms such as those required in interdisciplinary studies. these are essential when large complex problems have not been solvable by single professional approaches. while observing that interdisciplinary collaboration is in its infancy, paul jeffrey describes these four analogical methods in a particular cross-sector collaboration thus: a number of tools are identified that characterize and support the collaboration process, including the use of storylines and metaphor, choice of vocabulary, the nature of dialogue and the role of mediating agents (jeffrey 2003). while he includes the nature, language, and role of those participating in the collaboration, he also identifies four “products” of collaboration: “process,” “understanding,” “utility,” and “knowledge integration” (jeffrey,2003). the work of making and interpreting useful analogies includes all these characteristics. seeking an apt analogy is therefore a good strategy for making discoveries and building trust for a shared task. like all strategies, they require prior agreement of a common desire or goal, which may then move to a further elaboration of that goal (jacobs and frickel 2009, 43–65). this is why jeffrey reminds us that analogical work requires person-to-person work, not just mind-to-mind work. an analogy born in one complex sector does not lend itself to simplistic comparisons. for instance, professionals often lament the dominance of “business principles” or “business language” in the contemporary practice of medicine or education. the managers complain about the “bottomless pit” of money that medical staff must think they have, which is more a description of the compassion that motivates medical professionals. on the other hand, the teacher or nurse may feel that the “efficient” reduction in staff has made it impossible to impart confidence to patients or pupils, an essential part of the healing/learning process. thus, the definition of the e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 60 problem to be solved and the motivation to solve it are different from the outset. part of the people-work of analogical interpretation is to find a beginning point. for a cross-sector analogy to work in practice, therefore, requires some people-principles beyond the words and content. a dialogue is required that listens carefully to the others, respects their differing goals and views, and creates a way of speaking that solves the uncovered problems. if they avoid the conflict in that process, it is possible that they will paper over the challenges with an agreed “form of words,” which leads to no new outcome. the kind of thinking that is being advocated here is complex relationally, yes, but also philosophically. analogy is a powerful high-order logic (heick 2019). as noted above, teachers routinely use a “this is like that” form of learning to construct an informative point for students to be able to grasp. educational psychology claims that this creative act is also a critical path. not only do students grasp new learning but in the process of finding apt analogues assimilate it. the process of analogical reasoning is not, therefore, a simple metaphor-assignment task. rather, it is an iterative process of trying what works better or best as they move back and forth between the known and the unknown. terry heick observes: as students create incorrect analogies, analyse the relationships their analogies are suggesting, and then correct them accordingly, students are grappling with ideas, monitoring and revising their thinking, and otherwise actively considering the often-complex relationships between disparate things (heick 2019, 9). while this is a traditional technique of school education, we now see it in epistemology and engineering, valued as high-level logic. analogy is now recognized as a key form of logic in the building of artificial intelligence (forbus 1998, 231–57; chalmers 1991, 185–211). we have seen in the epistemology of analogue the importance of understanding and including context, discerning the core purpose of communication, the necessity of provocation to ian robinson—business analogies at church 61 discern new learning, the importance of the persons in the act of dialogue, and recognition of the stage or strategy of cross-sector enquiry. this list begins to define how an analogical situation may be aptly interpreted. one way to examine this question is the parables of jesus, where we will see these same principles. i will summarize the principles obtained as a hermeneutical method using the metaphor of a prism of light. after that, two concrete examples of “parables from business” will test the method. analogies are like parables jesus’ use of parables provides the strongest argument for why and how churches can learn from business practices. in thirty-three separate stories, jesus referred to business practices, mostly agribusiness, as analogy for the kingdom of god, for example (mark 4:26 niv): “he also said, ‘this is what the kingdom of god is like a man scatters seed on the ground . . .’” the following table lists the parables and their work-place theme. from the synoptic gospels the sower mark 4:1–20, matt 13:3–23, luke 8:5–15 not every innovation succeeds the seed growing secretly mark 4:26–29 growth simply takes time the mustard seed mark 4:30–32, matt 13:31–32, luke 13:18–19, start small the tenants mark 12:1–11, matt 21:33–46, luke 20:9–18 hold authorities accountable the faithful servant mark 13:33–37, matt 24:42, luke 12:35–48 reward good service the wheat and tares matt 13:24–30 nothing grows perfectly. you have competitors. the hidden treasure matt 13:44 invest where and when it really matters the pearl matt 13:45–46 act upon nice surprises e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 62 the unmerciful servant matt 18:23–35 create a culture of fair dealing the labourers in the vineyard matt 20:1–16 employees have lives the two sons matt 21:28–31 deeds matter more than words the ten virgins matt 25:1–12 be prepared for when it takes longer the talents matt 25:14–25:30 each person’s capacity differs, so treat them differently to be fair the two debtors lk 10:30–37 debts can be forgiven to create loyalty the good samaritan luke 10:30–37 social value interrupts routine the rich fool luke 12:16–21 plan without a sense of grandeur the unjust steward luke 16:1–8 practice justice for the least the rich man and the beggar lazarus luke 16:19–31 your social responsibility lies nearby from the gospel of john the harvest john 4:35–38 the mission of god produces a profit or harvest the apprenticed son john 5:19–20a follow the master’s instructions closely the shepherd john 10:1–5 lead like a shepherd the true vine john 15:1–17 god acts like a gardener. disciples act like fruiting branches. the foot washing john 13:1–15 lead as a servant table 1. parables from business practices ten parables include analogies about leadership in business. if they were taken as business aphorisms only, they would not be remarkable. all these parables are wise sayings that address core leadership questions in the kingdom of god. the close similarity between “analogue” (above) and “parable” can be easily seen. a parable is usually a short story that illustrates a moral attitude or a religious principle (merriam-webster ian robinson—business analogies at church 63 dictionary). the story itself may be taken from a news story or ordinary life-events. the interpretation of jesus’ parables is a wide field of study that cannot be adequately encompassed here. with the help of luise schottroff and klyne snodgrass, i locate the importance of this form of learning and compare it with the way analogy works. in parables, jesus narrated a wide range of events and values, always artfully inviting scrutiny. rarely, the narrative is meant to be an allegory, allowing many point-by-point comparisons. indeed, some revel in the obscurities of finding allegory where none was intended. in some parables a “ripping yarn” provokes attention but may also provoke misunderstanding. for instance, is the somnolent judge (luke 18:1–8) who resists the importunate widow a model of god, such that the church must recruit earnest prayers to persuade an unwilling god to act? many practice this sort of recruitment, but in context and in purpose the parable says exactly the opposite (v8). the age-old maxim applies here: other scriptures outside the immediate narrative teach the reader to discern that which is simply attention-getting through dramatic effect from that which is being affirmed. they have misread both the legal context and the theological context. a complex organisational behavior like a legal system does not yield light to simplistic comparisons. thus, our first interpretive principle is that the analogy must be interpreted with knowledge of its wider context (schottroff 2006, 220). the second is that the core purpose of the story, though not necessarily stated in the narrative, must limit interpretation (snodgrass 2018, 24–31). the third principle is that a parable has a provocative learning purpose. the goal in the use of these analogies is to make a listener think in new ways as they puzzle the purpose, the similarities, and the differences. the stories being compared are to be intuitively mapped for patterns or points of congruence rather than mined for a detailed or allegorical congruence. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 64 matthew 13, for example, includes a question about the difficulty of interpreting the stories (v10). jesus’ answer is that they are designed to be difficult, to need discernment, to need the peripheral view of context and self, to disrupt habits of thought. this fulsome chapter ends with the ironic ascription to jesus as “prophet without honor”(v57), which suggests that the disruptive work of interpreting jesus’ parables was immensely valuable yet created conflict. thus, some parables have the immediate goal to be disruptive and to create the appetite for learning but are not themselves a good source of that further learning. for that, other sources and analogues are required, aligning with the need for a changed field of view. it must also be stated that jesus sometimes uproots normal business practice. for instance, he calls some people to give up working and follow him, he tells another to sell everything and walk away with him, he forgives debt too many times to be called good at accounting, he overturns the tables of foreign exchange merchants, he commends a lack of thrift towards tomorrow’s food and clothing, he sends disciples out with no visible means of support, and he provides healing for free (which upsets both the lawyers and the doctors). st paul also famously described salvation with the analogy of redemption from slavery. lest that sound like immediate destitution, he aligned christians with a new citizenship in the kingdom of heaven, of greater value than the muchprized citizenship in the roman political economy. thus, some parables are intended to provoke reflection, promote immediate action, and may face immediate resistance, such as the good samaritan (luke 10). each parable renders a story from a known sector of life (this) and applies it to life in the kingdom of god (that). therefore, there are many purposes of jesus’ parables together with an explicit warning about doing the interpretive work involved. ian robinson—business analogies at church 65 a prism of principles from the above, the hermeneutical principles can be summarized as follows, in no order of importance: 1. purpose: limit oneself within the range of meanings intended and the core purpose. 2. context: interpret with reference to the wider context. 3. structures: clarify assumptions about authority or structures that are being used. 4. stage: be aware of staging the strategy in action or reflection. 5. learning: learn carefully for action or attitude, a reflective practice. 6. spirit: accept provocation to discern the holy spirit at work. 7. people: work with the other people in the dialogue. as soon as we list these principles we immediately see its relevance to the work of church leadership, especially regarding readiness to do the work of gaining wisdom. this allows us to move from the hermeneutics of parables to consider business practices as analogues for application to the church. two parables from business we will now employ two business parables, discerning them with the spectrum of the seven principles. the kingdom of god is like kodak. the context tells us that the kodak company (usa) manufactured camera-films, eventually holding 70 percent of the market for family photography, for which they created the slogan “a kodak moment.” in 1981 they, with others, invented the digital form of photography that gradually made kodak film obsolete. they missed the moment, it is often said; they did not recognize the e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 66 change that was coming, and eventually filed for bankruptcy in 2012 (munir 2021). how shall the church interpret this parable? the similarities of context include the ballast of long-standing excellence, the inrush of new ideas that are rejected, the consequent steady decline in fortunes and a management response that was inadequate. a church leader might comfort themselves by doing trend analysis and excusing themselves from responsibility or by adopting more contemporary flavors into their church services. however, scott anthony in harvard business review cited these as “wrong conclusions.” a generation ago, a “kodak moment” meant something that was worth saving and savoring. today, the term increasingly serves as a corporate bogeyman that warns executives of the need to stand up and respond when disruptive developments encroach on their market. unfortunately, as time marches on the subtleties of what happened to eastman kodak are being forgotten, leading executives to draw the wrong conclusions from its struggles (anthony 2016). in fact, a study of context shows that kodak did not overlook the opportunity. anthony continues: kodak created a digital camera, invested in the technology, and even understood that photos would be shared online. where they failed was in realizing that online photo sharing was the new business, not just a way to expand the printing business (anthony 2016). in fact, kodak had seen the issue, invested in the digital camera business, and they were not myopic. the online world of sharing photos overtook their redirection work, to which their response was to sell their many patents and re-configure the company. they did change but simply not enough. that is the more reliable lesson from kodak as parable. some interpreters with the wrong conclusions might congratulate themselves that they have “seen the need to change” but they may have failed to learn the real lesson—that a significant change or two are required. many ian robinson—business analogies at church 67 business writers speak of the necessity of and nervousness around making sufficiently bold changes (laczkowski 2019). they did undergo the provocation of a paradigmatic change in technology, consulted the workforce and the market, but not widely enough to avoid being blind-sided. they discerned their core purpose to be color printing and made major investments in printers, papers, and inks, whereas their identity—“a kodak moment”—said more about the capturing of images. they had been engaged in learning the new technologies and acted in a minor way to advance them. but the real lesson, as laczkowski (2019) noted, was not making sufficiently bold changes. in discerning the stage of the strategy, a church leader concluding from this analogue “to read the signs of the times” might fail to realize that this is an observation that applies only to the start of a response. other stages and strategies are required that must also be relevant to the contextual limits. in terms of affecting strategy, they must navigate the differing structural authority or assumed motivations that will permit or inhibit certain actions, as jim collins warns in his book applying business principles to social sectors (collins 2006). i hope the reader, with their own prior view of the famous kodak story, is now persuaded to apply the spectrum of interpretation to find more adequate responses to analogous situations they may face. let us test it further with one final example, this time not directed at congregations but “church office.” the kingdom of god is like toyota. in 1987, toyota suffered serious reputational damage due to media reports about a “stuck accelerator” which resulted in two fatal crashes. unfortunately, these reports came immediately before a global financial crisis. the event impacted toyota’s market share, but the coincident financial crisis reduced their capacity to respond. it threatened to crush the company. what did they do? did they try to silence the newspapers? did they hope it would blow over so that their historic brand-strength might see them through? e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 68 no, they apologized immediately and publicly, issued safety recalls for millions of their vehicles at great cost to themselves in a time of fiscal crisis, promised that “the safety of your loved ones” was still their first priority, gave full collaboration to an independent investigation (they were eventually exonerated), and quickly introduced a new model with a new name and withdrew that muchpublicized car. over the next few years their market share actually increased over what it had been. so, at a contextual level, is toyota a parable for what churches should do to recover their general reputation in public due to cover-ups of child sexual abuse, removal of babies, support of donald trump, or their public campaign to reject “gay marriage”? should they manage themselves to apologize in public, set up internal ethical safeguards, and try something new for the sake of demoralized innocent clergy and parishes? or is this their kodak moment and they should completely reinvent themselves? a further examination of the context will help the interpreter. newspapers and politicians flocked to accuse this foreign-owned company. however, toyota did not choose first to stand and rebut those voices nor lament their place in history. behind the scenes, as they did the public things mentioned, toyota increased their support to their dealer network, providing information and discount incentives to get them through (silverstein 2016, 189–204). they did later contest several malicious legal cases, but they did not do that first. in other words, the way they responded to the times of trial was more important in winning public trust than the vocal opposition of media and politicians and the safety issue itself. the people factor came into priority before strategy could be decided. as collins said, “first who, then what” (collins 2001, 41). this is not a lesson learned well enough by churches. with rapidly declining “market share” in public participation, the mainstream churches have generally defended their public position and left their congregations and clergy (aka dealer networks) to soldier on with the demands of new ethical regulations but without new support. episcopal and pentecostal churches had the structure for rapid responses like toyota, much more so than the congregational ian robinson—business analogies at church 69 or democratic churches, but they have been conspicuous in selfdefence. there are some exceptions. consequently, clergy are experiencing a dramatic loss of public respect. morale is low and church officials seem merely to want to ride out the storm (stonestreet 2019). the toyota parable hinges on their ability to state and practice their core purpose in their place in society—“the safety of your family,” not making money. the latter serves the former. mainstream churches have mostly lost confidence to state their core purpose—the gospel—when they make a core statement it is most often about themselves: church growth. can churches learn to state in public a similar core purpose? work towards an answer to this question, perhaps: why does god still have a church here and now? these parables are both provocative and do not within themselves provide all the answers to the questions they raise. we have been able to describe their similarities and differences in terms of the priority to people, alignment with core purpose, reading the nuance of context and its power structures, engaging the provocation to learning both in stage and strategy. the result has been nuanced, informed, responsible, and limited, but sufficient to take the reader to the next stage of response. at that stage, the same spectrum of principles will again inform their discernment. moving away from parables, we can go one further missiological step. with light like this and considering the place of analogue in cross-sector learning, churches could be well placed to flourish in this fast-changing environment. their voluntary commitment has traditionally been high because the gospel directly implies that the generosity of god’s love requires a response of generosity of time and funds. the reign of god assumes an ecology (body of christ) of nurture and trust-love and not just linear structures. management authority jim collins said that while churches are low in “executive authority,” they are high in “influential strength,” and adds, remarkably, that they thus demonstrate “true leadership.” there is an irony in all this. social sector organizations increasingly look to business for leadership models and e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 70 talent, yet i suspect we will find more true leadership in the social sectors than the business sector (collins 2006, 12). we note his claim that analogical learning between sectors can work in both directions, subject to the same spectrum of hermeneutics (bolster 2008, 20–22). the two-way street of this hermeneutic is a valuable outcome of these studies. it means the church can speak constructively, not just ecclesially or morally, in many more ways into the lives of business and, as collins describes, it will be a rich gift. conclusion from this study of parable, context, and analogy, seven principles have emerged for the critical and creative interpretation of analogues. one way to understand this is that there are seven colors in the spectrum of light. so, in any reading from other cultures or sectors, the degrees of sameness in the analogue and target can be mapped or patterned by looking through the colors of this prism. light can be described, merged, and combined in myriad ways, but this paper echoes the warnings of jesus to see the full light. it proposes a prism that shows how different insights can be combined to make a beam of light with more integrity than the sad examples with which i began. the seven colors must be applied iteratively in reflecting on every step of change. high-order parables can be found using these seven principles as lenses and will illuminate many leadership insights that are fresh yet biblical. these seven principles may prevent the church from taking analogy too far, too little, or too analytically. even more important, these principles can provide a platform for developmental learning of leadership, a practical wisdom that can turn the church around. further research is needed to position this spectrum of analogical interpretation in more detail in the larger bodies of theology and missiology. one could add an examination of the sectors of education and the military, sport, and biology. more work is also ian robinson—business analogies at church 71 needed to differentiate the systemic needs of community-facing churches, experimental initiatives, the birthing of new ideas, and the more aligned synod-type structures. this paper sought to highlight the confidence that the highorder learning of analogical interpretation has had in the theological and missiological history of the church. it has analysed together the epistemology of analogy and the hermeneutics of parables and found seven principles that can assist careful learning from emerging trends in the wider context and apply them to the leadership needs of the church. they can nourish a leader’s ongoing work and enhance the effectiveness and fidelity of a congregation and a denomination. bibliography anthony, s. d. “kodak’s downfall wasn’t about technology.” harvard business review, july 15, 2016. https//hbr.org/2016/07/kodaks-downfall-wasntabout-technology. bevans, s. b. models of contextual theology. maryknoll ny: orbis, 1992. bolster, m. c. “the good to great business model—does jim collins advice work for non-profit organizations? does it apply in seminaries?” intrust, autumn 2008. https//intrust.org/magazine/issues/autumn-2008/thegood-to-great-business-model. burton, w. h., iii. “examining the relationship between leadership behaviors of senior pastors and church growth.” phd diss., northcentral university, 2010. chalmers, d. j., r. m. french, and d. r. hofstadter. “high-level perception, representation and analogy. a critique of artificial intelligence methodology.” center for research on concepts and cognition, indiana university, march 1991. collins, j. good to great. new york: harvard business, 2001. ———. good to great and the social sectors: why business thinking is not the answer. new york: random house business, 2006. donovan, v. j. christianity rediscovered. 2nd ed. maryknoll, ny: orbis, 1982. forbus, k., d. gentner, a. markman, and r. ferguson. “analogy just looks like high level perception—why a domain general approach to analogical mapping is right.” journal of experimental artificial intelligence, 2021. goheen, m. w. introducing christian mission today—scripture, history, and issues. downers grove, illinois: ivp academic, 2014. heick, t. “a guide for teaching with analogies” teachthought, 2019. https.// www.teachthought.com/critical-thinking/types-of-analogies/. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 72 hines, c. d. “a study of pastors, their leadership and the results of their churches.” the journal of applied christian leadership 7 (spring 2013) 1. hunter, a. m. according to john. london: scm press, 1968. jacobs, j. a., and s. frickel. “interdisciplinarity: a critical assessment.” annual review of sociology 35 (2009) 43–65. jeffrey, p. “smoothing the waters. observations on the process of crossdisciplinary research collaboration.” social studies of science 33 (2003) 4. kouzes, j. m., and b. z. posner. “the five practices of exemplary leadership. how ordinary people make extraordinary things happen.” in encyclopedia of management theory, edited by b. h. kessler. los angeles: sage, 2013. laczkowski, k, tan, t., and m. winter. “the numbers behind successful transformations.” mckinsey quarterly, october 2019. moutter, s., j. hodson, and j. mccollum. “all in: from recovery to agility at spark new zealand,” mckinsey quarterly, june 2019. munir, k. “the rise and fall of kodak’s moment.” cambridge university research news, march 2012. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/therise-and-fall-of-kodaks-moment. ortony, a. metaphor and thought. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press, 2013. schottroff, l. the parables of jesus. minneapolis: fortress press, 2006. silverstein, m. j., et al. rocket: eight lessons to secure infinite growth. the boston consulting group, new york: mcgraw hill education, 2016. snodgrass, k. r. stories with intent: a comprehensive guide to the parables of jesus. 2nd ed. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2018. stewart, m. h., jr. “an examination of the relationship between exemplary leadership practices of senior pastors and church growth measures.” phd diss., new orleans baptist theological seminary, 2012. stonestreet, j., and r. rivera. “the declining respect for clergy: cultural trends and self-inflicted wounds.” breakpoint, thursday, august 22, 2019. https.//www.christianheadlines.com/columnists/breakpoint/thedeclining-respect-for-clergy-cultural-trends-and-self-inflicted-wounds. html. taylor, l. and n. nash. learning from innovation—sharing learning from innovative projects within the uniting church. north parramatta, australia: uniting mission and education, 2018. tracy, d. the analogical imagination: christian theology and the culture of pluralism, new york: crossroad, 1981. wrogemann, h. intercultural theology. translated by karl e bohmer. downers grove, il: ivp academic, 2016. 51 leading from the liturgy ordained ministers as facilitators of a communal process of interpretation rein den hertog rein den hertog is a minister of the word in amsterdam for the christelijke gereformeerde kerken in nederland (cgkn). he is also chair of the commission of home missions of the cgkn. currently he is pursuing a phd-research at the vrije universiteit in amsterdam on reformed theology of ministry from the perspective of the missio dei. abstract this article seeks to contribute to the reflection on ecclesial ministry from the perspective of the missio dei. the gateway chosen is the unconventional image of ecclesial ministry as depicted in the polish film corpus christi. jan komasa, the director, paints the protagonist as a facilitator of a communal process of interpretation and reconciliation through which the core of the gospel becomes concretely visible in social reality. this cinematographic portrayal of ecclesial ministry is then used to look at the situation regarding ministry in a small reformed denomination in the netherlands. the issues highlighted in corpus christi also play a role in these churches. to see if the imagination of corpus christi can also be made fruitful for thinking through a reformed theology e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 52 of ministry, two steps are then taken. first, it will be shown that within the reformed tradition there are starting points for the view of the ordained minister as a facilitator the process of interpretation. then, using the thoughts of michael moynagh, the article explores how this vision of ministry can be made fruitful for the current missionary situation in the west. the article concludes with three elements needed to implement the image of the ordained minister as an interpretive guide. keywords: homelessness; corpus christi; film; interpretive guide; michael moynagh; ordained ministry introduction in the polish film corpus christi director jan komasa tells the story of daniel, a young convict who is paroled and sent to a rural village to work in the local lumber mill. once daniel arrives in the village, however, he poses as a clergyman and is asked to replace the old pastor who is ill and must temporarily leave the village for treatment. although he initially accepts his new “calling” hesitantly, daniel gradually grows into his role and becomes a beloved pastor. the strength of daniel’s ministry manifests itself particularly in his unorthodox handling of the drama that has recently taken place in the village. about a year before his arrival, a terrible car accident occurred in which seven villagers were killed. six young people, under the influence of alcohol and drugs, and an adult villager with a history of drinking had collided head-on. the tragedy created a deep rift between the parents of the adolescents and the widow of the solo driver. this rift is reflected in the fact that the driver’s body is not buried in the village cemetery and his picture does not hang at a memorial in the middle of the village. initially, daniel encounters great resistance when he brings up the accident and the underlying accusations, but by the end of the film it appears that his unconventional approach has resulted in a (beginning of) reconciliation between the widow of the solo driver and the parents of the other victims. unfortunately for daniel, he has already been exposed at that point and must return to the detention centre to face his own demons.1 1 the violent ending of the film is puzzling. once back in the prison, a bloody struggle unfolds between daniel and another prisoner who is targeting him. daniel gets the upper rein den hertog—leading from the liturgy 53 corpus christi lends itself to various interpretations and can be understood in different ways. for example, the film can be seen in light of the contemporary post-modern search for identity, with daniel struggling to define who he is. for the purposes of this article, however, i would like to take a different approach and read the film as an entry point for reflection on the reformed theology of ministry from the perspective of the missio dei. it may not seem very sensible to begin an article on the reformed theology of ministry by discussing a motion picture about a roman catholic pseudo-priest, but i am convinced that corpus christi can be helpful in imagining what (reformed) ordained ministry can mean in today’s post-christian culture. route the route of this article is as follows: after briefly reflecting on the main issues emerging from corpus christi, i want to turn my attention to the reformed denomination to which i belong, the christelijke gereformeerde kerken in nederland (cgkn).2 with the imagination of corpus christi in mind, i briefly reflect on the main challenges of ordained ministry in these churches. then, with the fruits of this in view, i pause for a moment to consider the historical roots of the reformed theology of ministry, to see if there are historical starting points for further reflection. i will then return to the present and give my attention to what michael moynagh writes about missional leadership. i conclude by describing some steps that i believe are needed to improve the practice of reformed ordained ministry in a post-christian context. hand in this struggle but is pulled away from the fight by one of his fellow inmates before fatally injuring his opponent. daniel later manages to escape from the prison. opinions differ on the interpretation of this final scene. does komasa want to show that reality is more unruly than the ideal as it took shape in the polish village? or is the emphasis on the fact that daniel finally escapes his prison? however, since it is not directly relevant to the subject of this article, i will not go into it further. 2 the cgkn is a relatively small reformed denomination with approximately 70,000 members and 181 congregations spread over the netherlands. its origins lay in the secession movement of 1834 (dutch: afscheiding), but it was not until 1892 that the cgkn was formed in response to the emergence of the dutch reformed churches (gkn) under the leadership of abraham kuyper. confessionally, the cgkn are based upon the so-called three forms of unity: the heidelberg catechism, the belgic confession, and the canons of dordt). spiritually the cgkn are characterized by a pietistic slant based on historical affiliation with the spirituality of the “further reformation” that emphasized the personal appropriation of faith. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 54 issues from corpus christi i suggest there are three main areas of concern that emerge from corpus christi. mechanical vs authentic ministry first, director jan komasa paints a sorry picture of the state of church ministry. the pastor who is to be temporarily replaced by daniel is an unhealthy old man who has fallen into the clutches of alcohol and has a cynical view of his own parish, which he sees as mostly made up of villagers who do not believe and only go to church out of habit. in addition, it is precisely at the instigation of the old priest that the village turns a blind eye to the unprocessed trauma and the underlying reproaches. it was his idea not to bury the solo driver in the local cemetery and not to hang the picture of him with those of the other victims. the subtext is clear: the church and the pastor are unwilling and incompetent to deal with the real issues of the village and are there merely as irrelevant “givens”. even the rituals in the church are accompanied by computerized electronics that leave little room for spontaneity and authenticity. the film presents the image of a church and ministers struggling with their relevance. in the face of this sad state of church ministry, daniel embodies a very different form of priesthood. for one thing, daniel cannot be caught performing formal rituals in a mechanical manner, but rather his actions are characterized by a high degree of spontaneity and impulsiveness. thus, komasa creates the image of a priest, albeit a pseudo one, who is not caught up in mechanical rituals and procedures but, on the contrary, consciously embodies the message of the bible and church rituals. (ir)relevance? the second, and most pressing, issue runs from this. the old pastor was unable or even unwilling to tackle the great unprocessed trauma and the underlying mutual accusations of his fellow villagers. the church is located in the middle of the village but its minister dodges the problem in the heart of the community. in fact, the old pastor’s sigh about the unbelief of the villagers is a self-fulfilling prophecy: how can they possibly believe in the power of the gospel of reconciliation when the church itself is giving it a wide berth by neglecting the deep rift within the community? rein den hertog—leading from the liturgy 55 in the person of daniel, it is evident that things can also be different. in many ways he is not an exemplary pastor: he smokes, uses soft drugs, drinks and has sexual intercourse; but when it comes to the core of the gospel, he does not compromise. regularly komasa portrays daniel as a christ figure, suggesting that in the young ex-convict, unlike the old pastor, something of the gospel does become visible. daniel addresses the pain and the irreconcilability, even if he encounters resistance in doing so. he does not shy away from publicly confronting the villagers with their own dirt-spewing letters toward the widow of the solo driver. even when the mayor calls him to order he does not want to give in, yet for the sake of a much-needed reconciliation, he is willing to risk his own status and person. the result is that daniel, as a facilitator of the reconciliation process in the village, ensures that the gospel is not only heard, but also becomes visible in reconciled relationships. daniel’s ministry serves a vision of the good life where reconciliation in mutual relationships is central and social exclusion is combated. christian faith according to daniel is not an individual matter focused on the inner psychological state but serves the good of the community (marsh, 2018: 167, 170). liturgical a third element offered by corpus christi is the fact that komasa does not dismiss church rituals as irrelevant, but rather has the most crucial moments take place right around the sacramental acts. confession, baptism, extreme unction and the eucharist all occur as pivotal moments when the villagers come to deeper understanding. this eventually culminates in the mass celebration after the funeral of the solo driver during which actual reconciliation within the village begins to take shape. in daniel’s hands, the rituals and sacraments are not formal acts, but visible expressions of the gospel. from the liturgical embedding of ministry, daniel allows the gospel to spread far and wide throughout the community of the village. summing up komasa’s corpus christi provides a good entry point for thinking about ecclesial ministry. although the protagonist daniel is not in any way working toward a preconceived plan, he is clearly leading the community in an interpretive process in which the scope and impact of the gospel of reconciliation becomes e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 56 concretely visible in the restoration of damaged relationships. daniel, as someone who has personally experienced the dark side of life, acts from a vision of the good life and tries to bring the community along with him. he does this by giving himself to the community of the village and by confronting them – through proclamation, sacramental rituals and personal attention (pastoral care) – with issues that undermine the good life of the community. remarkably enough, daniel never makes an explicit call to reconciliation, and nowhere does he give an order for rapprochement, but he lets the parishioners take the step to reconciliation themselves. he does not force, but invites to participate in the process of reconciliation, though sometimes rather clumsily. from the liturgy, daniel is a facilitator of the communal process of interpretation. the situation in the cgkn i now focus on the situation of the denomination to which i myself, as a minister of the word, belong: the christian reformed churches in the netherlands. does the picture of the church painted in corpus christi also apply to the cgkn? and could daniel’s unconventional approach also represent a possible way forward within the tradition of the cgkn? in doing so, it must of course be remembered that this denomination belongs to a different church tradition than the roman catholic parish of corpus christi. irrelevance in 2021 jan van ’t spijker published a study of the cgkn in which he specifically sought an answer to the question of whether and how the structure of the denomination served its calling to bear witness to the gospel. spijker focuses his research on the question to what extent the concept of missio dei is reflected in the concrete ecclesiology of the cgkn. it is precisely this emphasis on missio dei that makes his research relevant to this article, since the concept explicitly calls attention to what “god is doing in and beyond the church in his recreational renewing works” and therefore “theology must develop an openness which reflects on what god is doing in the world, in the existing culture and in society, through the spirit” (spijker, 2012: 191). in other words: the church should not only focus on the individual salvation of believers, but should instead focus on concrete realities of culture and society in order to connect with the work of god there. rein den hertog—leading from the liturgy 57 in his research, however, spijker clearly shows that the cgkn is characterized precisely by a strong pietistic undertone in which the focus is primarily on “individual, spiritual (non-physical), post-mortem categories” and in which “physical and communal aspects of salvation that are already taking place in today’s world are only secondary” (2012: 190).3 spijker’s observations align with the belief that the concept of missio dei frees churches from an unhealthy focus on their own survival and, on the contrary, directs them towards the concrete well-being of the context in which they have been given a place. where churches are guided by the missio dei perspective, they are also explicitly focused on the flourishing of their context (cf. niemandt, 2020). however, there seems to be a real danger that the cgkn, through its individualistic and spiritual focus – by analogy with the church in corpus christi – will make itself irrelevant to the surrounding culture by avoiding the questions of society and culture. where in corpus christi the problems of the surrounding culture and society became very concretely visible in a collective unprocessed trauma resulting in an additional irreconcilable separation between fellow villagers, there the questions for the cgkn are perhaps somewhat less specific, but certainly no less urgent. i am thinking of the questions in the areas of sexuality, gender, economic justice and ecology.4 when the cgkn does not address the issues in these (sub)areas, irrelevance is lurking. only by addressing these questions can the cgkn contribute to the good life of the church and its context. 3 spijker acknowledges the fact that there is a clear line from the pietistic perspective to social and diaconal engagement. however, because it is not linked to a theology of the kingdom and is associated with a one-sided perception of the eschatological tension between the “already” and the “not yet”, this pietistic slant, according to him, leads to an individual, spiritual (non-physical) and post-mortem conception of salvation. 4 the issue of gender is a sensitive one within the cgkn. in the week after easter 2022, the synod of the cgkn met and made the decision not to open ecclesial ministry to women. this caused a wave of outrage within a great part of the cgkn. regarding ecology, i refer to paul schrader’s 2017 the film first reformed of paul schrader from 2017 which tells the story of pastor ernst toller who is confronted with a climate activist in his small congregation. in addition to the personal struggles this brings, the film also exposes the impotence of the church to speak out in this area. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 58 wrestling with ministry the film corpus christi can be interpreted as a stimulus to rethink the task and form of ordained ministry in the church. the image of the impotent and sick pastor is symbolic of a powerless and weak ecclesial ministry. this need for reorientation is felt within the cgkn as well. at the synod of 2019 there were no less than ten (partial) reports that dealt to a greater or lesser degree with the question of the essence and form of ecclesial ministry.5 these reports range from fundamental reflection on ecclesial ministry to some practical issues. from the reports the picture emerges that within the cgkn about ecclesial ministry there is a struggle with concepts like authority, calling, representation, collegiality, and the priesthood of all believers. also, in several reports the call is made to think through ecclesial ministry explicitly from the missio dei. there is not enough space here to deal with all the reports mentioned separately, but the picture is clear: within the cgkn there is a great deal of uncertainty regarding ecclesial ministry, and this uncertainty is explicitly related to the need to rethink theology of ministry from the perspective of the missio dei. if this uncertainty is not addressed, ecclesial ministry within the cgkn also risks a high degree of irrelevance. liturgical rooting in corpus christi, church rituals are the key moments when people come to an understanding or there is a breakthrough in the process of reconciliation. ecclesial ministry and the (liturgical) rituals of the church are closely connected. the uniqueness and the expressive power of ministry is visible in a condensed way in the sacraments.6 this can easily be interpreted as an underlining of the current cultural need for rituals, but from a theological perspective there is also much to be said for it. after all, within most church traditions, ecclesial ministry and the ministry of sacraments are closely linked. recently the synod of the cgkn pronounced that the ministry of the offices was fully reserved for the ministers 5 9.35 p.85-93 cie 7 rapport 13 ambten, retrieved from: https://cgk.nl/project/rapporten/ (download date: september 26, 2022). 6 roman catholic sacramental theology and the reformed doctrine of the sacraments differ widely. however, due to limited space, i will not elaborate on that in this article. https://cgk.nl/project/rapporten/ rein den hertog—leading from the liturgy 59 of the word.7 in doing so, the synod was loyal to the reformed tradition in which from the beginning the right to minister the sacraments was reserved for ordained ministers. the term liturgical rooting will not be immediately associated with a reformed theology of the offices, yet there is ample reason to maintain this wording. however, it must be kept in mind that, from an ecumenical point of view, liturgy does not only refer to the ministry of the sacraments, but to the whole of the proclamation of the word and the administration of sacraments (baptism, euchairst, and ministry e §27; borght, 2007: 230; koffeman, 2014: 85-6). summing up looking through the spectacles of corpus christi at the cgkn, it is striking that many of the struggles are shared. the looming irrelevance of the church that fails to address the questions at hand stands out most, but so do the uncertainties around the essence and form of ecclesial ministry. komasa’s film is helpful in visualizing challenges that lie behind the formal language of church reports. also, his emphasis on the ritual concentration of ecclesial ministry aligns with the reformed belief that ordained ministry and administration of the sacraments belong together. the question that remains open is whether komasa’s portrayal of ministry can be made fruitful for the cgkn. of course, i do not mean to suggest that ministers within the church should engage in drinking, drugs, tobacco and extramarital sex. instead, i am referring to the way daniel, in his capacity as a priest, leads the community in a process of awareness and reconciliation. the image of the minister as a facilitator of the communal interpretation process is far removed from the role currently assigned to ministers within the cgkn. with some exaggeration it can be said that ministers within the cgkn are trained to shape the interpretationand embodiment-process on their own. the interpretation of the gospel and its relevance to the community is a matter for the pastors who, as ministers of the word, expound the word from the pulpit. the community’s role in listening to scripture is generally limited to attentive listening during worship services. of course, there are occasional sermon 7 https://www.rd.nl/artikel/971399-mogen-cgk-ouderlingen-straks-sacramentenbedienen. https://www.rd.nl/artikel/971399-mogen-cgk-ouderlingen-straks-sacramenten-bedienen https://www.rd.nl/artikel/971399-mogen-cgk-ouderlingen-straks-sacramenten-bedienen e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 60 discussions and various topics are addressed at various bible study groups, but by and large the interpretation is on the preacher’s desk. it is not without reason that people often speak of a solo-pastor and a pastor’s church (dutch: domineeskerk). is it any wonder that when the community has hardly any role in the interpretation process, the church members feel little involved and can get the feeling that the church is a pastor’s hobby? is it any wonder that the minister has a somewhat cynical view of the congregation when the congregation is merely a passive listener? historical starting points there are, as is my suggestion, sufficient starting points within the reformed tradition to think about a different interpretation of ordained ministry. i will mention two examples from the early days of the reformed tradition. martin bucer’s strasbourg ideal the first example is the christian communities in strasbourg that existed under the leadership of martin bucer from 1547. bucer and his colleagues had until then always moved within the line of what was expected of the church within the sacral community of the pre-modern city state. this loyalty meant a break with roman catholic hierarchical ecclesiology on the one hand. on the other hand, however, the magistracy was afraid of too many anabaptist influences, leaving bucer and his fellow church men little room to shape to the church as a community in which the priesthood of all believers was given concrete form. from 1547, bucer therefore decided to form small-scale communities of dedicated believers within the existing church structure (see bellardi, 1934; spijker, 1996: 309ff.). these small communities embodied the ecclesiastical ideal of bucer. in a letter from 1547 in which he countered some objections against the christian communities in strasbourg, bucer laid out what he had in mind. based upon ephesians 4 he emphasized that the building of the community is not only a prerogative of ordained ministry, but of the entire congregation. therefore, there should not only be public meetings in which the gospel is preached by the ministers of the word, but also specific gatherings of the community in which every member can share the spiritual gifts they received according to 1 corinthians 14 (spijker, 1996: 331). rein den hertog—leading from the liturgy 61 the picture that emerges is that of small communities of dedicated members who were united in a communal process of spiritual discernment. interpretation of scripture was not confined to ordained ministry but a feature of the entire congregation as a community of interpretation. łaski’s strangers’ church a second example concerns the so-called strangers’ church in london under the leadership of john łaski. this strangers’ church formed a remarkable phenomenon on the reformed landscape of europe in the 16th century. whereas other reformed churches (such as strasbourg and geneva) were largely dependent on the whims of the city councils, the strangers’ church enjoyed a large degree of independence. this fact, combined with the fact that the members of the congregation joined voluntarily, gives the stranger’s church a unique position, which moreover has more in common with the current church situation in western europe, than the people’s churches in strasbourg and geneva (see becker, 2007; muylaert, 2021; pettegree, 1986; springer, 2007). also, in the strangers’ church the community was fully involved in the interpretation process. here i am thinking mainly of the so-called prophetia. for example, the french-speaking part of the congregation met every tuesday for faith instruction in their own language. at the beginning of the meeting, a pastor, an elder, or another designated member of the congregation explained a text from the bible. after this person finished his explanation, another member would follow, also explaining the portion, who in turn would be followed by the next. this went on until there was no one left to give explanations. the meeting was then closed by the one who had opened it. according to łaski, the abundance of spiritual gifts was evident in the many scripture explanations and the resulting warnings and consolations.8 the purpose of listening to the various explanations was to instruct the community in the interpretation of scripture. it is noteworthy that during these thursday meetings not only the pastors were allowed to give explanations of the bible, but also the elders and deacons and even some other designated members of the congregation. 8 ‘manifeste enim conspicitur opulentia donorum spiritus sancti in ecclesia in concordi multarum interpretationum circa unum quemlibet scripture locus varietate et exhortationum simul ac consolationum multarum inde petitarum accomodatione’, kuyper, 1866: ii.104. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 62 łaski’s strangers’ church embodied the ideal of bucer’s christian communities: small interpretive communities of dedicated members who were united in a communal process of spiritual discernment (spijker, 1996: 471).9 michael moynagh’s conversational ecclesiology the two examples above make it clear that the reformed tradition contains sufficient starting points for thinking about the church as an interpretive community, with the ordained minister leading from the liturgy. yet, of course, there is a big difference between the situation in the sixteenth century and the current situation of the churches in western europe. whereas churches were more or less at the heart of society in the sixteenth century, this is far from the case today. the church has been pushed back to the margin and is forced to think deeply about its place in society. this implies that the church as a community of interpretation is not only faced with the task of interpreting scripture together, but also the local context. in this respect, the thoughts of michael moynagh are helpful. moynagh is a minister within the fresh expressions stream of anglicanism and serves as director of network development and consultant on theology and practice. he is sometimes referred to as the “theologian of fresh expressions of church”.10 moynagh (2017) develops a framework of innovation for churches. this framework is based on two pillars. the first pillar concerns innovation as a theologically based phenomenon that propels the church through change towards god’s coming kingdom. the second pillar concerns the conversational nature of organizations. this second pillar in particular is important in the context of this article. moynagh emphasizes time and again the conversational nature of the church. following the mission shaped church report, he defines the church in terms of 9 i could also point to other examples from the protestant tradition, for instance those parts within the protestant tradition that, inspired in part by philip jacob spener’s pia desiderata, have emphasized the communal interpretation of scripture, the priesthood of all believers and the reform of theological education. however, i limit myself to these two early examples because they make clear that from the very beginning, the concept of the church as a community of interpretation has been present within the reformed tradition. 10 https://freshexpressions.org.uk/theology/. rein den hertog—leading from the liturgy 63 four interlocking relationships: with god, with the community, with the world and with the wider church.11 church leadership the conversational nature of the church emerges not only in the essence of the church, but also when it comes to its leadership. leadership according to moynagh is not a static given, but a dynamic group process. church leaders should learn how to draw on the gifts of others in areas where they are less qualified themselves. leadership as a dynamic process casts the role of the leader in new ecclesial communities in a different light. instead of developing a vision and imposing it on a community, the leader helps the organization to make sense of what it is experiencing. this does not mean that the organization has no focus, but rather that developing a vision is a conversational group process, with the leader helping the team to make sense of what is happening. thus, the leader’s role is primarily in the area of sense-making. church leaders have an essential role in safeguarding the quality of the conversations in the process of sense-making. although they are not responsible for everything that is said, they do have a great influence. the leader’s task is to encourage the participants and improve their conversations. thus, the most crucial function of leaders is to safeguard the sense-making conversations (moynagh, 2017: 353). the most important part of sense-making is “to craft a narrative that connects what is emerging from the kingdom to the team’s god-given values and history, however short that history is.” here, the language used is very important because it forms and expresses the underlying mindset of the organization (2017: 32-3). thus, the leader must be able to help the team connect the narrative of the church to the kingdom of god and find the appropriate language to do so. 11 according to moynagh (2017: 241), using the four words up, in, out and of, as the mission shaped church report does, is unfortunate, because they presume a rather onedirectional view of these relationships. moynagh prefers to speak of relationships, since they flow in two directions. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 64 the interpretive community and the role of the minister the image of the church as a community of interpretation, as developed by bucer and łaski, surfaces again in moynagh’s thoughts on ecclesiology. however, in his case not only the bible and the christian tradition are objects of interpretation, but also the context in which the congregation finds itself. in moynagh’s model, the minister of the word is an interpretive guide who helps the congregation as an interpretive community to understand the narrative of the kingdom in its context and find its place in it. this means that the minister, based on his knowledge of and feeling for the bible and tradition, should facilitate the interpretive dialogue within the community. this is fundamentally a two-way street. participating in public life as christian communities and individuals automatically brings with it implicit and explicit interpretive activities to which the minister should attend carefully, since they may unveil previously unexplored meanings of the gospel. this listening attitude is also necessary to then relate the normative christian sources to the concrete lives of the community and its members so that the gospel can land in their reality.12 the minister of the word, from the liturgy, plays a leading role in the process of interpretation, but it is fundamentally the congregation itself that must listen to what the spirit says to the congregation (roest, 2018: 21). in line with augustine, it is the task of ordained ministry to keep the (newly formed) community focused on the common objects of love in a communal process of discernment.13 moynagh’s thoughts on leadership seem to fit well with komasa’s portrayal of daniel as is a facilitator of the communal interpretation process from the liturgy. moreover, they fit well with the two examples from the beginning of the reformed tradition. moynagh’s proposal therefore deserves to be taken seriously by churches struggling with the essence and practice of ordained ministry. 12 the concept of the interpretive guide comes from gerkin, 1986: 98 ff. and is further developed in osmer, 2008. 13 augustine, 1972: 19.24: “a people is the association of a multitude of rational beings united by a common agreement on the objects of their love”. besides theological arguments, contextual arguments can also play a role here. in the present post-christian era, in which churches are increasingly small communities that are moreover made up of dedicated members who are used to being heard and who are more aware of their context than in the past, the time is passes that the ministers of the word were solely responsible for the interpretation of the gospel. also, from a cultural point of view, it is recommended to take seriously the image of the interpretive guide. rein den hertog—leading from the liturgy 65 towards a new practice the image of the congregation as a community of interpretation seems to be a promising starting point for a renewed reflection on reformed theology of ministry in a post-christian context. on the one hand, the concept is rooted in the reformed tradition; on the other, it is tailored to the current missionary situation in which congregations are challenged to interpret their own context as well. the question that remains is what is needed to stimulate development in this direction. and are there any concrete starting points for this in the practice of the cgkn? in my opinion, three elements are decisive when it comes to answering this question. in random order, they are the following. first, there will have to be an in-depth reflection on the position of the minister. next, the results of this will also have to be taken into account in the design of ministerial training. finally, congregations themselves will also have to be supported in the search for a new practice. this has three implications. first, there is a need for churches and denominations to profoundly reflect on their perception of the ministry of the word. the days when the ordained minister as a solo pastor was alone responsible for the exegesis of scripture are over. reformed denominations should learn again to take the charismatic character of the church seriously. moreover, the missionary dimension of the ministry of the word will also have to be further elaborated and substantiated, especially in view of the contextualization of the congregation in its own surroundings. within the denomination of the cgkn, the first beginnings of such reflection are already visible. i already noted that several reports on the synod’s table speak of a need for reflection on the pastorate. several reports argue for a renewed reflection on the doctrine of ministry from the missio dei. in addition, one report examines the social trends that influence the pastoral office and concludes that more teamwork is clearly needed. this is not yet the step towards the minister of the word as an interpretive guide, but it is clear that a change is underway in the perception of the ministry of the word. this reflection should, however, not only – and probably not even primarily – be limited to voluminous synod reports or in-depth theological literature. second, transformed perception of the ministry of the word naturally has implications for the way future ministers are trained. within the education of ministers more attention will have to be paid to the missionary dimension of all church practices, to working within teams and to guiding communities in developing and implementing a missionary vision and strategy. in their training e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 66 future pastors should be given concrete tools to lead the congregation as interpretive guides. this means that they will not only learn to interpret the bible with a view to the weekly sermon, but also with a view to fostering the communal interpretation process. in addition, future pastors will need to be trained in reading the social and cultural context in order to lead the congregation in the search for a credible embodiment of the gospel in its own environment. in doing so, it seems to me of eminent importance that this training should not only take place in the ivory tower of the academy but be intertwined with the concrete ecclesial practice of local congregations from the very beginning. signs of change are also observable in this area in the cgkn. the then rector of the theological university of apeldoorn, the educational institute of the cgkn, h.j. selderhuis delivered the opening speech for the academic year dated sept. 3, 2018. in it, selderhuis mentioned that there are questions about the theological and practical baggage that prospective ministers of the word are given. are they adequately prepared for missionary tasks, for the practice of ministry every day? the missionary character of congregations will play an increasingly important role. evidently, then, the training of pastors must take this into account. this also applies to the cooperation that will become more important in the future. training for teamwork, peer-to-peer coaching and professionalism is a must, according to selderhuis.14 last, but certainly not least, a changing perception of the church and the ministry of the word will need to be developed within local congregations. to some extent, this development has already begun because increasing empowerment of ‘ordinary’ church members, especially in urban areas, makes it progressively more difficult in practice to sustain the role of solo pastor. however, this change will have to be encouraged not only because of cultural influences, but also from the theological belief that the interpretation of scripture belongs to the entire community, and that the community as a whole should seek a concrete embodiment of the gospel in its own environment. 14 9.30 p.1-77 rapport commissie kleine kerken, retrieved from: https://cgk.nl/project/ rapporten/ (download date january 5, 2022), 46-48. https://cgk.nl/project/rapporten/ https://cgk.nl/project/rapporten/ rein den hertog—leading from the liturgy 67 on this point, too, there are promising developments within the cgkn.15 for instance, from the national commission for missions, so-called missionary learning paths have been offered in which congregations were guided in the search for a credible embodiment of the gospel in their own context. at the moment, it is not yet clear what the fruit of these trajectories has been, but that there is an increasing demand for guidance at the grassroots level indicates a turnaround. references augustine. 1972. the city of god, knowles, d. (ed.), bettenson, h. (transl.). harmondsworth: penguin books. baptism, eucharist, and ministry. 1982 (faith and order paper no. 111). geneva: world council of churches. becker, j. 2007. gemeindeordnung und kirchenzucht: johannes a lascos kirchenordnung für london (1555) und die reformierte konfessionsbildung. leiden/boston: brill. bellardi, w. 1934. die geschichte der “christliche gemeinschaften” in strasbourg (1546/1550): der versuch einer “ zweiten reformation”. leipzig: heinsius. borght, e. a. j. g. van der. 2007. theology of ministry: a reformed contribution to an ecumenical dialogue. leiden/boston: brill. gerkin, c. v. 1986. widening the horizons: pastoral responses to a fragmented society. philadelphia: westminster press. koffeman, l. j. 2014. in order to serve: an ecumenical introduction to church polity. münster: lit verlag. kuyper, a. (ed.). 1866. joannis a lasco opera tam edita quam inedita duobus voluminibus comprehensa. 2 vols. amsterdam/the hague. marsh, c. 2018. a cultural theology of salvation. oxford: oxford university press. 15 a clear example of a congregation in the cgkn that sees itself as a community of interpretation is the young amsterdam congregation via nova (https://vianova-amsterdam.nl). this community started in the first decade of the 21st century as a church plant aimed at young professionals in the urban environment of the dutch capital but has recently gone through a profound process of reflection. in the middle of the corona period – and partly due to it – via nova started a communal interpretive process using michael moynagh’s concept of 360-degree listening. i was involved in this process as theologian-trainer. whereas via nova initially started from the attractional church model, after the listening process it opted for a cell-church model, in which the focus on the young professionals shifted to focus on concrete presence in the neighborhood of the various house churches. https://vianova-amsterdam.nl e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 68 moynagh, m. 2017. church in life: innovation, mission and ecclesiology. london: scm press. muylaert, s. 2021. shaping the stranger churches: migrants in england and the troubles in the netherlands, 1547-1585. leiden/boston: brill. niemandt, n. 2020. “the missio dei as flourishing life”, ecclesial futures 1. osmer, r. r. 2008. practical theology: an introduction. grand rapids/london: eerdmans. pettegree, a. 1986. foreign protestant communities in sixteenth-century london. oxford: clarendon press. roest, g.-j. 2018, “een ander evangelie? contextualisatie in een verschuivende westerse cultuur”, in spijker, j. van ’t, een ander evangelie?: contextualisatie in een verschuivende westerse cultuur. apeldoorn: theologische universiteit, 11-32. spijker, j. van ‘t. 2012. to participate in god’s mission: looking for an ecclesial structure to be a witnessing church today. utrecht: eburon. spijker, w. van ’t. 1996. the ecclesiastical offices in the thought of martin bucer. leiden/ new york/köln: e. j. brill. springer, m. s. 2007. restoring christ’s church: john a lasco and the forma ac ratio. aldershot: ashgate. 9.30 p.1-77 rapport commissie kleine kerken, retrieved from: https://cgk.nl/project/ rapporten/ (download date january 5, 2022). 9.35 p.85-93 cie 7 rapport 13 ambten, retrieved from: https://cgk.nl/project/rapporten/ (download date: september 26, 2022). https://cgk.nl/project/rapporten/ https://cgk.nl/project/rapporten/ https://cgk.nl/project/rapporten/ 1 editorial steve taylor director angelwings ltd (kiwidrsteve@gmail.com) and flinders university, adelaide, australia (steve.taylor@flinders.edu.au). welcome to another issue of ecclesial futures and another fine set of original research contributions on the development and transformation of local christian communities. original research this issue of ecclesial futures offers five original research articles. we start in the particular, in london and among the homeless. during a covid-19 lockdown, sally mann undertook participatory action research over six months, engaging in ethnographic research of homeless people in a nearby park. she analysed her interactions with the homeless, using the work of paul ricoeur to thicken her reflexivity and thus inform her practice. in particular, mann drew on ricoeur’s notion of “emplotment” and the ways in which individuals make sense of their identity, their relationship to others and their place in the world, in the telling of stories. hence the act of listening and the reflecting back of repeated phrases, shifts in retold stories, offers pathways for changed sense of self. the stories that are shared might not be wholly accurate, but they can be transformative. in working with ricoeur, mann offers a fresh and grounded understanding e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 2 of “being with”. she demonstrates how attending deeply to the stories of the homeless invites those who feel trapped to explore a different identity, as known characters who belong in storied communities. mann’s article is a fine example of how reflection can inform action and guide the development and transformation of local christian practice. we move to a second particular context, that of evangelistic activity by ghanaian migrant communities in the united kingdom. john neate identified a significant gap between the stated evangelistic aspiration of the ghanaian church of pentecost-uk (cop-uk) to “possess the nations” and the practical situation within its individual assemblies. he explored this gap using empirical research, including questionnaires, interviews and focus groups. the research revealed very low levels of participation by white british people in cop-uk and a paucity of cross-cultural friendships among the ghanaian church members. barriers to cross-cultural friendships included the fear of being influenced by different cultural values and concerns over how ghanaian church members might perceive the building of relationships. neate also observed a lack of positive feedback about white british culture among his participants. a feature of neate’s research is his desire to not simply achieve an academic goal, but conduct transforming research that might actually shape ecclesial futures, in this case among the ghanaian church of pentecost-uk. hence neate sought to model the relational approach he was seeking to explore and observed insights being crystallized among his participants through the research process. alongside neate’s research and approach, i also commend his bibliography, which gathers an impressive range of resources in understanding migrant missiologies and diaspora movements. we move from the particularities of culture to the particularity of film. rein den hertog works with the polish film corpus christi and the ways in which the main character facilitates communal processes of interpretation and reconciliation. hertog argues that the missio dei is visualized in a particular social reality. hertog uses the movie to examine contemporary ecclesial practices in his denomination, the christelijke gereformeerde kerken in nederland (cgkn). the result is a set of challenges to the nature of gospel witness, ministerial identity and liturgical practice. from film and denominational self-reflection, hertog then turns backwards and sideways. looking to the past, hertog notes several starting points in his reformed tradition that encourage the ordained minister to understand themselves as a facilitator of processes of interpretation. looking sideways, hertog examines michael moynagh’s understandings of leadership as conversations, group processes and sense-making. the article concludes with three challenges: including ministerial practice, steve taylor—editorial 3 ministerial formation, and lay participation in local communities. while these challenges are focused on cgkn, they provide thought provoking challenges for all those working toward communal processes of interpretation and reconciliation in ecclesial communities. our final two articles research another dimension of particularity in mission, exploring missiological reflection on how the human brain works. nigel rooms works with recent research in neuroscience and considers what iain mcgilchrist’s interdisciplinary work in the master and his emissary might offer to the particularity of christian spirituality. rooms engages critically with two christian responses to mcgilchrist, one broadly evangelical, the other anglican. rooms argues that the recovery of the apophatic stream of christian spirituality and the importance of nurturing the gift of “beholding”, in which the world as god’s creation is a gift to be noticed. the embodied dimensions of this spirituality are traced, including heightened awareness of the here and now and an unselfing. what results are conditions which make possible an openness to the other and around which practices of hospitality, communal discernment and joining in with what god can form. nigel works to integrate his analysis with his ministry as a spiritual director and mission consultant. his aim is to integrate the individual and communal as the local church participates in the missio dei. (rooms is co-editor of ecclesial futures and this team approach to editing means that academic standards of double blind peer review can be maintained, in order that readers can benefit from the original research being conducted by the journal’s editors.) mike harrison joins rooms in an examination of how recent research in neuroscience might inform mission. this article offers a sustained reflection on character formation as participation in the missio dei. the argument is that while behavioural attempts and aristotelian approaches are popular, both in contemporary organizational practice and contemporary (especially secular) literature, they are theologically problematic. harrison then makes a constructive turn. first, harrison turns to developments in neuroscience and the ways in which the brain processes affection. second, he provides numerous examples to outline the ways in which loving attachment relationship to the divine and accountability-in-community are responses to the loving gaze of the divine. while there is plenty of scope for further research into the lived realities of communal formation, harrison provides an original and theologically formed meditation on embodied ecclesial practices. what is instructive is to realize that, in different ways, all our articles are working at this interface between the individual and the communal in contemporary mission. mann’s individual listening to the homeless results in e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 4 transformations in communal belonging. neate examines how a denomination might nurture cross-cultural friendships through encouraging more relational ways of being that transform the evangelistic sense of self. hertog demonstrates how cinematic analysis can provides mirrors on what it might mean to shift from individual and clergy-centric identities to communal processes of interpretation. rooms theorizes how the spiritual practice of beholding can form local communities in discerning what god is up as they participate in the missio dei. across diverse contexts, these articles provide challenges and evoke possibilities in the development and transformation of local christian communities. i commend them to your reflecting, thinking and acting. partnerships as a jounal, we continue to be delighted with the unfolding partnership with radboud university press and open journals. through diamond open access, original research is available free to authors and reader. the shift of ecclesial futures from print to online has brought significant increase in access, evident in downloads of abstracts, complete articles and book reviews across all the issues of ecclesial futures to date, current and archived. we have also been delighted to see people offering to be reviewers through the online platform (https://ecclesialfutures.org/). their reviewing expertise is already evident in several of the articles in this issue. ecclesial futures partners with churches together in england to offer an annual ma prize in mission. every year, a group of mission-minded scholars across england read ma level dissertations from students completing their studies at a uk based college or university around the topics of mission, evangelism and church planting with a particular focus on mission in the uk context. in 2022, as a journal we offer our congratulations to owen may for his ma dissertation a theology of mission for scriptural reasoning – guesthood: the good samaritan, the incarnation, and mystery.1 owen, who studied at cranmer hall in durham, was delighted to have won, noting, “what is really encouraging is that more people are becoming interested in relationships between those of the abrahamic faiths and finding ways into deeper understanding and friendship.” 1 owen may, a theology of mission for scriptural reasoning – guesthood: the good samaritan, the incarnation, and mystery, matm dissertation, durham university, 2021. https://cte.org.uk/app/uploads/2022/06/a-theology-of-mission-for-sr-owen-may.pdf. https://ecclesialfutures.org/ steve taylor—editorial 5 another partnership important to ecclesial futures is with the christian communities and mission study group of international association of mission studies. we are delighted to have an activity report from the recent iams assembly 2022. such reports remind us of the global nature of research into the development and transformation of local christian communities. the report also points to current gaps in the field. these include improvised theorizing of approaches to the “other”, the cultural embedded nature of listening, empirical study of partnerships and the possibilities of learnings from other culture. we invite you as researchers to consider ways your work might respond to these current gaps. we also continue as a journal to actively seek submissions of original research from diverse cultures and contexts. we also seek reviews of book from across the breath of the worldwide church. thanks thanks to each of the blind peer reviewers, who continue to provide constructive, thoughtful and engaged feedback. thanks to my co-editor nigel rooms and to patrick todjeras (who remains eager to receive book reviews). thanks to our copyeditor christopher pipe and the team at radboud university press and open journals for their skill and care. finally, stay connected. all our issues including archives are stored at https://ecclesialfutures.org/, thanks to the generosity of wipf and stock publishers, radboud university press and open journals. to receive updates via the newsletter, sign up at https://ecclesialfutures.org/. https://ecclesialfutures.org/ https://ecclesialfutures.org/ rooms.indb 69 missiological perspectives from germany: innovation and mission in rural areas michael herbst professor for practical theology at the university of greifswald and director of the research institute for evangelism and church development at the university of greifswald, greifswald, germany michael.herbst@uni-greifswald.de patrick todjeras vice director of the research institute for evangelism and church development at the university of greifswald, greifswald, germany patrick.todjeras@uni-greifswald.de abstract this article argues for innovation and mission in the lutheran churches of germany. the authors approach this topic by drawing on research on innovative and missional projects in rural areas in germany. the authors are looking at rural areas where few people would expect innovation. presenting a study called “landwards” and the evaluation of exemplary projects in rural areas in eastern germany, it is possible to review key factors for innovative and e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 70 missional church development. one of the most intriguing factors is that, compared to international studies on missional church development (like fresh expressions of church in the church of england or pioneering places in the protestant church in the netherlands), it can be shown that lay leaders do not play the dominant role in starting the initiatives. however, lay people organized in teams do seem to be the engine of on-going innovative initiatives in rural areas. this raises different questions regarding the training of leaders, for example, or the collaboration of such initiatives with established churches. the “landwards” study points out the possibilities of innovation in rural areas in and adjacent to the lutheran structure of being a “volkskirche.” this is a rather original way to deal with the challenges of being a state-like church in germany. introduction this article takes the results of the recent study “kirche im umbruch” (ekd 2019) as a reason to look at innovation in the lutheran churches of germany. “kirche im umbruch” is a study on the development of church membership and church taxes in the lutheran churches of germany. principal investigator bernd raffelhüschen and his team came to the conclusion that lutheran churches in germany will lose more than 50 percent of their members by the year 2060 due to demographic reasons, such as birth, deaths, and relocation (24 percent), and due to the lack of commitment of the members to their church (28 percent) (ekd 2019). the church’s membership situation is based upon the behavior of the baptized, the members who have abandoned their membership, and the people who are attracted to become new members of the church. this will have a major impact on the religious landscape inasmuch as the church tax system in germany grants financial stability to lutheran churches. herbst & todjeras—missiological perspectives from germany 71 regional development of members (ekd 2019, 8) th e authors do not off er any programmatic solutions to their disturbing fi ndings, which are not necessarily surprising outcomes, although they’ve received signifi cant media attention in germany. yet it is evident that new and innovative ways for being church e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 72 have to be sought. instead, the authors conclude their report by describing four different innovative and missional projects which could be exemplary for arresting the decline of membership and commitment (ekd 2019, 20–26). the report is proof that ongoing dialogue on mission is relevant. on the one hand, the increasing use of the term mission appears to be a hopeful sign in the midst of a crisis as churches are once more encountering their mission and their rootedness in the missio dei. on the other hand, discourse about the term mission and its implications are in danger of leaving central topics and inherent issues behind or unclear. could this be an unhealthy development if mission is degraded to a program for slowing or even stopping membership and church tax decline? mission would then become merely an instrument for maintenance. this can be seen, for example, in the recent structural discussions and new church laws. a recent decision caused controversy in the “evangelisch-lutherische kirche in norddeutschland” (a lutheran church in the north of germany). their synod declared that, although there are major upheavals in church membership and the structural maintenance of the local churches, the structure of parochial entities should remain the same and is non-negotiable. the “personalplanungsförderungsgesetz” (the personnel planning promotion law for full-time workers, mainly pastors) cements the parochial paradigm. it is no new phenomenon to think about missional church development in germany as a brief survey of the decades of debates about mission in the lutheran churches show (ekd 2006; karle 2011). although there has been increased attention to mission since eberhard jüngel’s proposal of a missional church at the 1999 ekd synod (jüngel 2000), the concept of mission is rarely addressed in german church theory and practical theology. in this article, we want to present a study on missional entrepreneurial initiatives in rural areas in germany which highlight possible criteria for innovative and missional pathways for the church. these initiatives are part of a new and promising reality. we plead for the case that churches in the west are entering herbst & todjeras—missiological perspectives from germany 73 an unknown situation. this implies that lutheran and catholic churches in germany face a major transformational process. the self-understanding of what it means to be a “volkskirche,”1 church for all people, needs to be reformulated and adapted. the cultural and religious dominance of state-like churches are being pushed back. the church has entered a post-christendom society. in a way, the churches in eastern germany have more experience in dealing with this phenomenon due to their experience during the former german democratic republic (gdr) (herbst 2014a). on the one hand, these challenges might lead to renewal and reorientation of the church’s mission. on the other hand, such changes may result in holding on more firmly to yesterday’s answers and generating resistance. it is evident that the lutheran churches need to rethink their identity and options as a “volkskirche.” the missional dimension of church as “volkskirche” has been recently stressed by the systematic theologian ulrich körtner, who said, “being a volkskirche means to be a church in society and for society. .  .  . the calling of the church—its mission—is the calling of the disciples into the world that god loves. in this way, the volkskirche is a missional church which lives by communicating the gospel” (körtner 2018, 592). the frequent use of and referral to the concept of missio dei is a signal for these discourses happening in germany (pompe et al. 2016) and includes questions about new places, practices, time schedules and new forms of the christian faith. these issues are associated with new requirements for pastoral ministry and arouse questions on how to establish a mixed economy church—a blended economy of different types and forms of churches which still holds on to the prescribed unity of the christian church. 1. the term “volkskirche” is a german term to describe a form of church which is partly linked with the state, e.g., by church taxes. the majority of german society still belongs to the lutheran or the catholic church. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 74 preliminary remarks—understanding the situation of the lutheran mainline churches in germany we would like to make a brief theoretical introduction to the situation of the lutheran church in germany in order to provide a better understanding of german mainline churches. as theologians, we have a pretty solid theological concept of what the church is—creatura verbi, fruit of the missio dei. on the one hand, we are certain that the church is headed towards the kingdom of god. on the other hand, it seems to be rather difficult to grasp how these theological concepts can be translated into everyday life. what is the church that we live in and work for? how do we explore the empirical side of church that we experience? putting this into relation to the ecclesia of our creed is the goal of recent discussions of “church-theory.” the point is: our church—the way it behaves, its dominant ways of thinking and organizing itself—has been described in german literature as “hybrid”—a “hybrid” of three different rationales (kunz-herzog 1997; hauschildt 2007). church consists of the people of god, people who trust in god and live their life accordingly both as individuals and in groups. the church, however, is also an organization that has to deal with finances, buildings, manage its staff and funds, recruit and train personnel and so on—quite similar to many non-profit organizations. however, this has shaped the german church as a former state-like church, it operates very similar to a public institution. the church used to have its independent department right next to the department of health. in many ways, the church in germany is used to behaving, thinking and feeling as if it was a subdivision of public government—less people-oriented and more concerned with formal aspects of church, e.g., compliance to rules and patterns, public integration, church law and the ministry as a public office. it has great difficulty implementing a “mixed economy.” cross-parochial activities, church plants, fresh expressions of church and lay leadership and pioneering are very challenging to the inherited, institutional way of “doing church.” recently, herbst & todjeras—missiological perspectives from germany 75 churches have started to question their strategies. due to decreasing membership resulting in less funds and a lack of young ministers, churches are increasingly open to discussing alternatives. in many areas of germany, especially in rural areas, the parochial system has reached its limit, and the focus seems to have shifted to developing church regions, networks of several parishes working together and cooperating. the “landwards” study research questions and definitions in 2014, the institute for evangelism and church development finished “landwards,” a study on mission in peripheral rural churches published in 2016 (schlegel et al. 2016). this study was preceded by a conference in 2013 called “mittendrin” at the alfried-krupp-wissenschaftskolleg in greifswald and was embedded in an academic research consortium called “think rural” on rural areas at the university of greifswald. thus, there is an interdisciplinary history of research on rural areas and mission in rural areas at the university of greifswald (see schlegel 2012; 2013a; 2013b; schlegel and alex 2012; alex et al. 2013; alex and schlegel 2014; dünkel et al. 2014; herbst 2014a; 2014b; herbst et al. 2016). the starting point of the study was to observe the challenges of the context, shrinking rural areas and the parallel shrinking of church life in peripheral regions. an interesting observation was discovered. various concepts and innovative approaches emerged in rural areas which caused a growing engagement with and attraction of de-churched and non-churched people. this led to the research question: why did the new concepts work? how did they start? do peripheral zones have a special potential for innovations? the authors of the study defined three key perspectives: rural areas, their understanding of mission, and their understanding of innovation. a peripheral rural area is an area which lies at least a twenty-minute driving distance to a regional metropolis and has e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 76 little population density (less than one hundred and fifty residents per square kilometer). regarding the term mission, the authors refer to a multidimensional concept of mission as discussed in an exemplary way in the anglican church as the five marks of mission. the five marks of mission defined by the anglican lambeth conference 1998 are (church of england 1999, 38; walls and ross 2008):  to proclaim the good news of the kingdom  to teach, baptize, and nurture new believers  to respond to human need by loving service  to seek to transform unjust structures of society  to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the earth2 for a definition of innovation the authors refer to the theory of social innovation (moulaert et al. 2007; moulaert 2010; butkevičienė 2009). the social innovation theory emphasizes three key dimensions to social innovation: first, innovations are usually new combinations or hybrids of existing elements rather than something wholly new. this refers to the contextuality of innovation. second, their practice involves crossing organizational or disciplinary boundaries. third, they leave behind compelling new relationships between previously separate individuals and groups. the main conviction in social innovation is that innovation helps to solve certain problems better than previous approaches and methods did. moulaert observes, “what counts for social innovation is ‘good practice’—i.e., a practice that has shown some contribution to social innovation in other similar contexts, or ‘good formulae’ that could contribute to social innovation in the future” (moulaert et al. 2005, 1978). 2. for an exposition and critique of the five marks of mission, see ross 2012. herbst & todjeras—missiological perspectives from germany 77 method and assessment through guided interviews with volunteers in peripheral rural areas and the analysis of different documents of church-related projects as well as the data according to philipp mayring, the authors assessed a compilation of one hundred and twelve intriguing samples.3 after the evaluation, they focused on seventy-nine projects which could be assessed. first, these were clustered according to their similarity. second, twelve projects (one of each cluster) were evaluated in more detail. two distinctive features could be noted beforehand. first, it was notable that sixty-seven projects were located in east germany. second, it was obvious that there was a significance in recurrent ideas. the following sample gives an insight into the first assessment of the findings by summing up the projects into twelve clusters and selecting one project of each cluster for further investigation (schlegel et al. 2016, 197–204): 1. mobile youth ministry: “der blaue bus im oderbruch” (brandenburg)4 2. church without pastor: lay-led prayer time “ad fontes” in mönchgrün (thuringia) 3. village church network: series of night-time organ concerts in the tecklenburg area (westphalia) 4. innovative use of church buildings: biker church in wehlen (saxonia) 5. touristic attraction: park of labyrinths in malchow (brandenburg) 6. village meeting place: house of inter-generational encounter in globig (thuringia) 3. the data recall was facilitated either by internet, recommendations, or letters (85 letters to deans and superintendents of church districts). filtered by the criteria rural area, mission, and innovation, 79 projects were left. 4. “the blue bus in the oderbruch area.” e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 78 7. responsibility for societal issues (right-wing radicalism): youth band project in joachimsthal (brandenburg) 8. central events for the region: soccer camp in oese (lutheran church of hannover) 9. evangelism: faith nurture course in verchen (western pomerania) 10. traditional “volkskirche” (lutheran mainline church)—missional: geithain (saxonia) 11. celebration/commemoration of local mentality and village history: museum of local history in brück (brandenburg) 12. unique ideas: free ride for your mind—local television project (mecklenburg) the second assessment was designed with expert interviews and the portrayal of twelve exemplary projects. with the help of the three criteria—rural area, mission, and innovation—it was possible to detect marks and distinctive features of innovation. the authors developed a fingerprint of each project with the goal of comparing the projects. a project would get all five points on the scale for “peripheral rural area” if it was located in an area with under fifty people per square kilometer and would need longer than a forty-minute drive to the next town. the spots on the scale of mission indicate the dominance of the focus on an aspect of mission as presented before. the scale of innovation was created with a framework on challenges for innovation in rural areas. the specific challenges for church life in rural areas were collected and described using six challenges for innovation: church structure; paid clergy and volunteers; demographic change; effects of peripheral situations; fragmentation, reduction of differentiation; and secularization, atheism. the darker spots represent the emphasis or degree of concentration regarding the specific criterion. as an example, see the fingerprint of the project “der blaue bus im oderbruch”: herbst & todjeras—missiological perspectives from germany 79 der blaue bus im oderbruch (schlegel et al. 2016, 313) th e third assessment focused on the initial emergence and formation of the projects. th e authors asked under which circumstances there was an ideal process for innovation. th ey found out that there were seven factors that occurred—even in diff erent sequences: a key person (“schlüsselperson”), teams and team-building (“team”), networks and networking (“netzwerk”), a reason to innovate (“anlass”), an idea of what to do (“idee”), resources (“ressourcen”), and resistance and challenges (“herausforderungen”). th e key factors appeared in diff erent order regarding the exemplary projects. some started with a team, others with a key person. innovative beispiele missionarischer praxis (schlegel et al. 2016, 342) e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 80 outcomes the in-depth qualitative evaluation of the twelve projects showed remarkable outcomes and conclusions regarding the criterion “mission.” it could be observed that about 50 percent of the projects chose their starting point in “diaconia,” a social ministry (“compassion and justice”). regarding eleven of twelve samples, “compassion and justice” was the key aspect of their ministry (mark three of the criterion mission). three of twelve samples had their focus on societal issues (mark four of the criterion mission). nevertheless, evangelism was always included. however, evangelism was the starting point/main interest in only one of the twelve samples (mark one of the criterion mission). it was interesting to see that only one of twelve samples had an ecological core (mark five of the criterion mission) (schlegel et al. 2016, 302–6), given the fact that these are rural areas and there is a growing awareness of ecological issues in society and in the churches in general. conclusions regarding the criterion “innovation” were (1) that nine of twelve samples were sensitive and responsive to ecclesial, cultural and societal challenges; (2) ten of twelve samples intended to counteract processes of territorial disintegration and fragmentation; (3) only two of twelve samples targeted the encouragement and promotion of volunteers; and (4) only six of twelve samples perceived secularization as a challenge and responded to this phenomenon (schlegel et al. 2016, 309–11). regarding the focal point of the study, i.e., the formation phase of an innovative project, all of the projects showed that, on the one hand, there were key players who initiated and pushed the project. this study called them “heroes” (also “community entrepreneurs”). most of them were full-time workers, mainly pastors or ministers (only one volunteer) who were great networkers and team-players.5 on the other hand, in all of the samples, the authors perceived the importance of team-building with volunteers with a strong sense of belonging and (a strong sense of personal) responsibility of the team members (schlegel et al. 2016, 317–23). beside 5. in four of twelve samples, “the hero” was a team of two to three people. herbst & todjeras—missiological perspectives from germany 81 these factors for innovation in rural areas, there were a couple of important “soft” factors such as positive and joyful atmosphere, attitudes like agility and perseverance and a start-up spirit (schlegel et al. 2016, 323–24 ). in addition, the causes for innovation had manifold reasons: motivation for innovation and new practice, crisis (i.e., flood, right-wing attack, failure), institutional occasions (i.e., memorial anniversaries), pressure from outside (i.e., deadline for applications for support, structural reforms), etc. it could be observed that innovative practices were created through an external and inner stimulus and incentive. heroes reported a free and open space, which was often a result of a crisis. it is impressive to see that resources on their own did not cause innovation. however, there is no innovation without resources (schlegel et al. 2016, 325–41). furthermore, innovative projects also suffered and endured resistance and opposition, harsh critique and periods of great problems. the “landwards” study shows that innovation and mission have happened in rural areas of germany (especially in east germany) which have led to significant implications for innovation and mission. discussion and implications in this article, we ask, “quo vadis, church?—where are you going, church?” asking this question implies different answers since the church may journey in numerous directions on its way towards the future. one of our strongest impressions regarding the “landwards” study and its implications for mission-shaped thinking and fieldwork in germany concerns the people involved in these innovative missional initiatives. it seems to be a central question to ask, “who are the pioneers, pioneering and innovating?” besides the “heroes” (key persons), it is obvious that there must have been different kairos moments when the “right people” met at the “right place” at the “right time.” in this study in almost every case the “heroes” were pastors or other paid full-time workers. this is somewhat disillusioning given the priority shown towards lay e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 82 leadership in mission-shaped church processes, for example in the church of england or in the dutch protestant church (lings 2016, 61–62, 173–79; kerk 2017, 7). a recent study of fresh expressions of church in the church of england called “the day of small things” shows that the proportions of ordained and lay leaders are about equal. a study on pioneering places in the netherlands shows that 18 percent of teams have no paid staff and 29 percent of them have staff employed two days per week or less. in most cases, it was pastors or other paid full-time staff in the “landwards” study who generated ideas and established teams to move forward. somehow, full-time staff are a stable guarantor of sustainability. whether this is a specific finding due to the situation of the german “volkskirche” remains unclear. in a certain sense, these findings contradict what alternative concepts of the future of pastoral ministry might look like. others examples such as the concept of catholic pastoral ministry in poitiers, france, envisage a pastor whose main ministry is to train the baptized and believing active members of the diocese, who gather in small, vital christian communities. their survival is not dependent on full-time staff. and yes, church still exists without full-time staff, even without a trained and ordained theologian (rouet et al. 2005; rouet 2011; müller 2012). similar concepts have been introduced in the discussion on the future of pastoral ministry in germany by michael herbst and hans-hermann pompe, who talk about a “regio-local” ministry (herbst and pompe 2017). they drew their concept from the anglican discussion of a mixed economy of the church (herbst 2018, 158–66). the language of a mixed economy church or a blended economy originates in the fresh expressions of church and was introduced by the previous archbishop of canterbury, rowan williams. the mixed economy is a plea for ecclesial diversity and deals with the question of how to conceive unity between fresh expressions of church and inherited forms of church. this becomes explicit in the foreword of the report “mission-shaped church”: but the existing parochial system alone is no longer able fully to deliver its underlying mission purpose. we need to recognize that a variety of integrated missionary herbst & todjeras—missiological perspectives from germany 83 approaches is required. a mixed economy of parish churches and network churches will be necessary, in an active partnership across a wider area, perhaps a deanery. (mission and public affairs council 2004, x) michael moynagh has promoted the term and the concept of a mixed economy church. he says, “the phrase ‘mixed economy’ .  .  . refers to fresh expressions and ‘inherited’ churches existing alongside each other, within the same denomination, in relationships of mutual respect and support” (moynagh 2008, 177). the mixed economy of church can be discussed in different ways, for example in terms of theological and spiritual accountability and responsibility in a region or in terms of the collaboration of new and inherited forms of churches (see nelstrop 2008; nelstrop and percy 2008; moynagh 2012; 2017; croft 2016; müller 2019). regarding the outcome of the “landwards” study, particularly the role of pastors and lay leaders, a mixed economy approach could mean the change of roles and responsibilities in missional church development. for example, instead of being the only catalysator of innovation in local contexts, pastors would focus on training disciples for their ministry in the world, being a kind of regional “episkopos.” the episkopos would mainly be responsible for leadership, doctrine and teaching, which corresponds quite closely with the role of the episkopos in the early church. christians will be seen and serve as “religious experts” in their daily networks—as the membership study of the lutheran churches in germany already shows for its members (hermelink and weyel 2015, 435– 37). as much as we count on attractive events and appreciate the structures of the church that invite people to come to the events and meetings, we have to open our eyes to the fact that lay people are often the first and usually the only chance for de-churched and non-churched people to get in touch with christian faith and the church. other studies (see lings 2016, 96–97; kerk 2017, 8) as well as the “landward” study demonstrate the importance of the spirit of participation and of being part of something relevant for the community. for this task, lay people will have to be supported by the pastors and their congregations. support could mean opening e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 84 up innovative spaces for them to try fresh expressions of being and doing church in or beside established parochial structures. it also means equipping lay people to be able to talk about their christian faith and engage with others in doing so. furthermore, lay people need to be trained in becoming vital and mature christians. david heywood calls this “kingdom learning” and proposes focusing on discipleship in this process, which means “the whole-life response of christians to jesus christ” (heywood 2017, 7). this inward process is connected to the outward process. “the relationship is integral: the disciple’s gradual change of inward character and its outward expression in a godly life that reflects the character of jesus and her participation in the mission of god are part of a single process of gradual formation and reorientation of life” (heywood 2017, 15). discipleship obviously plays a rather minor role in the projects evaluated by the “landwards” study. the study highlights the important role of pastors for innovation but also points to its possible danger. when pastors neglect to disciple people, empower their team and raise up other leaders, then they not only fail to be “heroes” but instead actually become the “stumbling block” of sustainable, innovative, missional church development. they will not create and sustain a releasing culture, but a culture of dependence on the full-time worker. in the future, mission-shaped church, christian communities will have to redefine the role of full-time staff and break the dependency and focus on the pastor who takes care of the flock. as david heywood says, ministry is not what only the clergy does (heywood 2017, 9). summing up, the role of pastors and full-time staff of the christian churches in germany will have to be diverse in the future. another quite important insight that can be drawn from the study is the role innovative initiatives can play for the wider church, including regional churches. although the “landwards” study itself does not discuss relationships with other christian communities (because it was not part of the study design) it points to discussions which will have to be led. the “landwards” study has made it evident that mission and innovation in rural areas are not driven by resignation. it seems that local teams have a realistic herbst & todjeras—missiological perspectives from germany 85 view of their situation. this can be interpreted as a specific potential of innovation in rural areas which would need further investigation. on the one hand, there is negative church growth and a necessary change of structure in rural areas as the examples in “kirche im umbruch” and the “personalplanungsförderungsgesetz” show. on the other hand, we can observe that new initiatives start with available resources. this leads to the question of how to coordinate scaling down processes with innovative processes. the appearance of innovative initiatives raises future questions about the relation between traditional and inherited churches and new expressions of church. recently new attention has been devoted to this in german theological debates (herbst 2017; 2018; 2020; herbst and pompe 2017; herrmann 2020; kunz 2020; lings 2020; müller 2020; pohl-patalong 2020). the mixed economy of church idea, as shown before, may prove to be the most fruitful and offer a new perspective. in addition, we can say that rather than merely sharing administrative duties, we believe that regions should develop a mission-shaped mix of different approaches. this does not imply a specific strategy but a fresh perspective on these challenges. this fresh perspective aims to overcome inherited constraints of our institutionalized-church mindset and embraces the advantages of understanding the church as a hybrid. the regio-local perspective rests on certain beliefs and values. the beliefs are, first, the ecclesia of the creed is not equivalent to a single congregation. that is why regio-local church development brings churches in a region closer together. second, the missio dei calls for diversity amidst a pluralist society, a variety of “biotopes” of faith. third, strong congregations need a strong region and vice versa. fourth, a regio-local perspective aims to create a supportive network of different ways of being church. fifth, this can only be achieved by an ecumenical perspective. likewise, the values of a regio-local perspective are, first, voluntary cooperation in a region (e.g., in catechumenate, youth groups, courses) (herbst and pompe 2017). second, a clear profile must be developed (i.e., prioritizing what you are good at). third, e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 1 i s s u e 1 86 ministry should be done in a complementary way (i.e., regional arrangements versus competition, envy, and fear of loss), as well as, fourth, in solidarity with others (e.g., taking on responsibility for a region, sharing, protecting the weak). “where are you going, church?” asking this, we should recall that the primary question in the new testament was, “quo vadis, domine?” this is the question peter asks the lord, “lord, where are you going?” and jesus simply replies: “where i am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later” (john 13:36). the apocryphal acts of peter recall this incident. peter escapes from rome and meets jesus on his way traveling the via appia. again, peter asks: “domine, quo vadis?” this time, jesus answers: “to rome to be crucified again.” hearing this, peter turns and goes back to rome to be arrested and crucified. this legend became famous. mission means to be where the lord is. that is what counted for the disciples: they wanted to be where the lord was. being part of his sending means to be where the lord is. he surely is always with those who are on the way with him (matt 28:20). this is the point the old legend about peter makes: instead of, “quo vadis, ecclesia?” we should be asking “quo vadis, domine?” the church wants to be where her lord is, i.e., on the way to the people, testifying and serving. or to agree with lesslie newbigin, “there is no other way to be with him. at the heart of mission is simply the desire to be with him and to give him the service of our lives” (newbigin 1989, 127). bibliography alex, martin, et al. 2013. “wer springt in die bresche? kirchliches ehrenamt in ländlichen räumen.” in kirche im ländlichen raum 64: 25–32. alex, martin, and thomas schlegel, eds. 2014. mittendrin: kirche in peripheren ländlichen regionen. neukirchen-vluyn: neukirchener theologie. butkevičienė, eglė. 2009. “social innovations in rural communities: methodological framework and empirical evidence.” social sciences/ socialiniai mokslai 63(1): 80–88. church of england. 1999. called to live and proclaim the good news, 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109(1): 51–68. pompe, hans-hermann, et al., eds. 2016. fresh x. frisch. neu. innovativ: und es ist kirche. neukirchen-vluyn: neukirchener theologie. protestantse kerk. 2017. fingers crossed: developments, lessons learnt, and challenges after eight years of pioneering. utrecht: dienstencentrum protestantse kerk. ross, cathy. 2012. “an exposition and critque of the five marks of mission.” in ekklesiologie in missionarischer perspektive: beiträge zur siebenten theologischen konferenz im rahmen des meissen-prozesses der kirche von england und der evangelischen kirche in deutschland, edited by christoph ernst, 146–57. leipzig: eva. rouet, albert. 2011. “auf dem weg zu einer erneuerten kirche.” in was wird jetzt aus uns, herr bischof? ermutigende erfahrungen der gemeindebildung aus poitiers, edited by reinhard feiter and hadwig müller, 17–42. ostfildern: schwabenverlag. rouet, albert, et al. 2005. un nouveau visage de l’église: l’éxperience des communautés locales à poitiers. paris: bayard schlegel, thomas. 2013a. “mission im osten deutschlands und das problem des anknüpfungspunktes.” in alles auf anfang: missionarische impulse für kirche in nachkirchlicher zeit, edited by matthias clausen et al., 116–34. neukirchen-vluyn: neukirchener theologie. ———. 2012. “regionale ausstrahlung oder dienst vor ort? wie wir menschen auf dem land besser erreichen.” in leuchtfeuer oder lichternetz: missionarische impulse für ländliche räume, edited by thomas schlegel and martin alex, 19–39. neukirchen-vluyn: neukirchener theologie. ———. 2013b. “strukturell angefragt: volkskirche in ländlichen räumen.” kirche im ländlichen raum 64: 8–11. schlegel, thomas, and martin alex, eds. 2012. leuchtfeuer oder lichternetz— missionarische impulse für ländliche räume. neukirchen-vluyn: neukirchener theologie. schlegel, thomas, et al. 2016. “landaufwärts—innovative beispiele missionarischer praxis in peripheren, ländlichen räumen—die greifswalder studie.” in freiraum und innovationsdruck: der beitrag ländlicher kirchenentwicklung in “peripheren räumen” zur zukunft der evangelischen kirche, edited by kirchenamt der ekd, 171–344. leipzig: eva. walls, andrew, and cathy ross, eds. 2008. mission in the twenty-first century: exploring the five marks of global mission. london: dlt. 115 spencer, stephen. 2019. growing and flourishing. the ecology of church growth london: scm press. isbn: 978-0-334-05734-5 ix + 140 pp reviewed by patrick todjeras university of zürich patrick.todjeras@uzh.ch revd canon dr stephen spencer leads the theological education initiative for the anglican communion and is based at the anglican communion office (since 2018). he was previously vice principal at st hild college in yorkshire. he also has experience as a parish priest and has written several theological books. during his time in the diocese of leeds he was link officer for the diocesan companion link with the dioceses of mara, rorya and tarime in tanzania. stephen spencer presents an inspiring study that discusses church growth in an international environment. the purpose of this book is to encourage and inform church growth (94). he does indeed achieve his goal. mailto:patrick.todjeras%40uzh.ch?subject= e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 116 it is a work of popular theology, but it is food for thought for theologians addressing questions of how to speak rightly of growth in the christian life. it seeks an answer from outside the west. spencer enables us to hear the anglican diocese of mara in tanzania. in doing so, he applies the lessons learned about church growth in the diocese of mara, rorya and tarime in tanzania to the british context and compares them to a fairly typical medium-sized church in a provincial town. his initial understanding of church growth is based on the anglican definition of growth as spiritual and numerical growth including its capacity to serve the whole community (church of england, gs 995). thus he develops the image of an ecology of church growth, meaning the interconnectedness of the church and its growth with its environment. a distinctive feature of the book is the narrative form of the accounts, such as the vivid description of church growth in the mara region (16-19) or the extensive quotes from leaders in the mara region. the mara region has seen substantial growth over the last 30 years – growing from a dozen parishes in 1985 to 150 parishes in 2010 (3, 15-16). in interviewing a cross-section of people at the heart of this church growth, both lay and ordained, he gathers their insights into the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of church growth. stephen spencer discovers six factors for church growth in the mara region. alongside numerical growth there has been growth of congregational relationships, growth of interactive evangelism, an increasing dynamism of sacramental life, a strengthening of community service, and a nurturing of personal discipleship (42). spencer conceptualizes them in six dimensions that can be developed in up to three stages: institutional growth, congregational relationships, evangelistic communication, sacramental expression, community service and discipleship (53-93; see the summary as a graph on page 93). the ‘numerical growth’ factor is interesting. it was not measured in the number of individual conversions but in the number of new congregations. this shows a communal approach to evangelism (39). in a theoretical classification, he interprets the results through the lens of avery dulles’ survey of ecclesiology in his models of the church. this multiple correspondence with dulles’ highly regarded survey of ecclesiology shows that what has been happening in mara region is not an oddity with little relevance to the wider church but rather an example of the wider multi-faceted nature of the catholic church (48). in particular, the role of evangelism rooted in the community life of the congregation and its relationships with its surrounding community is important. patrick todjeras—growing and flourishing 117 for spencer, what church growth means becomes clear here. it cannot just be an increase in the size of the gathered church – viewed as a self-contained institution. instead it is an “increase of interaction with its surrounding community in which neither side loses itself but in which both build up purposeful and life-giving relationships” (51). in the carry-over of his findings, spencer discusses studies of the anglican church growth scene and brings up comparables and differences. for example, spencer argues that the evangelistic and sacramental dimensions are missing in michael moynagh’s reflection on fresh expression of church (98-101). in the final part of his study, “bringing mara growth home”, he discusses the church growth initiative of a british congregation that took several intentional steps to address the growth of their church. from after-school clubs, to messy church, to godly play, new attempts were made again and again. these attempts are discussed and recognized by spencer with his framework of six dimensions. an outstanding effect of the ecology analog is that the author does not describe the six dimensions as steps, but organically. this means that growth is not manufactured through an instrumental process but must be cultivated in an interactive and response way, like nurturing crops in a vegetable garden (112). critically, the comparability of the two contexts (tanzania, britain) is not discussed in depth (4-5) and so does not defuse the criticism of a carry-over. at times, the description of transferable insights (such as numerical growth) felt as if a more critical edge would help. finally, the theological normativity of his notion of growth requires a critical theological counterweight, which spencer does not provide here enough. for this, i am happy to recommend martyn percy’s book in the following review by kristine stache. ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 1 122 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef15516 b o o k r e v i e w s doi: 10.54195/ef15516 hart, david bentley. 2022. tradition and apocalypse: an essay on the future of christian belief grand rapids: baker academic. isbn 9780801039386 reviewed by cristian sonea david bentley hart’s book explores the intersection of theology, history and eschatology. he provides a compelling argumentation for the relevance of the christian tradition in contemporary society while also exploring the challenges posed by modernity and the looming threat of the apocalypse. with his characteristic erudition and rhetorical flair, hart engages with diverse philosophical and theological traditions, from church fathers to contemporary thinkers. whether you are an experienced theologian or simply curious about the future of the christian faith, this book offers a stimulating and illuminating read. the author initially addressed the topic of this essay in a lecture entitled “tradition and authority: a vaguely gnostic meditation” at a conference on religious traditions and modernity held at valparaiso university in april 2018. a version of the lecture was printed as an article in the idea of tradition in the late modern world, edited by thomas albert howard. the original text was published in theological territories (notre dame, in: university of notre dame press, 2020). i will briefly present each of the seven chapters of the book, in the hope that the review will turn into an invitation for other readers to engage profoundly with this work. overall, the book offers a philosophical and theological exploration of the nature and role of tradition in christian theology. in the first chapter, “tradition and traditionalism” (11–45), hart discusses the tension between traditionalism, healthy moral and intellectual growth, and the failure to synthesize the historical and dogmatic perspectives of modern christian thought. he suggests that an unjustifiable fiction, such as “incurious belief” (36), eventually loses its persuasive power and can lead to disillusionment. he argues that it is only 123 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef15516 through recourse to the “historical record” (41) that the legitimacy of the christian tradition can be defended. theology and christian history were once a single science, but they have become rigidly separated in modern times. this failure to synthesize historical and dogmatic perspectives has led to an increasing divergence, with theological scholars avoiding early christian studies and aspiring scholars of christianity and christian texts of late antiquity, ignoring the historically unchallenged statements of systematic or dogmatic theology. in the second chapter, “tradition and causality” (46–76), hart discusses the difficulty of applying the concept of causality to human affairs and history, as opposed to the physical sciences. he questions what constitutes a cause, how it can be distinguished from chance, and whether there is “a vital and rational unity to any stream of events” (47) that can be recognized as a tradition. he then warns against the danger of confusing physical and historical processes and the pseudo-scientific theories that arise from “careless conflation” (49), arguing that the unity of a tradition arises mainly from the intentional states of rational agents and must be deliberate rather than simply spontaneous agreement. however, such unity must remain invisible to the historical sciences and can only be judged by a “proleptic apprehension” (58) of the ultimate cause of that tradition. the author notes that historical development will always require creativity and selectively ignoring historical data that the “preferred narrative cannot assimilate” (59). one of the main arguments of the third chapter, “tradition and development” (77–154), is that the development of religious doctrine involves an initial moment of belief and an ongoing process of rational validation. the author suggests that accurate religious adherence consists of a moment of an apocalypse, in which one is seized by a sense of seeing and knowing more than one can initially account for, only to be strengthened and enriched by reasoned argument and corroborating evidence. hart argues that nothing is suspect or deplorable about this “‘apocalyptic’ priority of conviction by faith” over rational validation (78). nevertheless, this reasonable justification of belief must become increasingly dependent on evidence as the journey towards understanding continues. hart discusses maurice blondel’s response to the crisis of modernity in the early twentieth century, particularly alfred loisy’s controversial treatise l’évangile et l ’église. loisy had argued that the synoptic gospels only recorded jesus announcing the kingdom but that the church had arrived instead (111). this statement caused a scandal but would be considered relatively tame by today’s standards. loisy also made claims about the historical accuracy of the early chapters of genesis and the development of israelite monotheism from earlier cults of divine figures. in response 124 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef15516 to loisy, blondel’s essay was written on a tightrope, attempting to navigate the thorny issue amid the ongoing crisis of modernity. while loisy is often portrayed as having rejected catholic ecclesial history, hart argues that loisy believed in the absolute necessity of the church “as the living and necessarily the adaptable presence of the gospel in history” (112). the fourth chapter focuses on “tradition and history” (155–79). here hart discusses the concept of doctrinal definition and the history of dogma. he notes that the development of doctrine is not simply a matter of “finding the right words” (174) to express beliefs already present in the community of faith but involves the generation of new and often “vague formulae describing unprecedented models of christian confession” (175). each dogma represents a synthesis and an innovation and can “radically alter the meaning” of previous beliefs and claims (175). this process inevitably involves an “a degree of willful historical forgetfulness” (176) and the invention of a new version of the past, purged of the complexities and confusions that necessitated a new dogmatic definition in the first place. the author argues that orthodoxy and heresy are retrospective and ideological constructions designed to reinforce each recent doctrinal decision by wrapping it in the mythology of a pure and exhaustive deposit of faith. but he also notes that this does not mean that innovations are false developments or corruptions but rather creative acts of “reinterpretation and reinvention” (178). in chapter 5, “tradition and doctrine” (180–211), hart discusses the power of the nicene synthesis, which was formulated with vagueness and imprecision, allowing for a vast conceptual world and “numberless variations and developments” (208) in theological thought. the author argues that the historical record must prove any doctrinal synthesis’s “correctness or incorrectness” (208). yet the theological legacy of the council of nicea demanded and permitted a rich and fertile tradition, subordinating the evidence of the past to a finality whose whole meaning could not yet be known. the author suggests that the future of theology and doctrine is open and cannot be closed off and that traditionalists may hinder “healthy developments” (210) in theological reflection by resenting the chaotic and disruptive vitality of the living tradition. the author implies that the living tradition is a spiritual reality and that “the spirit breathes where it will” (210). in chapter 6, “tradition and apocalypse” (212–42), hart argues that distinguishing the true christian story from its many phantom inversions or caricatures requires discernment, especially in separating an “original ‘orthodoxy’” from all “its simulacra and counterfeits” (233). the lines of demarcation become even more confusing and indecipherable as one engages in the hermeneutical and historical work of 125 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef15516 identifying the original “orthodoxy”. the author claims that the apparent unity of a “dogmatic continuum is often much more credible when viewed from the present, as a fait accompli” (234). in the past, however, it looks more haphazard. the author argues that the tradition has always progressed by discovering new implications in what is currently understood as orthodox christian confession and practice and by questioning, challenging and reinterpreting what has been before. thus, the author argues for the integral unity of a living christian tradition and the internal rationality of its history of dogmatic development; one must see it not only as a source of agreement and cogency but also “as a force of destruction, reconstruction, reinterpretation and unanticipated renewal” (240). the final chapter, “tradition as apocalypse” (243–98), is dedicated to the future of the christian faith. hart describes it as an ideal dimension of christian tradition, essential to its “coherence but inexhaustible by any of the configurations the tradition has assumed over the centuries” (243). he admits that he cannot claim he knows what lies ahead, but he believes that the christian faith constantly evolves and even desires “its overthrow in a fuller revelation of its inner truth” (245). hart argues against certain forms of traditionalism, dogmatism and fideism and rejects the options of extrinsic and historicism as “intellectually stultifying and imaginatively suffocating” (246). he proposes a rule for theologians to follow, which involves seeing doctrines as dynamic orientations of “reflection, desire, and imagination” (247) rather than fixed properties. hart also discusses the “final cause” or “ultimate intentional horizon” (265) of the christian tradition, which is the goal or purpose of the rule. this final cause is pervasive in practice and transcends its historical configurations, allowing for the revision of foundational narratives and concepts of faith. the author argues that this final cause cannot be reduced to a simple sum of propositions but is the whole absolute future of the tradition. in other words, the last reason is a vision of a future reality in which all things are restored and reconciled to god. this vision of the future animates the christian tradition and provides the ultimate ground of unity for believers. in short, one of the book’s main arguments is that the development of religious doctrine involves an initial moment of belief and an ongoing process of rational validation. hart suggests that accurate religious adherence consists of a “moment of apocalypse” (77). one is gripped by seeing and knowing more than one can initially account for, only strengthened and enriched by reasoned argument and corroborating evidence. the book is a stimulating and illuminating read, but it can also be challenging and thought-provoking. hart’s exploration of the intersection of theology, history and eschatology requires close attention and a willingness to 126 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef15516 engage with complex and sometimes difficult ideas. however, this book is well worth the effort for those interested in the future of the christian faith. about the author cristian.sonea@ubbcluj.ro mailto:cristian.sonea@ubbcluj.ro ef2-2.indb 99 courageous, purposeful, and ref lexive writing as a missional and emergent task lynne taylor, elaine heath, nigel rooms, and steve taylor all members of the ecclesial futures editorial board abstract writing is an essential means of communicating ideas. however, it is also hard work. most writers learn “on the job” through trial and error and self-reflection. this article advocates seeing writing as a missional and emergent task, a craft undertaken towards a greater good. two different approaches to writing journal articles and books are described, each calling for courage and reflexivity. the article then provides practical insights on how to press through a sense of being stuck, before offering a step-by-step guide to responding to peer reviewer comments. we hope that this practical article will encourage the craft of writing, providing emerging and established writers with practical suggestions as they seek to place themselves and their ideas in the public arena. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 100 introduction writing is essential. to communicate our ideas, we write sermons, post on social media, craft journal articles, and write book chapters and books. however, most learning about writing is informal. writers build on previous knowledge. we learn on the job and through communities of practice, including the ecclesial communities that we research, the institutions and organisations we work within, and the editors and reviewers who engage with our work. writers reflect on practice. we learn through trial, error, and self-reflection. we learn from each other. in part, this is necessary because there is there is little formal reflection on writing within fields of missiology and ecclesiology. conceiving and writing this article has itself been a learning journey on the missional craft of writing: a journey that we now invite the reader to join us on. in her 2017 book air and light and time and space, helen sword points to the diversity of approaches to writing. based on interviews with one hundred “exemplary academic writers and editors” and a questionnaire of 1223 scholars who attended her writing workshops, sword discovered not a particular, universal approach to writing, but four categories that can be addressed by different people in different ways (sword 2017, 1–2). she called these base habits: behavioral, artisanal, social, and emotional. behavioral habits relate to how “writers carve out time and space for their writing”; key artisanal habits include “creativity, craft, artistry, patience, practice, [appropriate] perfectionism . . . [and] a passion for life-long learning”; writers are social, relying on others to provide feedback and support; successful writers cultivate healthy emotions and “modes of thinking that emphasize pleasure, challenge, and growth” (sword 2017, 4). these habits undergird diverse approaches to writing, approaches that are unique to each writer. sword’s base habits were evident in presentations offered at the inaugural ecclesial futures missional research workshops, held online in june 2021. as part of the workshops, we each gave a ten-minute presentation on the craft of missional writing. this taylor, heath, rooms, & taylor—courageous, purposeful, & reflexive 101 article extends their reach to a wider audience, weaving in insights from wider literature and being attentive to the missional motivation and aspirations of our writing. based on our experience as writers, reviewers, supervisors, and examiners, the article explores the writing process in terms of impetus; the task of writing; getting unstuck; and responding to peer review. “writ[e] with others,” sword encourages (2017, 123). so we did, sharing our learnings verbally, then working collaboratively on the manuscript, crafting a co-authored piece.1 we bring four distinct first-person voices to this writing task (holman 2016, 95), sharing our experiences of the craft of writing and hoping to encourage writing in the field of mission studies and ecclesiology. why write? writing is craft, and, for us, writing is missional. we don’t write primarily for fun, although writing can certainly be fun (sword 2017, 165). we write because we dare to hope that the ideas we share might make a positive difference to the work of the church and of christians, as we all seek to discern and engage in the missio dei. this is what makes our work missional: it is reflexive on practice related to mission, and it seeks to encourage and enhance the participation of ourselves and others in the mission of god. as researchers exploring the future of the church, we find ourselves in environments of experimentation. there is curiosity about what god might be doing as we research the transformation of local christian communities or individual lives. there is thoughtful reflection as we consider the systems in which such communities are formed and thrive. there is creative craft as we express ideas, and experimentation as we clarify how best to communicate insights. like stephanie paulsell, we write “with the good of others at [our] heart” (2002, 29). sword found the same: “a striking number 1. sword contrasts co-authored work, where “two or more authors contribute to the writing and editing of a single piece,” with co-attributed and co-written works (sword 2017, 124). e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 102 [of her interviewees] dwelled mainly on their pleasure and pride in knowing that their work has made a difference to other people” (2017, 109). they know their research is important and have successfully communicated it. audience is key here: as practical theologians, we write not only for an academic audience comprised of other scholars, but also for people in the church and in ministry leadership, seeking to communicate to them the significance of our insights. within ecclesiology and missiology, this is perhaps easier to achieve than in some theological disciplines: the churchfacing implications are readily apparent. because we write for multiple audiences, our communication is multi-layered. as well as articles and books directed to academic and ecclesial audiences, we craft blog posts, tweets, facebook posts, and short articles in order to make our ideas more accessible. however, while writing is essential in the nurturing of change, there is a lack of reflection on writing within fields of mission studies and ecclesiology. as a result, the communicative craft of writing suffers. emerging and established writers lack access to insights learned through trial and error and expressed through diverse personalities. hence, consistent with the approach of sword (2017), who researched writers, and holman (2016), who dares us to “writ[e] without footnotes,” we offer these insights. writing and editing the words according to sword, successful writers adopt a wide range of writing habits, rhythms, and rituals. such diversity was evident among us. in terms of editing, nigel begins each writing day at the beginning of his writing, further honing the existing words before tending to the new. lynne fears that her perfectionism would see her polishing early words to a high gloss before she turned to writing any more. elaine edits just the previous session’s words before turning to the new. in this, we are “staying with it,” editing and improving our work: discarding, reworking, and revisiting (paulsell 2002, 29). in relation to scheduling, steve writes for the first hour taylor, heath, rooms, & taylor—courageous, purposeful, & reflexive 103 of every day. elaine blocks larger patches of time. lynne wants to get better at this! don’t lose sight of this diversity. in this section, nigel and elaine introduce their writing processes. you’re invited to learn from and adapt these learnings for yourself or to try other approaches that these ideas spark. pushing past the fear elaine on showing up and writing when i was asked to write about how i write, the first thing i felt was exposed. it didn’t matter that i have written several books and plenty of articles. the old, familiar squeeze of anxiety popped up. because writing about anything that others will read—even writing about writing—is a vulnerable act. we truly have to show up as ourselves in our writing, use our own voice, put ourselves out there. and in academic culture, which is about as “judgy” as it gets, all of that takes immense courage. what i found as the years rolled by from graduate school, to professor, to dean, to founding neighbourhood seminary, is that most of my writing challenges boiled down to fear. early on as a new professor, i feared that with the many demands of creating and teaching new courses, serving on committees, and caring for my family, i would not have enough time to publish, which in my university context would lead me to perish. i would lose my job, have to find another one, which would be difficult in light of my lack of publications, and then if i could find another job, i would have to move my household across country yet again. i saw myself in the future at the food pantry, taking home a sack of pinto beans and rice, wondering why i spent so many years earning a phd when this was the outcome. it was not an idle fear. this actually happens to people. but wait, there’s more. i feared that if i wrote in my own voice expressing my own thoughts i would be mocked by my colleagues on the rank and tenure committee, who held opposing theological e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 104 views and who maybe didn’t respect my guild or my gender. those whose task it was to judge the quality of my work, determining whether i got tenure. that is, if i ever found time to get my writing done and then found a decent publisher who would risk publishing a “newbie” theologian. so many “ifs.” all these mental scenarios led back to beans and rice. as you can see, i have a vivid imagination. that imagination is a curse when i let fear have its way with me, especially about what and how i am writing, because then nothing gets done other than a big fat headache. on the other hand, imagination is my best friend when it comes to the actual art of writing. so the real question here is how to overcome the fear and lean into imagination and courage. how do we attend to the negative emotions and overcome the anxieties over the “ifs”? and how do we manage to make time to write, and to focus our writing on what really matters to us? i cannot speak for everyone, as we writers each have our own methods. what i share here are a few tips that i hope may help you overcome your own anxiety, internal resistance, or whatever is keeping you from fully showing up and writing with passion and skill. this will also help your eye to stop twitching from writer’s block combined with a looming deadline. first, let’s talk about a behavioral habit: our use of time. some writers with charmed literary lives get up every morning, take their coffee and disappear to write in solitude in their eclectically decorated office, coming up to breathe hours later with pages of publishable material ready to send off to the editor. those writers are not us. we arise, make coffee, run out to feed the chickens, take the trash to the curb on our way back, clean up the dog sick that happened at the door while we went to the chickens, make breakfast for the kids who are probably going to miss the bus and have to be driven to school, check in on our elderly mother who lives with us and must go to the doctor today although we forgot, accidentally put our laptop in a pool of grease on the kitchen counter, have to clean up said grease, and finish the article that was due yesterday. taylor, heath, rooms, & taylor—courageous, purposeful, & reflexive 105 here is what i do. i schedule blocks of time in my calendar, in advance, giving myself at least four hours and sometimes more. those days are all blocked off before any other thing can gobble up that precious open space in the calendar. i try to block half a day once or twice a week for a book-length writing project that is going to require several months to complete. on those days, i lock myself in my office or wherever i need to be to write that day, and i write. i generally get more work done that way than if i try to write one hour per day. having a weekly block of time helps me to get into the mental flow of what i want to write, and then the writing comes more easily and with fewer revisions needed. i need silence and lack of interruptions. if i can get that space, i can get “into the zone,” and write with passion and freedom, and often find the writing flows easily. for book-length projects i also try to schedule a writing retreat toward the beginning of the project, a few days if possible, where i go away and hole up at a retreat center and work without interruption. then, each time i sit down to continue the writing project, i develop what sword (2017) calls my “artisanal craft,” reading aloud and making small edits to the work i did in my previous writing session. this quickly exposes grammatical errors, run-on sentences, and all manner of little errors. i pause to correct as i go. not only does this polish the writing but it puts me back into the flow of thought that propels the project, preparing me to dive in again in this session. if i am writing about a new topic that is somewhat beyond my academic field or that involves expertise from a field about which i am a beginner (byzantine history, for example), i draw on social networks and send those pages to a reader (a byzantine historian who works at my institution) who has some expertise in the field in question and ask for their feedback. this way i can edit as needed, and i can anticipate and prepare for some of the questions others may have when i present the chapter or article at a conference. but let’s get back to the topic of fear, and how it connects to structures for writing and the content of our writing. when i wrote e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 106 my first post-dissertation book—the mystic way of evangelism (2008)—i asked a group of four friends who were representative of the audience for which i was writing to read every chapter and have coffee with me once a week. they were kind enough to agree. this did two things. first, i had to produce a chapter a week, even if it wasn’t in final form, and get it to them the day before coffee. second, i got reader feedback from the types of readers i wrote the book for; feedback which, though kind, was honest. they kept my feet to the fire on content, form, and voice, and in getting my work done on time. finally, after i finished the first draft of the book, i took a half-day to go back and read the whole manuscript aloud. this time, i deleted everything i wrote when i felt afraid because i was listening to the imagined critics who would make sure i did end up with beans and rice. i left in place everything that i felt and believed deeply, and wished the whole world could understand, everything that i wrote when i wasn’t afraid, but was absorbed with the topic. that process, encompassing each of sword’s behavioral, artisanal, social and, emotional habits (here time, feedback, readers, and choosing to honor my voice and passion) was the beginning of claiming my own voice, and my responsibility and calling as a theologian. and that, friends, is foundational for all the writing we do. bringing our selves nigel on writing as emergent helen sword confirms my intuition that there is no one way of writing: indeed, there are as many ways as there are writers. and yes, of course one’s psychological profile will emerge as we draw on the internal resources required to put finger to keyboard.2 i came to writing in the second half of my life: my first longer-form article was published when i was around forty-five years old. for me, i consider that it took that long to have enough to say that was 2. as we do these days—though i wonder what difference transcribing a voice recording might make. taylor, heath, rooms, & taylor—courageous, purposeful, & reflexive 107 worth putting into the public domain. that relationship between publishing and having one’s words placed in the public domain is important. and it is double-edged. on the one hand, the writing has to “stand-up” as worthy of being published. on the other hand, this induces deep fear (as elaine has articulated) that it will be somehow “trashed” once one’s head is placed above the parapet. testing out your work with others as elaine does and as we offer as journal editors for a draft article generally deals with this anxiety. thus, looking back, what i have written is based on reflection on personal experience, and on research that i have conducted. from these come things i have learned and wish to share—things which are somewhat original, not having been said before in quite that way. there has, therefore, been an element of “downloading” and i wonder sometimes how long this might go on for. i want to underline what’s been said already about social habits: collaboration really helps! not just pragmatically in that it reduces the amount of time it takes to produce the work. more importantly there is an interactive and sometimes helpful combative process which hones and improves the writing of all involved, a process that is different from simply having an editor look at the work when it is nearly done. what i normally do is share out the work and then we comment on each other’s writing before everyone “commits” to the finished product: one that is acceptable to all the writers, even though it might not be what each would have written themselves. of course, there might also be an upper limit to the number of authors writing: if it looks more like a committee, beware! how to get going? i like the behavioral idea of the “fuzzy goal”—taken from management literature. a fuzzy goal has enough definition so that you know the direction of travel (we are going over here and not over there), but is not overly ambitious, nor so focused that it limits any creativity and meandering along the way. this is why i take quite a lot of care over a book proposal—not because the publisher requires it (though they do), but because it is a discipline to describe the kind of book one wants to write, including the shape and the details of each chapter. the same can e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 108 be done on a lesser scale via an abstract and/or introduction for a journal article (which really should be answering one fairly simple research question). rarely does a book work out exactly like the proposal, but that is the point. this is what life is like, and how god works, if the spirit is like the wind blowing where she wills (john 3:8). perhaps we could say, to riff on aristotle, that life, even god, abhors a straight line. the proposal is enough to get “the sails” of our writing set and to avoid staring, becalmed, at the blank page. writing becomes simply filling out the prior proposal. proposals or rudimentary frameworks also offer an (artisanal) space for creativity. this is where i have enjoyed writing the most. i know there is something i want to say in this chapter or article; i know what the subject area is, but i don’t know exactly what i will say or how it will turn out. this raises a helpful fear that i won’t be up to it. faith is therefore required to set out on this emergent journey. there is something truly beautiful about arriving with a collection of words that emerged from within (where god dwells, according to our baptism) and which represent a newness, originality: something we knew needed to be said and now has been, there on the page in black and white. because what we write emerges from within our whole selves (okay, and the extant literature!), i have found being in touch with my unconscious to be really important. recently the shape of a journal article i wished to write emerged on my regular ten-mile bike ride. for me, riding clears my mind and lets what is below the surface emerge. there are many ways of doing this, but paying attention to the unconscious, especially at the boundaries of wakefulness and sleep, and being aware of when the unconscious is speaking to one is vital for good writing. this brings us to a key question: how much of oneself to put on the page? believing there is no theology without biography (mcclendon 2002) and because reflexivity is highly valued in practical theology (graham 2017), i have erred on the side of putting more of myself in my writing. of course, too much of ourselves can get in the way and obscure the point of writing. but so taylor, heath, rooms, & taylor—courageous, purposeful, & reflexive 109 too can an overly objective stance and “thin” descriptions that are too distanced from the subject. finally, in my experience a golden rule of writing is that “less is more,” especially if we want our work to be read. the audience for theological books is generally people with a lot of pulls on their time. it helps them if there isn’t any superfluous material (padding) in the work they are reading and they can get to the point fairly quickly. so, i’ve found myself attempting to be succinct in my writing, avoiding the tendency in some academic circles to increase the number of words in order to give the writing more import (holman 2016, 92). i bring this attitude to my work as a journal editor too. it is why we stick to a journal article being around six thousand words as, if it is well-written, it should be able to hold the attention of the reader in a single sitting. and, in my experience, i haven’t seen a script longer than that that hasn’t benefitted from a good edit downwards in the number of words. we often become attached to our writing, but i find we don’t miss an unnecessary paragraph once it has gone. when it gets tough lynne on getting unstuck writing isn’t always easy. there are times when words and ideas flow and we ride those waves enthusiastically. however, there are also times when writing is just hard work, when the creativity and inspiration dry up. when that occurs, how might we respond? how can we get back on track? first, it is helpful to remember that writing is indeed hard work. sometimes we get stuck because it is complicated. we are dealing with big ideas and seeking to communicate them in ways that make sense. the process of writing itself works to clarify those ideas, so tentativeness and change are often necessary: we might not know what we’re going to write until we begin to write it. that, and a myriad of other factors, can make writing difficult. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 110 at the same time, writing can also be pleasurable. in fact, “pleasure” and “enjoy” were the emotions most frequently mentioned by the exemplary writers and editors that sword interviewed (2017, 156). this pleasure resulted from pursuing passions, experiencing a sense of satisfaction in their work, enjoying a sense of flow, and more (sword 2017, 156–59). interestingly, the pleasure and the pain frequently coexist. in fact, sword wondered if “at least for some writers, frustration is a prerequisite for elation. perhaps the pleasure of the breakthrough, the intensity of the flow, would lose some of its emotional force if writing were easy all the time” (sword 2017, 163). in the context of sporting excellence, an emphasis on “flow states” and “peak performance” is being extended to what is known as “clutch states.” here, the balance between “letting it happen” and “making it happen” is key. the latter involves a “more intense and effortful state of heightened concentration and awareness,” occurring at “important moments,” when the “outcome is on the line” (swann et al. 2017, 377, 395). at these times, already-honed skills are utilized, and focus is “complete and deliberate” (swann et al. 2017, 395). sword’s work, and the added wisdom from sports psychology, remind us that while writing can be pleasurable, it isn’t always going to be easy. but experiencing difficulty does not mean that we should abandon writing altogether. rather, it can be an invitation to lean into previously-developed skills, determination, and purpose. writing is a privilege and an opportunity to explore things that we are interested in and passionate about. this privilege and opportunity does, sometimes at least, look and feel like enjoyment. for me, remembering my broader purpose of writing (engagement in the missio dei) also helps keep me focused and hopeful. when writing is difficult, there are some behavioral tools and tricks that we can employ to help move us towards productivity again. i find it helpful to do three things: to recognize, diagnose, and act.3 i’ll introduce each next, and then provide an example from my own recent writing. 3. there is resonance here with the see-judge-act tasks of contextual bible taylor, heath, rooms, & taylor—courageous, purposeful, & reflexive 111 recognize: notice that you are stuck the first task is to recognize that you’re a bit stuck. perhaps writing is seeming a bit harder than usual, or you’re not feeling motivated. it might be that words or ideas are not coming easily, or that you keep being distracted. sometimes we realize that something is wrong, but just keep trying harder, when actually we need to pause. diagnose: what is happening? what kind of stuck are you? once you have acknowledged your stuckness, it is time to diagnose possible reasons for it. i consider at least five categories: physical aspects, the subject matter itself, a need for a change in perspective, a need to read or research more, and some sort of performance anxiety. first, and easiest, are there physical things that might be causing you to be finding it difficult? do you feel hungry, or thirsty, or tired, or uncomfortable? when did you last eat or drink or rest or move? secondly, is the subject impacting on your wellbeing? is your writing touching on issues that are difficult for you? perhaps the topic itself is challenging for some reason, or it might be reminding you of something unresolved in yourself. thirdly, do you need to look at your data or writing differently? perhaps you need a fresh perspective. fourthly, do you need to know more? to read more widely or deeply? are there additional questions you need to explore in empirical research? or perhaps you might benefit from a clarifying conversation with a wise or knowledgeable colleague. finally, are you reluctant to share your writing with others? are you close to finishing, and afraid to let it loose? is it so familiar to you that you think everyone must know it already? does it seem unimportant, obvious, or boring? study: recognising what is, judging (or here, diagnosing), and acting in response (graham et al. 2005, 182–83). e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 112 of course, it is possible that none of these capture your own stuckness. in that case, consider what other questions might help clarify the sort of stuckness that you are experiencing. act: try something! even the diagnosing can help. sometimes, knowing what the issue is can be enough to get you unstuck. but if it’s not immediately resolved, it is time to discern an appropriate response. to do something different. if the problem is physical, listen to your body. eat, drink, rest, or go for a walk. if the problem relates to your wellbeing, it might be helpful to check in with a friend. it is good to reach out socially and to ensure that you have structures in place to keep you safe and emotionally healthy. if you have been looking very closely at something, you might like to step back and look at a bigger picture. if you’re been looking at the big picture, chose a small part and explore that in detail. do you think you need to know more? do you really need to know more? remember, you can’t read everything. if you do need to read more, go for it. but don’t be overwhelmed and don’t be afraid to share your own insights. finally, be brave. remember, you have something to contribute and no one else is as familiar with it as you are. working as we do in the missional space, i sometimes wonder if there is a spiritual element to my stuckness, something that i need to press prayerfully through as part of my participation in the missio dei (holman 2016, 97). sometimes i need to lean into audacity over humility, and write despite my own inadequacies and the inadequacy of human language (paulsell 2002, 22). if none of those tips work, press on, with something, regardless. engage in some productive procrastination: clean footnotes, order the library book or article that you need, or work on edits for a different piece of work. give it time. often, things that seem difficult become clearer when we return to them. taylor, heath, rooms, & taylor—courageous, purposeful, & reflexive 113 an example in my research on how churches acted in response to covid-19, i had been analysing interviews and church services in relation to a particular question and had one focus group to go. as i prepared to analyse and write from that final focus group, i recognized that i was experiencing at least two different types of “stuckness.” it seemed really hard and big. i wasn’t sure where things went or how best to analyse the new data. when i tried to apply the previous codes, they didn’t fit neatly. it was too big and muddly and i was feeling unmotivated. i made a cup of tea, attending to the physical. and i realized i needed to be brave. i had become so familiar with what i was working on that i could no longer see why it was important. in fact, it had begun to seem unimportant, obvious, and boring. i know from experience that it’s best to not listen to the voice that tells me my work is one of those things. because generally, it’s simply not true. in these moments, i need to press on, and so i did. i also needed to look at things from a different angle. therefore, i opened a fresh document and stopped trying to “fit” data into my existing categories. i started again, with the codes that came from the data. the work and words began to flow again, and while it was not exactly fun, it stopped being horrible, and i stopped being stuck. later, i merged the two sets of codes together, attentive to the similarities and differences. my analysis was richer because i recognized that i was feeling stuck, sought to diagnose why that was the case, and did something about it. so, if (when) you feel stuck, first recognize, then diagnose, and finally act. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 114 after peer review steve on the craft of working with feedback writing is craft. craft suggests a care about how and what we write. this craft encompasses not only reading literature, reflecting on ethics, collecting data, and assembling words. it also applies to feedback: to what happens after we “submit our writing to another . . . and ask them to show us our mistakes” (paulsell 2002, 25). when i submitted my first journal article, i thought the writing was over. in the years since, i have realized that the period between submission and publication is essential to the craft. the feedback from the review process is a gift to the emergence of my research. i need to skilfully discern feedback and undertake the emotional work required of all who participate in processes of change. between submission to a journal and publication, our work will be read closely by the issue editor, two blind peer reviewers and a copyeditor. if “emergent” is an adjective, the process of coming into being, then these four pairs of eyes play a central role in the process of an article’s coming into being. sword writes that “our ability to write effectively about our work requires not only training, commitment, and skill but also a willingness to change, grow, and learn from others” (2012, 13). this suggests the mysterious reviewer 2 can actually be a collaborator, contributing to the craft of writing. consider how students are taught to read journal articles. check the title. skim the abstract. read the conclusion. peruse the introduction. go to the section most relevant. contrast this with the review process. four pairs of eyes, carefully reading front to back, probing for coherence and consistency. how might the missional practices of emergence, craft, and discernment apply to the task of writing about ecclesial life? how might the review process contribute to intellectual creativity and allow your writing to shine? the first pair of eyes, those of the editor, will check for scope. the scope of every journal is outlined in their aims (for instance, https://wipfandstock.com/journals/ecclesial-futures/). pressing taylor, heath, rooms, & taylor—courageous, purposeful, & reflexive 115 themes are outlined in recent editorials. these are signposts. the craft of writing involves pointing to those signposts. key phrases from the scope can be woven into your introduction and conclusion. as you submit your article, your cover letter can outline how your article is within scope. your creative pointing to these established signposts reassures the editor, who will pass it onto two blind peer reviewers. two more pairs of eyes are now involved, invited because of their experience and insight. this can take time. reviewing is a craft, likely undertaken by a person with a range of commitments. they are probably reading your precious article in the margins of their lives, balancing work and family. the editor will collate reviewer feedback. editing is a craft, and this includes offering guidance to you as author. how you receive reviewer feedback plays a critical role in the emergence of your article. growth can occur in two domains. one domain is your character. the other domain is your writing. these domains are distinct, yet interrelated. reviewer feedback can generate emotions, including feelings of anger, or regret, of being misunderstood. these are important. they need to be heard and respected—but never by the editor. here is the process i follow after i receive peer review, seeking to grow as i collaborate with editors and reviewers. acknowledge receipt before you read the reviews, send the editor a quick email saying you received the feedback and are looking forward to reading it and processing it. this gives you time. choose when to open the email the response in the email will range across five categories. these include reject; major changes and resubmit to reviewers; major changes and submit to the editor; minor changes and submit to e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 116 the editor; accept as is. while the decision itself is beyond my control, i can control where i am when i hear the result. i choose an appropriate time to open and read the email, ensuring i have some time clear afterwards. feel the emotions central to the craft of writing is attending to feelings. we are humans and the reviewer comments will result in emotions, perhaps ranging from joy to rage. these feelings need to be respected. respect these feelings by naming them in a journal or walking with them in your body. respect the editor by not locating your feelings in your reply to them. turn the feedback into data it is tempting to personalize the feedback, trying to guess who said what. such thinking is fruitless. instead, make a table. i begin with one column for reviewer 1 and another column for reviewer 2. i insert their comments (representing major or minor amendments) into rows, grouping similar comments. analyse the data something happens as phrases and sentences are detached from the editor’s email and re-ordered in a table. my table now contains gold. the reviewers have given my work the closest read it is ever likely to get. i underline the affirmations, seeing my work through new eyes. can i build on these strengths? i look for patterns, realizing that in different ways, both reviewers might be pointing to things that could be improved. i ponder tensions. rather than rail against the inconsistencies, i wonder what can be learned from how my communication is being received. i write my thoughts in a third column. i draft some actions, which are placed in a fourth column. taylor, heath, rooms, & taylor—courageous, purposeful, & reflexive 117 size the task looking at the fourth column, i make a list of the indicated tasks. i group these into categories. these includes changes (as i agree with the reviewer that work is needed), alternatives (as i hear what the reviewer is saying but decide to approach it differently), and rebuttals (i hear what the reviewer is saying but have logical reasons for why i disagree). these decisions require discernment. as i size the task, i am pondering my identity as a writer. is it my pride that refuses to accept a section could be tightened? sometimes, i check my discernment with the editor, emailing, outlining what i heard from the data and what i plan to do in response. i invite feedback. complete the “to do” list with a sized workload, i consider how i might allocate the required editing time. in a spare ten minutes i can chase a reference, but i need ninety minutes to draft a tighter introduction. communicate the changes once i complete the tasks, i write a letter to the editor outlining the changes i have made and the reasons why. sword writes that “academic writing is a process of making intelligible choices, not of following rigid rules” (2012, 30). i need to provide evidence for my intelligible choices. making the table helps this process, as i cut and paste my work from the third and fourth columns into the letter to the editor. this process is clarifying my voice and attending to writing as craft, the discernment by which my writing emerges. if the editor agrees with your discernment, then a fourth pair of eyes is introduced, that of the copyeditor. they read for grammar, syntax, and punctuation. if you hear from them, it will be in relation to fine detail, the final polish. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 2 , i s s u e 2 118 conclusion this article has explored the writing practices of four practical theologians. it has outlined the motivations that lie behind our writing, named the importance of courageously finding and using your own voice, and highlighted the importance of reflexivity. practical suggestions on what to do when you feel stuck were followed by a process for responding to peer review. across the four writers, there are shared themes. readers are encouraged to push past fear and uncertainty and to see writing as an expression of wisdom and insight. collaboration occurs across the entire writing process: collaboration involving fellow writers, wise others, early readers, editors, and peer reviewers. writing is a deeply human yet spirit-attentive process. it is emergent and missional. sword’s base habits were evident in the article. diverse behavioral habits relating to time, place, and rhythms and rituals were noted. we explored the importance of social habits such as writing for the sake of others, learning from others, writing collaboratively, and seeking feedback. emotional matters were addressed in relation to courage, stuckness, and attending to feedback. finally, the purpose of the article is artisanal—we seek to develop our own writing, and the writing of others. there are as many approaches to writing as there are writers. we hope that this article will help you find and grow in your own unique approach. bibliography graham, e. “the state of the art: practical theology yesterday, today, and tomorrow: new directions in practical theology.” theology 120.3 (2017) 172–80. https://doi.org/10.1177/0040571x16684419. graham, e., h. walton, and f. ward. theological reflection: methods. london: scm, 2005. heath, e. the mystic way of evangelism. grand rapids, mi: baker academic, 2008. holman, s. r. 2016. “daring to write theology without footnotes.” in lived theology: new perspectives on method, style, and pedagogy, edited by c. marsh. new york, ny: oxford university press, 2016. taylor, heath, rooms, & taylor—courageous, purposeful, & reflexive 119 mcclendon, j. w. biography as theology: how life stories can remake today’s theology. eugene, or: wipf & stock, 2002. paulsell, s. “writing as a spiritual discipline.” in the scope of our art: the vocation of the theological teacher, edited by l. g. jones and s. paulsell. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2002. swann, c., l. et al. “psychological states underlying excellent performance in sport: toward an integrated model of flow and clutch states.” journal of applied sport psychology 29.4 (2017) 375–401. sword, h. stylish academic writing. cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 2012. sword, h. air and light and time and space: how successful academics write. cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 2017. ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 1 6 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13613 a r t i c l e s doi: 10.54195/ef13613 how to make the best ganjang gejang: the missional church movement in korea: evaluation and proposal seung-hyun (nathan) chung abstract in korean christianity, interest in missional church has almost exploded in the past 15 years, with two main streams of ideas. one emphasizes that a local church should reflect the missionary nature of the triune god in a series of activities such as worship, preaching, praise and bible study. the other insists that since the god of scripture always calls and sends people, church members should also go to their local community. this paper reviews the current discussion on missio dei in korea and the creation theology of jürgen moltmann. moltmann states that god’s creation continues until the end and god’s ultimate purpose is to fellowship with all creation. kong3al community and ilbeot church, located in gang-hwa island, south korea, practise such fellowship between human and human, human and nature, and creation and god. for the missional church movement to proceed fully in korea, both streams should engage each other through the osmosis of the economy of salvation and the work of creation. keywords: missional church; missio dei; creation theology; kong3al; ilbeot church introduction one of koreans’ favourite foods is ganjang gejang, a raw crab marinated in seasoned soy sauce. to make ganjang gejang right, at least two conditions must be met. one is good soy sauce to prepare the crab meat. the other is having sufficient time required for the soy sauce to seep through the crab meat. in other words, the fermented soy sauce must enter every part of the crab’s body, and the crab must be sufficiently immersed in the soy sauce in a wide bowl. in korean christianity, interest in missional church has almost exploded since 2000. by 2021, there were 678 academic papers written about missional churches (korean 7 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13613 citation index 2022), in which there have been two main streams of ideas. one emphasizes that a local church should reflect the missionary nature of the triune god in a series of activities in the church, such as worship, preaching, praise and bible study. the other insists that since god revealed in scripture always calls and sends people, church members should likewise go to their local communities to participate in his mission. to support the full development of the missional church movement (mcm) in korea, i would like to review missio dei, the foundation of mcm, and propose an osmosis of both streams by discussing creation theology. two streams of the missional church movement in south korea as is well known, the 1952 international missionary council (imc) in willingen, germany, proclaimed that “the missionary movement of which we are a part has its source in the triune god himself” (goodall 1953: 189). to put it simply, for a long time in christianity, mission was a programme or project in which a church or a mission organization took the lead and sent certain missionaries abroad according to specific passages of the bible. and these kinds of mission almost always proceeded in one direction, from the west to the third world. however, willingen imc declared that mission is of the very nature of god, like love, justice, grace and holiness. this means that mission can no longer be accepted in only a narrow sense. the missionary nature of god must be manifested in life by all believers, both inside and outside the church. however, in korea, recognizing this missionary nature of god as the church’s dna is proceeding in two different directions. one emphasizes the internal renewal of local churches from the perspective of missio dei, and the other focuses on the church’s actions in the local community. on the one hand, the group that emphasizes internal renewal of the church underlines that the missionary nature of the triune god must first fill general church activities such as ministry, worship, bible study, and discipleship before performing missions outside the church ( juan international university 2021). this is partly because, although korean society has never reached a fully-fledged version of christendom, it is under the influence of “functional christendom”, as darrell guder explains it (guder et al. 1998: 6). in other words, a functional christendom lacks the concept of missio dei and has not practised what guder calls “missional theology education” (guder 2015: 1–19). it can be argued that christendom has influenced the vast majority of seminaries in korea. as a result, local churches have been mainly focused on pastoring church members rather than participating in god’s missionary nature active in the world. in that sense, it is thought that before doing missions in and for the world, various activities within the church must first be revitalized with god’s missionary nature (chung 2016; 2020a & b; 2021). this 8 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13613 is felt to be a step necessary to transition “from church with mission to missional church” (guder et al. 1998: 4). on the other hand, another group of korean churches has mainly focused on developing relationships and having fellowship with residents. kook-il han claims that the local church focuses too much on simply evangelizing the local community without engaging with the community (han 2016:77) and thus, for the church to be a community sent out into the world, a relationship with them must come first (han 2016:90). as an example of this, the maeul (village) movement in the korean church is one of the typical examples of mcm focused on this mode of engagement with the missio dei. dosimlee church, located in hongcheon, gangwon-do, sees the church community and the maeul community as one. therefore, for the church, maeul events are church events and church events are maeul events. ranking cannot be determined. this can be understood by regarding mcm holistically (hong 2018: 159–60). these two directions of mcm are similarly apparent in conferences with local church pastors. the korean society of mission studies (ksoms) and npt-rig (new, integrated platform that transcends region, ideology, and generation) korea have conducted annual joint conferences on mcm in korea since 2019. at the first joint conference, four pastors presented, mostly sharing about their various ministries conducted in their respective local communities. in 2020, three pastors announced how they were reflecting the missionary nature of god in the worship, pastoral care and education of their local churches. in 2021, four pastors presented, two of whom mainly spoke about the church’s ministry in their local communities, and two shared the process of converting a traditional church into a missional church. however, these discussions were mainly about the church or community rather than missio dei, the source of a missional church. understanding this trend, i would now like to look at contemporary discussions of missio dei in korea. recent discussions of missio dei in south korea missio dei is a critical concept still being discussed in missiology and i especially pay attention to the arguments of korean scholars. first, soo-il chai points out that there needs to be more academic research on the issue of money and other religions from the perspective of missio dei in korean christianity. in the second half of the twentieth century, korean christianity was consumed with tensions between evangelicalism and ecumenism, conservatives and progressives, and spiritual salvation and social participation. while that trend has gradually faded in the twenty-first century, a new polarization emerged between poor and rich churches (chai 2003: 542–43). in 9 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13613 addition, chai cites the example of the conflict between buddhism and tang kun to emphasize the need to study how missio dei can enable christians to approach other religions without taking a conservative and aggressive stance (2003: 543–45). secondly, the systematic theologian baik chung-hyun indicates that the discussion since willingen imc proceeded as a study of the church’s doctrine rather than of the triune god himself. however, missio dei is here approached mainly in relation to missio ecclesiae right from the start. still giving a statement centering around church but not around god, willingen’s proposal of missio dei is basically ecclesiological. this is one of the main reasons why it does not say much about god or the triune god, except saying that god the father sends the son and works through the spirit (baik 2021: 332). in other words, willingen imc was a breakthrough in the definition and subject of mission. still, it then developed as a new ecclesiology rather than a study of the missionary nature of god himself. thus, baik adds that the concept of missio dei should be further discussed as a character of the triune god himself. “we need to approach missio dei quite differently. that is, we need to approach it not in relation to missio ecclesiae but primarily in relation to processio dei, that is, the procession of the triune god” (baik 2021: 339). finally, the more critical theological and missiological problem of missio dei in korea is that jesus christ is understood almost exclusively in terms of soteriology. according to jürgen moltmann, god the son is “the divine foundation of creation and its inexhaustibly creative ground.” he explains this in a threefold sense: 1. all things from god are created ‘through him’ and through him find their forms and the community that binds them together; 2. all things from god are made fast ‘in him’, their lives and existence being sustained against the threat of chaos by his presence in them; 3. all things are ‘for him’ – that is to say all things are created for his sake, and for him all things are waiting (moltmann 1990: 287). like two sides of a coin, creation theology and the soteriology of jesus christ cannot be divided. mcm in korea, however, primarily focuses on humans’ salvation; consequently, discussions of creation, such as climate change and ecological issues, remain marginal. in the articles and conferences of korean scholars, it is hardly possible to find discussions that link missio dei to creation theology. in summary, although missio dei is a very comprehensive concept, korean christianity has understood and interpreted it in narrow terms and mostly applied it to ecclesiology in relation to human 10 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13613 salvation. in this context, this paper examines the creation theology of the triune god, mainly drawing from moltmann, to propose a direction for mcm in korea. brief sketch of creation theology according to moltmann moltmann’s creation theology is closely related to the trinity. the centre of that connection is “the unique and perfect fellowship of the father and the son and the holy spirit” (moltmann 1985: 1–2). according to moltmann, the order is essential in creation. there is a relationship within the triune god first, and then god creates the world and has relationships with the creation in the pattern of that original relationship (shin 2015: 61–63). as is well known, moltmann explains the triune god’s inner relationship with the concept of perichoresis or circumincessio, which was the original idea of john damascene. an eternal life process takes place in the triune god through the exchange of energies. the father exists in the son, the son in the father, and both of them in the spirit, just as the spirit exists in both the father and the son. by virtue of their eternal love they live in one another to such an extent, and dwell in one another to such an extent, that they are one. (moltmann 1981:174–75) also similar to perichoresis, the three persons of the trinity have a process of mutual manifestation: “the process of the mutual manifestations of the persons through their relations in the divine glory. the persons of the trinity make one another shine through that glory, mutually and together. they glow into perfect form through one another and awake to perfected beauty in one another” (moltmann 1981: 176). ok-su shin summed up perichoresis as ‘mutual reciprocity, mutual indwelling, and mutual interpenetration’ of the three persons of the triune god. and they form the unique and integrative unity of the triune god through intimate existence with each other, for each other, and within each other” (shin 2015: 59). the triune god now wants to have this perfect fellowship in the created world. so he participates in creation and invites all creatures to this fellowship. in the unity of the father, the son, and the holy spirit, the triune god himself is an open, inviting fellowship in which the whole creation finds room: “that they also may be in us”, prays the johannine christ ( john 17:21).… it is not merely an external bond joining human nature with the divine essence. it issues from the essential inward community 11 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13613 of the triune god, in all the richness of its relationships; and it throws this community open for human beings in such a way that it gathers into itself these men and women and all other created things, so that they find eternal life (moltmann 1992: 218–19). when the triune god has fellowship with the world, the way of indwelling is different. since the triune god is himself perfect, he does not need the finite world. however, he wants to have fellowship with the creatures, and for this, god spatially reduces and constrains himself through a voluntary kenotic action (moltmann 1981:105–14; 1985: 86–89). god also limits his eternity to give creatures a finite time (moltmann 1985: 114) and his omniscience to provide them freedom (moltmann 1981: 109–10). through this process of creation, god is in the world, and the world is in god. moltmann distinguishes it from deism, which emphasizes only the transcendence of god, or pantheism, which highlights only immanence. and he claims that “the trinitarian concept of creation binds together god’s transcendence and his immanence” (moltmann 1985: 98). furthermore, this creation of the triune god does not stop once and for all with the original creation, but continues when new creation takes place. moltmann explains this as the original creation, the continuous creation (creatio continua), and the new creation (nova creatio) that completes everything. god continues to create through fellowship with humans and other creatures related to the original and new creations. on the one hand, continuous creation is maintaining and preserving what was created in the beginning, and, on the other, preparing to complete the new creation (moltmann 1985: 208–10). by the way, the reason god created all creation is not so that human beings can merely admire the creation or take unilateral responsibility for the creation on behalf of god. what god wants is fellowship. this must happen in both directions. the coexistence of creator and creature is also their mutual life, their cohabitation, and influence on each other. the creator finds space in the fellowship of creature. the creature finds space in god. so creation also means that we are in god and god is in us. rather, creation means fellowship between god and the world (moltmann 1991: 133). however, although god has entrusted humans as stewards of creation, they have misunderstood it and committed at least three mistakes. the first mistake is that creation became for the convenience of humans, or to put it more practically, he subjugated the creatures for profit. numerous animals and plants are unilaterally sacrificed for human greed. secondly, despite human beings being sufficiently aware of and experiencing the climate crisis, they are choosing to repeat their past mistakes. 12 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13613 finally, christians who are responsible for god’s creation are focused only on human salvation and fail to listen to the cries of creation. in other words, the church regards preserving creation and fellowship with creatures as secondary and optional. to sum up this section, the triune god humbled himself voluntarily to create the world and he is inhabiting it and continuously creating it. in addition, these series of god’s creations are for fellowship. the purpose of missional church should be to experience and embody this fellowship inside and outside the church. both renewing the church with missio dei and serving the local community is important, but the fellowship with god’s creation is essential. with this understanding of creation theology, i would like to examine one community dedicated to such fellowship. communities that embody fellowship kong3al (three beans) community was established in gang-hwa island, south korea, in 2005. it is said that korean ancestors planted three seeds when planting beans. one bean was to be eaten by insects or birds, one to share with neighbours, and the last to be eaten by the planter himself. as such, kong3al began with the spirit of a farmer who plants three seeds to bear fruit: one for the community to form a mutually life-giving fellowship, another to share with others out of joyful overflow, and the last to be harmoniously integrated to sustain the ecological cycle. kong3al practises social farming to implement this vision. social farming was one of the 100 national tasks of the moon jae-in administration in korea. social farming focuses explicitly on three areas. the first is care. agricultural activities are carried out with educational and welfare institutions for those needing care, such as the elderly and the disabled. the second is education. social farming mentors the disabled, young people, and women who do not have basic agricultural skills through agriculture-related education for settlement in rural areas. the third is employment. it provides vocational training opportunities in the agricultural sector in rural areas. kong3al aims for the self-reliance of the community and its members by planting and harvesting beans to make and sell tofu products. the community practises sharing while working with the socially underprivileged. sixty per cent of its employees are people with disabilities in the local area. kong3al takes care of the mentally ill and the disabled as well. in addition, kong3al helps elderly farmers and returning villagers to restart farming. furthermore, it allows people who are tired of city life to gain alternative experiences by forming an agricultural social network. through these processes, kong3al considers humans and nature to be mutually dependent. 13 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13613 jung-hoon suh, who leads kong3al, pioneered ilbeot (friends who work together) church in 2006. he was born into a family of farmers for generations. his life experience led to his interest in rural missions and pastoral work from his seminary days. while studying ecological theology, he searched for an agriculture-based ministry and communal life. at first, he did not plant a church because, to him, the church is not a building but a gathering, and a community itself. he participated in everything related to farming and the local community, and met like-minded friends on the journey. they gathered together to create the ilbeot community, and naturally suh, who was ordained, became the senior pastor of the ilbeot church on the recommendation of its members. like the church’s name, it became an intimate community of friends who shared life-giving work. suh regards labour as life. for him, labour is not just about making money. it is a mission beyond survival, and it is to save the lives of those in god’s kingdom. he asserts with conviction that jesus’ work was to save lives. jesus said, “my father is always at his work to this very day, and i, too, am working” ( jn 5.27), so we must work to save lives. suh is trying to catch two rabbits: regional economic revitalization and ecological conservation. he is also zealous in environmental missions, such as conducting a group on reading the bible from an ecological perspective and writing a confession of faith that pledges the importance of life and the environment. as part of these efforts, ilbeot church was selected as the green church of the year for the 38th environmental sunday in 2021. since 2006, kcems (korea christian environmental movement solidarity) and ncck (the national council of churches in korea) have been selecting green churches which seek to preserve the creation world in all aspects of the church, including worship, education, service, missions and organization. suh emphasizes that the korean church must rediscover communal intimacy. this is difficult in a neo-liberal society that values competition. the church also operates on the same values of competition for personal acquisition. that is why relationships in the church are shallow, and other people are merely meant for one’s ends. suh insists that we should instead consider the mystery of life in all of nature and feel awe at this mystery. he believes that the korean church will also be restored if communication, a sense of mystery and the sense of wonder regarding others are restored in a healthy community. ilbeot church and kong3al practice fellowship in multiple dimensions. the first is between people. korean society has progressed dramatically, but it still struggles to coexist with the disabled. there needs to be more awareness of what it means to share life with people who are different from the majority. until almost the year 2000, 14 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13613 most of korean society was made up of a single ethnic group. like korean society’s exclusion of other ethnicities, people with disabilities have also been marginalized. they were often not welcomed even in church communities. many church buildings do not have the most basic facilities, such as parking spaces, elevators and restrooms for the disabled. however, in ilbeot church and kong3al, god’s fellowship is being practised from person to person, rooted in the land given by god. in other words, disabled and able-bodied people practise the fellowship god wants for the world. the second is the fellowship between humans and nature. at kong3al, the community goes beyond simply caring for nature as an object. it is a harmonious and sustained interaction. nature provides people with a place to live. the able-bodied people and the disabled live together while planting, cultivating, harvesting and making tofu. and people participate in god’s ongoing creation in places that could quickly become wastelands. as moltmann pointed out, god did not create in the beginning and then end all creation. god’s creation in the beginning was already wonderful and good in god’s eyes, something even twenty-first-century science cannot imitate. but god will not stop creating until the end. god wants to have fellowship with all creatures through creation. ilbeot church and kong3al participate in the continuous creation (creatio continua) and through it participate in fellowship with creation. in other words, participating in fellowship means realizing the preciousness of creation. the third is fellowship with all creatures and god. as mentioned, god provides and guides the arena of all this fellowship. through creation, he wants fellowship between human and human, between human and creation, and between creation and god. he also wants the perfect fellowship seen in perichoresis to be realized on earth. for this, god sent his only begotten son, and he broke down all human barriers. men and women, hebrews and greeks, poor and rich, the able-bodied and the disabled, and people of other faiths, can now all experience fellowship in the god of creation. and human beings who have experienced that fellowship extend it to all creatures, and ultimately give glory, praise, and worship to god who allowed that fellowship. the missional church sent to creation the missional church is a church that recognizes missio dei as the dna of the church and practises it inside and outside the church. here, mission led by god does not mean only overseas missions that western christianity had performed in the nineteenth century. the latin missio dei is “god’s sending”. in the west, the term missio dei has been used from augustine’s time when discussing the trinity. god the father sent his only begotten son, jesus christ, to this earth, and the son, jesus christ, was 15 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13613 sent ( jn 3.17; 5.30; 11.42; 17.18). and the heavenly father and the son jesus sent the holy spirit to this earth. however, georg f. vicedom argued that the record of god’s sending appears more extensively in the bible (vicedom 1962: 12–14). he stated that the bible describes god’s work of salvation for humans and the world as sending. first of all, god sent countless prophets to his people. in addition, god sent grain, new wineand oil ( joel 2.19), mercy and truth (ps. 57.4), light and truth (ps. 43.3), his word (ps. 107) and salvation (ps. 111.9) as well. on the other hand, god sometimes sends his people a famine for them to pay attention to the word of the lord (amos 8.11) and a sword to punish them (jer. 9.16). in this context, our god is a god who sends what is needed for his children. he is the god who sent, sends and promises to send. vicedom clearly describes this character of god as follows, “in this sending god is always present. thus sending is an expression of his actual presence in judgment and grace. thereby the missio dei becomes a declaration of his deity” (vicedom 1962: 13). if god did not send his son, the holy spirit, the word, many prophets and many other necessary things to humans, we could never realize his divinity. the triune god is the sending god, and in sending he reveals himself. as mentioned, the triune god not only sends, but is also sent. god did not only send angels or prophets for man, but is willingly being sent himself. however, there is an apparent reason why the triune god sends and is being sent. on this, vicedom argued, “missions to the heathen as we have them today are only possible because god continued his sending and, through the event of the sending of his son, established a continued mission” (vicedom 1962: 72). the sending of the triune god is not a continuous and meaningless charity for an unspecified number of people. his sending is his mission to save the fallen creatures he himself created. his love does not leave a sinful creature alone. that is why god started the mission, carried it out, and completed it in the end by sending and being sent himself. in this way, h. h. rosin insisted that missio dei is interpreted in english as god’s mission or the mission of god rather than simply literally sending of god (rosin 1972: 1–2). the triune god was sent and sends at the same time for the creatures of this earth. and he wants to have fellowship with all of creation. now he invites the faithful to join him in this very mission. in other words, to participate in missio dei means to participate in his work of both salvation and creation. 16 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13613 conclusion most korean protestant churches continue church-centred missions even in the era of missio dei post-willingen imc. and the goal and method of missions are still mainly based on soteriology. while this approach is not a problem, it has some limitations in responding to continuously changing contexts and issues today, such as conversing with other religions and responding to climate change. ilbeot church and kong3al are not perfect models of the missional community, but compared to most existing church communities in korea, they actively participate in realizing god’s fellowship. the triune god continuously accomplishes creation through osmotic pressure with the created world based on inner fellowship. “creation exists in the spirit, is moulded by the son and is created by the father. it is therefore from god, through god and in god” (moltmann 1985 :98). just as making a good ganjang gejang requires a process of osmosis between soy sauce and crab meat, mcm in korea requires sufficient osmotic pressure between soteriology and creation theology. such engagement is needed now more than ever to engage with god’s creation. about the author seung-hyun chung has been a professor of missiology at juan international university, incheon, south korea, since 2011. he received his phd from fuller theological seminary in 2007. then he ministered at sekolah tinggi filsafat theologi jakarta, indonesia as a professor of missiology from 2008 to 2010. he is on the editorial staff of mission and theology, the korea presbyterian journal of theology, and muslim– christian encounter. his research and teaching interests include missional church, missio dei, creation theology, and islam. contact: kahdohshi@gmail.com references baik chung-hyun. 2021. “a critical analysis of the concept of missio dei. suggestions for a trinitarian understanding.” neue zeitschrift für systematicsche theologie und religionsphilosophie 63: 329–40. chai soo-il. 2003. “missio dei – its development and limitations in korea.” international review of mission xcii (367): 538–49. chung seung-hyun. 2007. “the origin of the missio dei and its implication to missional ecclesiology: the critical reflection of willingen imc (1952).” theology and mission 20: 185–235. ———. 2016. “the understanding of christendom and missional ecclesiology.” korea society of mission studies 43: 187–220. ———. 2020a. “a study on the missional ecclesiology and pastoral missiology of wilbert r. shenk.” theology of mission 58: 319–46. ———. 2020b. “the realization of the god’s mission narrative and the missional reinterpretation of holy communion: a study on missional worship.” theology of mission 60: 403–29. mailto:kahdohshi@gmail.com https://philpapers.org/asearch.pl?pub=3586 https://philpapers.org/asearch.pl?pub=3586 17 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13613 ———. 2021. “a study on missional spirituality participated in the missio dei as an alternative community in daily life.” mission and theology 53: 391–417. goodall, norman (ed.). 1953. missions under the cross. uk: edinburgh house press. guder, darrell l. 2015. called to witness: doing missional theology. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. ——— et al. 1998. missional church: a vision for the sending of the church in north america. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. han kook-il. 2016. a theology and practice of missional church. seoul: presbyterian university and theological seminary press. hong dong-wan. 2018. “dosimlee church practices and applications.” theology and mission 44: 135–63. juan international university. 2021. from church with mission to missional church. incheon: juan international university press. moltmann, jürgen. 1981. the trinity and the kingdom of god: the doctrine of god; trans. margaret kohl. uk: scm press, 1981. ———. 1985. god in creation: an ecological doctrine of creation; trans. margaret kohl. uk: scm press. ———. 1990. the way of jesus christ: christology in messianic dimensions; trans. margaret kohl. uk: scm press. ———. 1991. history and the triune god: contributions to trinitarian theology; trans. john bowden. uk: scm press. ———. 1992. the spirit of life: a universal affirmation; trans. margaret kohl. minneapolis, mn: fortress press. rosin, h. h. 1972. “missio dei”: an examination of the origin, contents, and function of the term in protestant missiological discussion. leiden, netherlands: interuniversity institute for missiological and ecumenical research department of missiology. shin ok-su. 2015. revisiting the theology of moltmann. seoul: holywave academy. vicedom, georg f. 1962. missio dei. trans. dennis a. hilgendorf. saint louis, mo: concordia publishing house. http://www.kong3al.com/company_01.html http://www.ganghwanews.com/news/articleview.html?idxno=2582 interview with jung-hoon suh (23 september 2022). http://www.kong3al.com/company_01.html http://www.ganghwanews.com/news/articleview.html?idxno=2582 ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 1 114 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef15514 b o o k r e v i e w s doi: 10.54195/ef15514 aldous, benjamin. 2022. the god who walks slowly: reflections on mission with kosuke koyama london: scm press. isbn: 9780334061113 reviewed by simon woodman many western christians are unaware of the work of kosuke koyama, the twentieth-century japanese theologian. ben aldous, in this book, provides an introduction to koyama through the medium of autobiographical theology. aldous encounters koyama as a fellow pilgrim, and shares how koyama’s words of wisdom have helped shape reflection on aldous’ own life and ministry. so, in a sense, this book gives us two-for-the-price-of-one: we get to know not only koyama, but also aldous. aldous positions koyama as a contextual theologian, one who brings their experience of the past (through the scriptures and church history) into intentional dialogue with their experience of the present (through culture), with both being honoured as the context of god’s revelation. each chapter of the book takes a particular theme from koyama’s writing that speaks to the current climate of mission in the uk, inviting the reader in each case to ‘slow down’, to attend to what is important. in “walking: the importance of slowing down”, aldous introduces koyama’s theological perspective of ‘timefullness’, noting that for most of his life jesus only ever travelled at walking pace. koyama defines this as the god who walked slowly, the “three-mile-an-hour god”, and invites us to do the same, to take the time to feel the wind, rain and sunshine. when this idea of timefullness is brought into dialogue with the western obsession with clock-watching productivity, a timely challenge emerges: we have idolized time, and time has taken that power and used it to oppress us in return. against this, god calls people to divine time, to a perspective much longer than our own minutes and days. the implications this has for mission, for missional “productivity”, and for ecclesial decision-making are explored helpfully by aldous. 115 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef15514 in “seeing: notes in the margins”, we encounter the god who “sees”, who moves slowly enough to see the excluded, the marginalized and the isolated. the challenge here is for each of us to see those whom we often ignore, and aldous frames this in terms of the church’s colonial legacy of exclusionary and imperialistic violence. koyama calls people to “neighbourology”, to hospitality toward strangers, to embracing those often unseen because they have been pushed to the margins of society. he says that “extending hospitality” is the beginning of mission: inviting others to the table, both literally and metaphorically. this is a direct challenge to the post-colonial legacy of english exceptionalism, and the populist rise in the “othering” of those who have migrated to british shores. aldous proposes that the future of the uk church needs to be more diverse, as people learn to live together with difference in a way that reflects the shalom of the coming kingdom of god. the next chapter, “talking: shut up and listen, will you!”, is grounded in the aural attentiveness that the three-mile-an-hour god paid to those he encountered. aldous considers how evangelism in the uk might learn from koyama’s challenge that “christianity suffers from teacher complex”: we are too quick to speak, and too slow to listen, too quick to teach, and too slow to learn. contrary to the way christianity often positions itself at the centre of society to proclaim and declaim, koyama says that it is the broken christ who heals the world broken by idolatry, and that the church needs to recover the brokenness of its saviour if it is to be relevant to those who live with weakness and pain. the call here is to evaluate evangelism less by numbers and statistics, and more by pilgrimage, soul friendship, deep learning, and reciprocity. aldous proposes “apophatic evangelism”, which is grounded not in knowledge, but in recognition of ignorance, not in strength, but in recognition of weakness. this is evangelism in mysticism, in silence, in expectant quiet, where listening is prioritized over speaking, and where those who have been ignored find their true place of belonging. in “surrendering: nailed down!”, aldous reflects with koyama on the powerlessness of the crucified god. koyama’s early years were marked by his experience of being in japan at the time of the nuclear bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki, so his theology is marked by a profound sense of the fragility of human beings and culture. in the face of this, he advocated a ‘bodily thisness’, an embrace of the material and the local as the site at which christian living and discipleship take place. against those strands of christianity that over-emphasize an otherworldly experience or destination as the goal of mission, koyama points to the fragile humanity of jesus, noting that god chooses to work slowly and inefficiently, to the point where god in christ comes to a full stop on the cross: the “nailed down” god. aldous hears this call to “stop” in the context of the covid-19 pandemic lockdowns, and asks what mission in human frailty 116 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef15514 and vulnerability might authentically look like. listening to those who have worked in disability theology, aldous points to the disabling vulnerability of god nailed to the cross, and brings this into dialogue with the technological utopianism of transhumanism: for all of the benefits of technology, god is still an embodied god, revealed in the vulnerable and broken body of christ jesus. this is a book that calls its readers to profundity, to hold the context of their lives in dialogue with their scriptures and their faith. as such, it is also a profoundly relevant book, engaging with some of the key questions and challenges of the twenty-first-century western world. koyama’s insights enable fresh reflection on the real world of our lives, and aldous brings his own story to bear in ways that generate new insight. for those longing to discover an alternative to the fast-paced, performance-driven, task-focussed, high-energy, hyperactive functionalism of so much of contemporary church culture, this book is the perfect antidote. about the author the revd dr simon woodman, bloomsbury central baptist church, 235 shaftesbury avenue, london, wc2h 8ep simon@bloomsbury.org.uk mailto:simon@bloomsbury.org.uk 95 we want the good life now: insights from lived religion for a whole person and communal approach to salvation in the twenty-first century dejan aždajić lecturer and research associate at the freie theologische hochschule gießen, germany. email: azdajic@fthgiessen.de orcid id: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6090-2618 abstract while late-modern people in contemporary western societies may be curious about salvation and have questions regarding the hereafter, they clearly long to achieve human flourishing here and now. to obtain this goal, special prominence is given to the affective dimension, embodied spiritual practices and personal experiences. at the same time, the church in the west continues to insist on prioritizing cognitive word-based pedagogies and offers merely a marginal emphasis on experiential bodily participation. this strategy that highlights content over purpose has largely resulted in a diminished impact considering the significantly changed religious landscape. consequently, this paper e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 96 intends to offer relevant insights from lived religion with its explicit emphasis on enacted theology as a communal source for catechetical instruction and the whole-body prioritization for a salvific encounter with god. reflecting on these important aspects contributes to a more contextual and holistic understanding of how the church can promote the good life now, while increasing its practical effectiveness in its traditional proclamation of god’s salvation for the world. keywords: lived religion, salvation, secularism, human flourishing, embodiment, religious experience times have changed: salvation for the here and now times are changing, and it appears that in the modern era this notion is not only true, but increasingly accelerating. while europe has evidently been considered a mission field for decades (paas, 2012: 45), the ever intensifying secularization process has continued to marginalize the influence and authority of christianity as the principal blueprint for life and has inaugurated a widespread postchristian worldview in the context of most western societies (paas, 2011: 6). while in the past the basic assumption of a supreme and eternal transcendent reality dominated the landscape, today’s age is characterized by a clear shift in plausibility structures, where it is completely feasible to live without reference to god. the material world has been intentionally divested of any compelling dependence on transcendent categories for obtaining objective meaning. god is viewed as merely one viable option among many. these changed conditions ought to compel christians in the west to deeply rethink what the gospel and the lasting message of salvation might be within this post-christian setting and develop a creative vision of how best to present the unchanging biblical story considering the new circumstances. the beginning of this transformation can be broadly traced back to the reformation, and from there through enlightenment philosophy until the present time (gregory, 2012). with the permission to abandon the perceived constraint of institutional religion and any perceived guilt regarding the burden of spiritual responsibility coupled with the ensuing emancipation of the individual, disbelief had no longer significant social repercussions. established rules or fitting into a cultural order that provided a certain sense of identity was replaced with unprecedented personal freedom. salvation shifted from participation in the life of the church to the independent activity of attaining personal fulfilment and happiness (rooms, 2018: 102–103). the notion that people are in dejan aždajić—we want the good life now 97 their essence worshipping beings was firmly negated. not only has the need for god incessantly decreased, but the abolition of god has even been considered by some as a necessary precondition for genuine fulfilment. the basic claim is that the rejection of god and the acceptance that human beings are alone in the universe represents the ultimate expression of bravery and the requirement for actual freedom (rollins, 2012: 201–202). even for those who chose to continue participating in religion as one legitimate option among many, this has been manifestly reduced to a private endeavour, where acceptance by god no longer depended first and foremost on institutional church membership and demands for creedal affirmation. instead, religion needed to conform to a private vision about the world and the inner judgment of the individual about the ultimate meaning of life. long-standing concepts such as sin, confession, and redemption, all became personal categories that encouraged an individualistic form of faith that would have been inconceivable to previous generations. this privatization and internalization of faith resulted in the reduction of external, cultic practices and the migration of spirituality to where believing became an inner, intellectual category, which occurred somewhere within, deep on the inside of the autonomous independent thinking subject. people increasingly began to believe that they were finally liberated from cultic constraints and clerical authority and were now not only responsible, but also able to make their own decisions and shape their own destinies. the vision of human flourishing became the end goal. the premise that individuals were perhaps unable to save themselves became incomprehensible, thereby further depreciating the need for ecclesiastical communities and divine assistance. but is transcendence a threat, or perhaps the only satisfying response to the perpetual longings of the human heart? perhaps it is possible to represent the of role the church less as an institution of repression, and more of a communal journey of transformation. nevertheless, this remarkable development of private autonomy and trust in the boundless potential of humanity combined with the simultaneous decline of belief in eternal life and the need for god, resulted in the attempt to construct meaning and significance through personal effort without any reference to a transcendent reality. god has in effect ceased to be part of the daily way of life for a majority of late-modern people, while individual worth and a successful existence is now primarily sought within the boundaries of an immanent framework (seel, 2018). long-established concepts such as sin, redemption and salvation, that for centuries carried inherently agreed defining characteristics, have been reinterpreted and have taken on new meanings. this secular re-appropriation of familiar terms reveals fundamentally changed assumptions that must be taken e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 98 seriously. for instance, while most theologians would agree that the doctrine of salvation entails certain promises and benefits in this world it must also by necessity await its final fulfilment in the future. such a predetermined soteriological postponement, however, has ceased to be considered good news (paas & schaeffer, 2021: 334). the enduring human dilemma and profound quest to discover the underlying meaning of life abandoned any post-mortem conceptions and focused predominantly on the present actualization of human flourishing. for this reason, the ultimate spiritual, and presently non-tangible aim of salvation gradually transformed into a search for immediate satisfaction in everyday life and the concrete achievement of human happiness today. while contemporaneous flourishing in daily life is certainly also anchored deep within christian theology, traditional approaches have until now tacitly assumed that our dialogue partner shared a similar view about a transcendent existence. this constitutes a methodological hurdle and exposes an inadequate understanding of the changes that have taken place. we need a renewed imagination about ultimate meaning and human flourishing in order to develop a viable response to the self-sufficiency that is characteristic of today’s secular societies. the new circumstances of a disparate accentuation regarding the location and exact timing of salvation’s manifestation assuredly represents pressing interpretive as well as communicational challenges that must be addressed and overcome. it has become indispensable to stop speaking past the listeners. the contemporary christian understanding of salvation and other relevant theological categories is clearly confronted with a reordered western culture, thereby necessitating an intelligible representation of what it means to be saved. added to these significant changes has been the pluralization and resultant relativization of traditionally established truth claims. in our secular age there is an overwhelming number of possible choices for belief. modern people may perhaps be unable to determine absolute truth but that is acceptable assuming that the freedom to independently choose remains. the kantian notion that equivocated freedom with limitless choice appears to dominate secular thinking. the emancipation from perceived constraints that inevitably leads to a wide diversity of possibilities is readily preferred, even if the consequence is a pronounced fragmentation and a high probability of uncertainty (noble, 2018: 54). as long as people are free to choose according to an inner standard, the intrinsic essence of the object of belief or its correspondence to axiomatic norms remains secondary. objective facts are now individually determined, where each person is entitled to being the locus of absolute meaning. flaws in basic beliefs and the resulting dissonance is hardly troubling, since there are always new ideas and additional evidence to consider. and since truth dejan aždajić—we want the good life now 99 is perceived to essentially be subjective and geared towards pragmatic results, choosing a loose patchwork of beliefs that periodically contradict one another does not necessarily require rational congruency. moreover, due to globalization, the multiplication of diverse options and an indefinite number of contested possibilities, that which is real must ultimately be determined by the independent authority of either the individual or a cohesive community of individuals. this democratization of truth, where the opinion of the majority assumes the prerogative to determine what is right, has further contributed to the erosion of previously held common ground. certainty about right and wrong is perpetually questioned and traditional binary thinking largely discredited as an inferior approach to comprehending reality as a whole and successfully navigating through life. knowledge about ultimate truth inescapably remains partial and actual lived experience suggests a perpetually continuing modification of perspectives on the world. seel suggests that the essential attitude for modern people is that they believe that, “pure truth is an abstraction, not a lived experience” (seel, 2018: 49). instead, what is important is to live authentically according to an ongoing internal and progressive process of discovery, rather than submit to any external dogmatic propositions. truth has essentially migrated from an external objective reality, which was for centuries fundamentally informed by the christian story, to its current location on the inside, where “safe within our heads, we interpret what is good, what is true, what is beautiful, and who we are” (noble, 2018: 89). while this interiorization of truth by self-reliant and self-confident individuals has been part of modern culture for some time, the current constellation that continues to elevate individual independence at the expense of any collectively accepted foundational and permanent axioms, has resulted in deepening the rift between past assumptions and the present reality. this unique combination of a desired immediacy of salvation that is principally expressed through this-worldly goals, with previously accepted facts becoming subjective and internal, has led to the complete prioritization of pursuing personal well-being and momentary pleasures (sayers, 2010: 19). simply put, a particular form of pragmatic expediency has for secular people become the essential guiding principle for determining reality. the natural consequence of the relativization and subordination of truth to the fluctuating preferences of individuals has been an increased insistence on the guiding role of experiences in their supposed ability to detect and confirm the authentic. the logic is clear. if definitive certainty is denigrated and perpetually mixed with doubt, and absolute external objective meaning ultimately unattainable, then a decisive strategy must be employed to find other reliable sources that e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 100 offer explanatory assistance and orientation to make sense of reality. for this reason, the only valid approach to transcend human limitation and apprehend genuine truth is to rely on subjective affections and experiences. the dependability of a rationally assumed philosophical worldview or the correctness of a particular external object of belief has become subordinate to the principle of expressive individualism and the strength of genuine individual feelings (smith, 2014: 88). the fundamental search for axiomatic truth that would be congruent with rational categories was replaced with the pursuit of happiness, which was, “attainable through all sorts of experiences which, even if chosen, must be felt to be enjoyed” (marsh, 2018: 19). the process of authenticating reality must consult individual feelings. in this way, affective experiences are no longer considered a by-product of engaging in certain spiritual practices or the implicit result of intrinsically meaningful action, but rather the determining standard that necessarily legitimizes all authoritative claims truth. strictly speaking, if the felt experience is meaningful, authentic and positive, then there is a greater inclination to believe the theoretical content. stories, the imagination and emotional impressions consequently trump abstract reflection. considering the enduring reality of this changed landscape, where latemodern people display vastly altered views on life, meaning and salvation, then how should the church respond? if human agency is viewed as self-sufficient and responsible for attaining the good life now apart from any divine assistance and if the inherent implication of what the gospel actually represents is left to each individual for personal interpretation, then traditional methodologies of communication are inherently restricted. moreover, if emotions and the longing for immediate human flourishing eclipse propositional content and the promise of an anticipated fulfilment in the hereafter, then contemporary christian efforts to reach today’s secularized population with a convincing message of god’s salvation for the world must be realigned. to properly respond to these important challenges and advance constructive suggestions for future ecclesial practices, it is important to first offer a brief overview of the currently dominating strategy. following this limited analysis, i will introduce salient insights from research in the field of lived religion. in the final section, these insights will be further explored for the purpose of finding holistic and potentially more effective approaches to achieve the long-term overall aim of succeeding to convey the christian conception of salvation and the good life within the secular context of contemporary society. dejan aždajić—we want the good life now 101 salvation: a good story needs more than words in the previous section i argued that the typical leitmotif for most western culture is a pronounced longing for instant happiness and well-being that fundamentally depend on affective experiences to be considered authentic. for salvation to be good news, it is expected to be both pragmatic and immediate. additionally, since axiomatic demarcations of objective truth are continuously shifting and ultimately contingent on autonomous acceptance by independent individuals, rational categories, and cognitive-based approaches as the primary means of transmitting religious content in contemporary pluralized society have increasingly lost their effectiveness. a word-based approach, where individuals can remain safely within the boundaries of the interior intellectual self, freely able to accept or reject propositional claims to truth appears to be less than optimal. seel explains, “much of our pedagogy is head, heart, and hand, or observation, interpretation, and application, when just the reverse is actually how we learn: hand, heart, and then head” (seel, 2018: 19). it appears that theoretical ideas are best comprehended and internalized through the transformational power of embodied participation. this is precisely what butler argued, saying that theology is essentially embodied in practices and that “the distinction drawn between participating and thinking begins to erode as thinking becomes about participation and participation becomes an act of discernment” (butler, 2020: 287). since texts and ideas are inherently dependent on concrete embodiment in time and space and there is a seeming inseparable hermeneutical connection between beliefs and practices, then any meaningful religious tradition ought to be able to satisfy both body and intellect. consequently, there has been for many years an ecclesiastical wrangling with the question about finding an appropriate balance between word and sacrament (ross, 2014). does the cognitive acceptance of content based on words supersede the more multidimensional sensory experience of faith being expressed through a variety of external means? while there certainly has been a recent tendency to reemphasize certain liturgical elements within protestant churches (rempel, 2020), the spoken words still remains the predominant approach. carefully choreographed ritual enactments have been largely replaced with a particular message that can be grasped with the mind. verbal discourse takes precedence over bodily participation. there are several examples of this attitude. for instance, cronshaw and barnett pointedly disapprove of the prevalence of word-centrism that is especially evident in today’s seminary education, saying, “words, and words about words, are the currency of theological education” (cronshaw and barnett, e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 102 2017: 5). the role of the body as a significant locus of religious learning has been mostly disregarded. this is unfortunate since true spirituality cannot be reduced to a cerebral exercise. the teaching of doctrine that neglects a holistic engagement with embodied practices will be severely limited to achieve its intentions, for it is paramount to enable practitioners to relate theological insights to a pragmatic understanding of how this may affect their everyday lives (chan, 2006: 67). another example of the pervasive attention on words and texts, often combined with an implicit anti-liturgical stance, is hardly anywhere more discernible than in many of the sermon-centric worship services, where knowledge about god typically depends on the communicative skills of gifted speakers, who are trained in the mastery of verbal exposition. in tandem with several other important developments, the evolution of the sermon as the main pedagogical and spiritual tool to comprehend god also has its roots in the reformation, where “the rise of the word was at the expense of the use of the body in worship. benches and pews took up space that would previously have been available for the movement of people in procession or for kneeling in prayer. worship became increasingly a rational exercise” (senn, 2012: 45). knowing god through a holistic, co-participatory, bodily engagement gradually decreased in favour of passive listening with the predominant goal of cognitive comprehension. while it is certainly possible to attain spiritual insights and succeed in reaching certain religious experiences through a left brain, word-based emphasis, this rational orientation also suggests a somewhat incomplete understanding of what it means to be human, since it is ultimately unable to reach the whole person. it also reveals the reoccurring tendency towards a dualistic, even reductionistic view of material reality, which tends to have “a very partial view of the human person” (crawford, 2015:8). it is obvious that people are far more than thinking beings that can be satisfied by verbal concepts and abstract ideas. this viewpoint does not exclude rationality as one legitimate element among others that can certainly nurture devotion and facilitate a meaningful religious experience. the critique is rather directed toward the asymmetrical emphasis that reveals certain insufficiencies. what needs to be reassessed is the implicit assumption that views cognition as automatically superior to all other ways of attaining spiritual fulfilment and knowledge about god. a more balanced and holistic understanding requires a deeper anthropological affirmation of the interconnectedness of the physical body as a necessary vehicle for the transmission of religious truth. becoming fully human is fundamentally an invitation to go beyond a rigid mind-body dualism that often disregards the significance of the body and the implicit embodied nature of all theological knowledge. dejan aždajić—we want the good life now 103 yet despite these important insights and especially considering the contemporary context where people demand an integrative and pragmatic vision of life, the christian tendency continues to be an emphasis on the content of faith, while undervaluing the critical prominence of its purpose and function. for instance, it appears more common to answer what salvation means in terms of its doctrinal implication or an eschatological future, rather than what its precise purpose is for the here and now. marsh argues, that is crucial to strive toward a considerable reorientation in the christian communication about how salvation is understood and to “address the question of what salvation means for the present” (marsh, 2018: 209). if salvation is principally tied to an abstract story about the next life, then it will have foreseeable difficulties to compete in the pluralized marketplace of multiple stories that confidently proclaim flourishing in this world. this in no way denigrates the significance of the christian story and its promise of salvation that is made available through faith in christ. revelation and god’s word are crucial for helping people to understand their deep-seated hungers and hidden hopes. words and ideational content remain decisive in addressing people’s true identity, perceptions about the world, and the intense longings of the heart, which ultimately can influence their decision-making and behaviour (smith, 2013). even for thoroughly secular people, stories are foundational to make sense of this world (roberts, 2020; glasson & marsh, 2019), which is why it is important for christians to continue to tell their version as convincingly as possible. the essential nature of any religion or worldview is to persuade others that their story and vision of the ultimate good life is worth believing, which is why, “religious stories are not necessarily different in kind from the other stories we tell” (marsh, 2020: 53). the challenge remains, however, that the christian story ought to go beyond its proclivity to overemphasize words and theological assumptions and take seriously the whole person. this includes individual passions, experiences, and a profound embodied existence. the story cannot be limited to eternal life beyond the grave but must include quality of life and flourishing now. prioritizing these elements and pursuing an intentionally holistic aspiration to inspire people’s imagination is precisely what has always made up the core of any lived religion. a brief examination of some of the foundational areas of emphasis within the framework of lived religions can therefore help to provide important insights for the christian approach in its attempt to recalibrate the way of presenting its message of salvation within the current circumstances. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 104 insights from lived religion on salvation and the good life research on lived religions has been a well-established discipline within religious studies for many years (ammerman, 2021). rather than looking at religion through texts, it investigates how ordinary people apply theological concepts and beliefs in their everyday lives and within their specific local context. since it is too vast a field to discuss in any detail here, i aim to focus on merely two relevant and hence important ideas. lived religions due to their fundamentally pragmatic orientation deliberately allocate special attention to genuine human flourishing and embodied experiences (mcguire, 2008). aside from the theoretical content, the essential goal of believing and consequently applying religious values in day-to-day living is to generate a successful way of life. religion does not solely correspond to verbal truths and cognitively derived spiritual insights, instead its cardinal function is to, “make us act and to help us live” (durkheim, 1995: 419). in response to complex realities, uncertainties and significant challenges, people usually design common strategies across multiple settings in their attempt to attain meaning and contentment (ammerman, 2014). when certain institutionally derived requirements and religious obligations hinder the achievement of these principal objectives, then religious practitioners quickly find creative ways of pragmatic reinterpretation and new ways to implement those aspects in order to ensure their personal well-being. simply put, a system of normative beliefs is not always at the heart of religious behaviour. ordinary people constantly engage in a negotiation process. ambiguity, not rigid orthodoxy describes the distinctive nature of lived religion. the key common denominator, however, invariably remains the aspiration to the good life. liberation theology scholars have known this for decades and have been quite critical of an individualistic, future-oriented understanding of salvation. for them salvation ceases to be good news if it fails to provide substantial deliverance from material lack as well as positive socioeconomic benefits in everyday life. as this debate rages on and both sides endeavour to achieve a more balanced perspective, the plausible dangers are evident. on one hand there exists the possibility of instrumentalizing religion for personal gain. that which is expedient and helpful could be viewed as more important than that which is true. this leads to a devaluing of theological norms and an overly positive view of human potential. the necessity for belief in traditionally upheld doctrinal content could eventually be replaced with social activism and liberation from all forms of oppression in this life, where improved relationships and dejan aždajić—we want the good life now 105 not regeneration become paramount (morris, 2014). on the other hand, a too narrow view of salvation that does not sufficiently acknowledge the various dimensions that god intends to redeem in this world may become irrelevant. this is why “christians need to believe that the gospel is not only relevant for our soul and in the afterlife, but also for our bodies, relationships, and our lives here and now” (paas, 2021: 148). although the conflict between the utilitarian aspects of salvation and the commonly assumed transcendent orientation continues to persist (aždajić, 2021), it is important to take people’s aspirations to flourish seriously. lived religions understand that humans fundamentally long to thrive. consequently, to attract followers it is paramount to provide an adequate response that satisfies these tacit desires. and one of the most significant, yet undervalued, ways to achieve this objective is to offer an explicit focus on affective experiences and an overtly embodied theology. lived religion recognizes that belief is not primarily cognitive or theoretical, but rather that it has an overtly physical dimension. consequently, embodied expression provides an inviting platform for becoming more fully human by satisfying the desire for emotional contentedness and the need for concrete flourishing in this life. the reduction of theology to abstract concepts is essentially impossible because the human body is not only implicitly expressing theological content but is indispensable for theology’s existence and its concrete articulation. materiality is an essential element of any relevant religion and has a particularly strong grounding in christianity, since the “incarnation was not simply a theological premise, but a methodological practice” (seel, 2018: 118). god taking on flesh is a biblically informed worldview that affirms that corporeality is not subordinate to rationally held beliefs. for this reason, a purely spiritual or ideational focus that overlooks the incarnational emphasis of the christian faith will always remain inadequate. bodies fundamentally define who we are and any religious narrative depends on bodily involvement. mcguire describes this as follows, “human bodies matter, because those practices – even interior ones, such as contemplation – involve people’s bodies, as well as their minds and spirits” (2008: 98). especially within the contemporary context it is apparent that modern people clearly value embodiment, feelings and that which is experientially good over cognition and theoretical content. not only does an embodied focus aim at people’s desires on an emotional level, lived religion likewise understands that any deep comprehension about god must go beyond the intellect and is intimately dependent on bodily and interactive forms of knowing. it is fundamentally impossible to discern transcendent truths without being materially active and present in the world (shapiro, 2011). as theological doctrines are enacted through a choreographed e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 106 spatial-temporal event, new pathways are opened to go beyond abstract ideas into a transformational process that encompasses the entire person. thus, the body does not merely transport information to the mind for analysis but becomes a profound receptor of discernment. an explicit emphasis on bodybased learning for attaining meaningful spiritual understanding has invariably comprised the principal pedagogical strategy and lies at the core of most lived religions, where the formative role of practices takes precedence over doctrinal formulations (clifford & johnson, 2019). this perspective reveals additional insights of the paramount importance of an embodied learning process that serves as an implicit medium of cognition, enabling practitioners to learn to believe intellectual content through concrete action. in summary, while human flourishing and experiential fulfilment can be attained through verbal, informational content, insights from lived religions point out that a more direct way may be better achieved through a purposeful focus on the body. considering these important insights, how can ecclesial communities develop relevant new strategies to improve their current practices of proclaiming the message of salvation? practical strategies for communicating salvation in the twenty-first century the preceding discussion has highlighted that the conditions for transmitting the christian message of salvation have radically changed, and that latemodern people are predominantly interested in the benefits of salvation for present-day life, which is typically accompanied by the endeavour to attain experiential satisfaction that is often related to embodied forms of spirituality. merely hearing words about the good news is not enough. these words are expected to offer concrete advantages and a quality life beginning now. taking these yearnings seriously the church in the west can respond appropriately, not by abandoning its responsibility to faithfully proclaim the biblical message of salvation, but merely by reemphasizing certain aspects already contained within its rich historical tradition. such an increased intentionality avoids the danger of a cultural usurpation of biblical norms, while simultaneously engaging in proper forms of contextualization that can result in more effective ways of communication. while there certainly is an abundance of creative ideas and areas deserving attention, for the purpose of the present discussion i want to suggest two practical ways forward. dejan aždajić—we want the good life now 107 first, ecclesial communities would benefit from a return to intentionally exploring various liturgical elements that go beyond the principal use of words. a particular appreciation and accompanying prioritization of the body and its paramount role for enacting theological content has the potential to offer promising possibilities to effectively satisfy some of the most fundamental human desires, while simultaneously transmitting important truths (lamothe, 2008). such an exterior reorientation that propagates the body in terms of its profound ability to apprehend religious knowledge does not diminish the significance of text-based information. it merely acknowledges the strategic validity of this approach, for “the praxis of the church is in fact the embodiment of its theology. christian praxis is understood as the medium through which the christian community embodies and enacts its fundamental vision of the gospel” (anderson, 2001: 48). this conceptualization of the gospel is significant, for it goes beyond the affirmation of doctrinal statements by including worship, prayer, interpersonal relationships, and an emotional encounter that has the potential of leading people to assume a posture of wonder. thus, by processing reality through an experiential engagement that stirs the imagination, salvation can be felt here and now, which is precisely what late-modern people long for. such an intentional augmentation of the inherent meaning of the gospel affirms the necessity of not merely hearing the message about christ but experiencing a transformative new life as a direct result of that message (ward, 2017: 48). although this line of reasoning may appear self-evident, i argue here that attaining this objective can currently best be achieved through an overriding focus on the body. practices are not only remarkably useful to comprehend underlying theoretical content, but any real understanding is wholly conditional upon the guided medium of embodied worship and practical engagement since this approach is fundamentally able to express the substance of belief in a profound way (grumett, 2015: 15). simply put, knowing is inseparable from doing. the internal, subconscious dimension that is contingent on the physical body has an enormous formative and transformative function. people often do not change solely through mental processes or an acceptance of elaborate ideas, but through habit-forming activities, repeated gestures, and a myriad of other embodied liturgical activities that imprint relevant information onto their inner being. this does not abrogate the value of verbal communication, it merely elevates the tacit, yet powerful influence of physicalities and active participation as an essential component to impart deep aspects of truth that bring about lasting change. in fact, some recent research has suggested that an intentional focus on a bodily involvement can prove to be more effective during a conversion e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 108 process than the traditional models aiming at cognitive understanding (taylor, 2019). the seemingly simple, habit-forming power of participating through the physical enactment of various christian practices and rituals seems to be quite constructive in communicating complex propositional concepts that can over time ultimately evolve to an acceptance of the christian faith. it is a fundamentally useful way that over time forms people’s identities and sense of belonging. the procedure suggested here is not intended to be normative but rather sequential, claiming that the embodiment of implicitly transformative truths ought to precede the comprehension of rational particularities, where experience comes before understanding. it is important, however, that while this process may be personal, it should not remain permanently subjective, but must be given contextual meaning by the interpretive community. such an approach helps to explain and locate a variety of experiences within the christian story. one legitimate question at this point may relate to specific liturgical practices that have perhaps proven themselves as decidedly useful in transmitting key doctrinal content. another consideration may inquire regarding the most promising ways how secular people could be convincingly persuaded to participate in such practices. since responding to these understandable reflections goes beyond the scope of this article, it is important to highlight again not a formulaic list of prescribed procedures, but the necessity of prioritizing the transformative power of the body as a key tool to impart theological truths and provide avenues for meaningful human experiences. for this reason, the church would do well to re-envision the significant potential of the existing embodied elements already contained within its liturgical and worship practices. the second strategy besides a renewed focus on the body that can assist ecclesial communities to attain greater effectiveness in their presentation of salvation and the good life is intimately connected to a communal emphasis. since human flourishing is dependent upon materiality and an embodied reality, which is fundamentally anchored in the christian understanding of the incarnation, then from a trinitarian theological perspective, community and the relational dimension of salvation are likewise indispensable for ultimately achieving the good life (chandler, 2015). being made in the image of god from a biblical perspective, human beings must look beyond their individual selves and relate to others. if harmony and love characterize the essence of the triune god, then the good news must entail a soteriological dimension that is both personal and experienced relationally alongside of others. in other words, an essential component of a holistic message of salvation necessarily presupposes the vertical reality of reconciliation to god, while simultaneously emphasizing the horizontally reconciled relationships between people. although this dejan aždajić—we want the good life now 109 position may go against the individualistic attitudes of late-modern people, the fact remains that even within the current secular context, there is a deep longing for meaningful relationships (seel, 2018: 50). even for those who show little interest in the theological angle of a restored relationship to god, the deep-seated desire to experience intimate community remains. there are other reasons that make the communal aspect imperative. the previously mentioned focus on the body for attaining genuine understanding and experiential satisfaction implies a considerable interdependence with others. sharing life and an active participation in communities of practice are essential because spiritual discernment is contingent upon the embodiment of theoretical content in the presence of others. and since liturgy is inherently individual as well as relational, it provides an ideal platform for collectively enacting and hence articulating a shared theological story. by embodying these stories in unity with others and engaging in an ongoing process of interpretation, comprehension follows. this kind of co-participatory experience can lead to a profound reshaping of deeply held assumptions through a continuously evolving integration of thought and action. such a reliance on others is deliberate, for it aims to resist the prevalent attitude of autonomy and self-sufficiency that tends to reduce religion and spirituality to a private affair. instead, a true religious experience and even self-knowledge requires corporate involvement. propositional content certainly retains its validity, but any authentic emotional fulfilment can only be achieved in the context of shared human relationships. thus, the participatory dimension and interpersonal relationships take sequential precedence over an individual affirmation of ideas. deep transformation requires a thoughtful integration of unifying communal actions and an effective verbal communication of factual content through words. this strategic approach considers the spiritual sensibilities of the entire person and addresses both the intellect and the emotions, which can potentially lead to a genuine faith commitment. since this may require some time, an intentional openness to the idea of belonging before believing is therefore foundational in providing space for identity construction. during this transformative process the prioritization of embodiment is crucial, since shared social practices by groups of people have always contributed to the development of one’s identity (wenger, 1998). consequently, the formative and integrative role of collective embodiment to establish belonging and influence belief, further strengthens the significance of a bodily and communal emphasis as imperative for the communication and appropriation of theological truths. since conditions have significantly changed in the modern secular west, it is crucial to convey a holistic and multidimensional understanding of salvation e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 110 that deliberately seeks to proclaim the biblical assurance relating to the future and at the same time provide, “quality of relationship, inner well-being, openness to others, being willing to be challenged, accepting the struggle and cost of growth, and recognizing that one’s own well-being is bound up with that of others” (marsh, 2018: 210). reflecting upon this new reality is important, if christians desire to transmit a relevant and contextually sensitive message that contemporary people consider good news. references ammerman, nancy tatom. 2014. sacred stories, spiritual tribes: finding religion in everyday life. oxford, uk: oxford university press. ———. 2021. studying lived religion: contexts and practices. new york, ny: new york university 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press. ———. 2020. “theology in practice, in an age of wizards, hobbits and vampires.” practical theology 13/1–2: 48–59. mcguire, meredith b. 2008. lived religion: faith and practice in everyday life. oxford, uk: oxford university press. morris, wayne. 2014. salvation as praxis: a practical theology of salvation for a multi-faith world. london: bloomsbury. noble, alan. 2018. disruptive witness: speaking truth in a distracted age. downers grove, il: ivp books. paas, stefan. 2011. ‘post-christian, post-christendom, and post-modern europe: towards the interaction of missiology and the social sciences.” mission studies 28/1: 3–25. ———. 2012. “the making of a mission field: paradigms of evangelistic mission in europe.” exchange 41/1: 44–67. ———. 2021. “missional christian communities in conditions of marginality: on finding a ‘missional existence’ in the post-christian west.” mission studies 38/1: 142–60. paas, stefan, and hans schaeffer. 2021. “reconciled community: on finding a soteriology for fresh expressions.” ecclesiology 17/3: 325–47. rempel, john d. 2020. recapturing an enchanted world: ritual and sacrament in the free church tradition. downers grove, il: ivp academic. roberts, vaughan s. 2020. kingdom stories: telling, leading, discerning. london: scm press. rollins, peter. 2012. the idolatry of god: breaking our addiction to certainty and satisfaction. new york, ny: howard books. rooms, nigel. 2018. ‘evangelism through happiness? a case study in innovative ‘preevangelism’ with contemporary uk ‘post-christians’.” mission studies 35/1: 101–23. ross, melanie. 2014. evangelical versus liturgical?: defying a dichotomy. grand rapids, mi: wm. b. eerdmans publishing. sayers, mark. 2010. the vertical self: how biblical faith can help us discover who we are in an age of self obsession. nashville, tn: thomas nelson. seel, david john, jr. 2018. the new copernicans: millennials and the survival of the church. nashville, tn: thomas nelson. senn, frank c. 2012. introduction to christian liturgy. minneapolis, mn: fortress press. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 112 shapiro, lawrence. 2011. embodied cognition. new york, ny: routledge, taylor & francis group. smith, james k. a. 2013. imagining the kingdom: how worship works. grand rapids, mi: baker academic. ———. 2014. how (not) to be secular: reading charles taylor. grand rapids, mi: william b. eerdmans publishing. taylor, lynne. 2019. “our doing becomes us: performativity, spiritual practices and becoming christian.” practical theology 12/3: 332–42. ward, pete. 2017. introducing practical theology: mission, ministry and the life of the church. grand rapids, mi: baker academic. wenger, etienne. 1998. communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. cambridge: cambridge university press. _hlk95485040 _hlk96334497 _hlk91151276 _hlk99228587 _hlk92923612 _hlk92923636 _hlk72870314 sample _hlk102057148 _hlk102058336 _hlk102058373 editorial nigel rooms problems with “pioneering” mission: reflections on the term “pioneer” from germany, south africa and the uk setting god’s pioneers free? the need to release lay pioneers from the church of england’s narrative of resourcing and equipping james butler discipleship, mentorship and training which empowers african women for ministry in the diaspora naar m’fundisi-holloway communal maturation and missional discipleship: a congregational study nick ladd joyful disciples: a study of a missing link in considering spiritual disciplines and corporate missional habits mike harrison we want the good life now: insights from lived religion for a whole person and communal approach to salvation in the twenty-first century dejan aždajić book reviews kwiyani, harvey. 2020. multicultural kingdom: ethnic diversity, mission and the church. london: scm press. reviewed by sabrina müller roxburgh, alan j. 2021. joining god in the great unraveling: where we are & what i’ve learned. eugene, oregon: cascade books. reviewed by steen olson susan lucas (ed.). 2020. god’s church in the world: the gift of catholic mission. norwich: canterbury press. reviewed by luke larner olsen, steen, 2020. jacob’s ladder: missional church in the 1970s. st. marys, australia: sa & rl olsen. reviewed by patrick r. keifert 31 cultural perceptions: a barrier to the role of cross-cultural friendships in mission? (a church of pentecost-uk case study) john neate an ma graduate in african christianity from liverpool hope university, john is a member of the vineyard churches uk and ireland (vcuki) national missions team, responsible for co-ordinating vcuki’s partnership activity in sub-saharan africa. he has a passion for multicultural church development and for cross-cultural friendships. email: john@johnneate.com abstract this paper, based on original qualitative and quantitative research undertaken as part of my ma studies in african christianity at liverpool hope university, explores the challenges faced by the ghanaian church of pentecost-uk (copuk) in sharing the love and good news of jesus christ with white british people, in the specific context of the uk’s postmodern culture. arguing that, in this context, intentional investment by cop-uk in cross-cultural friendships with white british people is likely to form the essential basis of trust for the discussion of issues of christian faith, the paper discusses the barriers to engagement mailto:john%40johnneate.com?subject= e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 32 in such friendships posed by a generally negative perception of white british culture. my approach to the original research and to subsequent follow up has been consciously relational and the potential contribution of this approach to future collaboration with cop-uk, in addressing cross-cultural barriers, is also explored. the findings have potential relevance for other black majority churches (bmcs), for other minority ethnic churches, and for everyone who is concerned to enable the god-given contributions of all ethnic groups to be “brought to the table” in god’s wider evangelistic mission. keywords: black majority church; cross-cultural friendship; postmodern culture; mission; multicultural church; evangelism introduction it is important to clarify at the outset that i am white british and, until my first encounter with the ghanaian church of pentecost-uk (cop-uk), was unfamiliar with it. while the challenges of cross-cultural communication must be acknowledged in undertaking the research (if not in language itself, then certainly in associated meaning), it is also possible that my ethnicity added value to the research process in that, as an indigenous member of uk culture, i could reasonably be expected to understand key elements of that culture, and that this has generally been perceived as an advantage in exploring cultural engagement by members of cop-uk in this particular environment. the genesis of the research underpinning this paper was a 2020 case study interview, conducted as part of my ma in african christianity studies at liverpool hope university (neate, 2021). in this interview, a district pastor from cop-uk poignantly, powerfully and very honestly reflected on the difficulties faced by members of his church in attempting to evangelize in the uk, in pursuit of the global vision of the international, ghanaian church of pentecost (cop) to be “a church where members go to possess their nations [my emphasis] by transforming every worldview, thought and behaviour with values, principles and lifestyles of the kingdom of god and thereby turning many people to christ” (church of pentecost, 2019: 18). the district pastor commented: we recognize that we need to break out of our comfort zones. our theme is “possessing the nations,” so we need to go out. the first-generation african christians who come to this country – whether to study or to work – recognize the [poor spiritual] john neate—cultural perceptions 33 state of western christianity. you say, “this wasn’t as i expected. what can i do?” you have the intention to do it [evangelize crossculturally], but then the barriers come down; barriers of language, colour and resistance; “who are you to come and speak to me about god?” then you begin to withdraw and revert to what you do well. (district pastor a, 2020) cop’s global vision of “possessing the nations” is based on a number of biblical references – in the old testament referring more particularly to the physical driving out of the enemies of god’s people (e.g. dt. 11:23 (niv)) and in the new testament, to the driving out of spiritual forces of evil, such that nations and their peoples today are recaptured as part of god’s spiritual realm (e.g. eph. 6.12 (niv)). cop’s evangelistic vision is truly ambitious but, as illustrated by the comments of the district pastor, there is a significant gap, at least in the uk context, between the visionary goal and the practical reality on the ground – a challenge shared with many other bmcs in this country. hence this paper can be set within the context of the significant secularization of uk society, the rapidly increasing number of black majority churches (bmcs) and their challenges in engaging with british, postmodern culture. attempts to bridge this gap require an understanding of the current postmodern culture in the uk and the adoption by cop-uk and other bmcs of evangelistic methods likely to be successful in this context. research literature highlights changes over recent decades in the landscape of faith in the postmodern uk context, in which christian certainties (including the notion of absolute truth) are challenged, and where there is now greater emphasis on the relational and process natures of the faith journey. tentative conclusions that can be reached from the literature include: (a) that friendship is likely to prove to be an important route to connection with white british people in a postmodern society; (b) that this approach runs counter to some of the currently prevalent methods of evangelism used by cop-uk (particularly, street evangelism); (c) that it is not a “quick fix” route to making christian converts; (d) that it must be genuine, unconditional and sustained; (e) that it should not be treated as a project nor should individuals be targeted for friendship in a manipulative way; and (f) it will require hard work, an intentional approach and a willingness to break out of circles of ethnic familiarity. cop’s five-year development and evangelism strategy, vision 2023 (church of pentecost, 2019), highlights the importance, in attempting to transform communities for jesus christ, of learning to engage with those communities e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 34 and seeking their good (church of pentecost, 2019: 62). this suggests the importance of intentional engagement and relationship building and indeed, the possibility of friendship. interestingly however, a word search of two key reference documents, vision 2023 and the 2020 cop-uk trustees report (copuk 2021), contains no reference to the notions of “friendship” or “relationship”. intentional cross-cultural working is also not significantly developed as a theme. my central research focus was therefore to explore the potential role of cross-cultural friendships between members of cop-uk and white british people in overcoming the cultural barriers to sharing jesus’ love and good news. however, while cross-cultural friendships may be very significant in addressing cultural barriers, it is important to recognise that their impact will be conditioned by the attitudes of cop-uk leaders and members towards white british culture, affecting the likelihood of, and enthusiasm for, their active engagement. this paper explores the perceptions of white british culture held by cop-uk leaders and members and how these may be shaping current attitudes both to uk cultural engagement and to investment in cross-cultural friendships. finally, this paper briefly discusses the relational approach which i took to the research and the impact of this both on the research process itself, and also on the way in which cop-uk is currently engaging in conversation about potential responses to the research outcomes. the church of pentecost since its origins in 1937, cop has extended its reach to become an international church (onyinah, 2020: 184). by 2021, cop was operating in 136 nations with a worldwide membership of 3,901,400, organized within 24,773 local assemblies (church of pentecost 2022). cop operates within a centralized structure, with cop in ghana remaining the dominant element. membership of cop-uk in 2020 (the latest available at the time of writing) was 21,248, organized through 162 akan and english-speaking assemblies (church of pentecost-uk, 2021: 3). the english-speaking assemblies, known as pentecost international worship centres (piwcs), and representing some 40 percent of all assemblies, were first introduced in the uk in 2002 (nyanni, 2018: 122), with the aim of providing a “well-structured, multicultural church, primarily for people of non-ghanaian background” (nyanni, 2018: 121). every five years, cop issues a development plan (currently covering the period 2018-23), which it expects to be appropriately implemented locally in its churches across the globe, using the “spirit of the vision to explore community john neate—cultural perceptions 35 interventions that are relevant in their respective societies to ensure that we take the nations for christ” (church of pentecost, 2019: 18). key evangelism goals are set out in vision 2023 and tangible actions taken in response by cop-uk are outlined in the trustees’ annual reports (the latest being for 2020). although these highlight a broad range of social engagement activities, a strong focus continues to be placed on traditional means of evangelism (albeit adjusted for the impact of the coronavirus pandemic), for example, tracts distribution, door to door visiting and street preaching – essentially “transactional” rather than “relational” methods. key issues from the literature three specific areas of literature provide relevant background for this research project: (a) the challenges for bmcs in working cross-culturally; (b) the changes in social context in which evangelism is taking place in the west’s postmodern culture; and (c) the positive role of relational approaches to evangelism within this culture. postmodern culture frequent reference is made in this paper to postmodern culture (mcguigan 2006). before reviewing the background research literature, it is important to outline briefly the key characteristics of this phenomenon. brian duignan (2020) suggests that essential aspects include: (a) denial of absolute or real truth; (b) scepticism toward overarching theories and certainties in knowledge; and (c) markers of pluralism [embracing many different religious systems and ways of thinking], self-referentiality [essentially, truth is as determined by the individual] and moral and knowledge relativism [morality and knowledge are just one way of seeing things, and there are others]. while there are clearly many sub-cultures within white british culture, i believe that the powerful overlay of postmodernism within the uk provides a useful general framework for analysis. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 36 cross-cultural challenges for black majority churches at a time when europe is becoming increasingly secular (natcen social research, 2017), bmcs can often see their role as being to rescue westerners from their “spiritual wilderness” and western churches from a “state of apostasy” (adogame, 2011: 81). by contrast to this western secularization trend, the past 70 years have seen an enormous expansion of bmcs in the uk. these churches are now operating, in effect, in a new mission field (adedibu, 2012: 47-49; kwiyani, 2020: 34). the challenge however, for cop-uk and many other bmcs which are trying to seize the new mission opportunities, is to find a way that enables them to move beyond their narrow, core ethnic bases and to penetrate the indigenous white british communities surrounding them. the experience of many african migrants to the uk has been a feeling of alienation in a “strange” white british culture, sometimes accompanied by hostility and rejection by both white british people and the white british church (kalu, 2010: 9-34; aldred, 2007; burgess, 2011: 255). against this background, bmcs have often provided mutually supportive communities and places of safety for their members (kalu, 2010: 19). however, these “places of safety” have frequently become insular and defensive, generating a form of “fortress” outlook among their members, and fostering generally negative attitudes toward white british culture. they have also adopted a form of quasi military language in their evangelism strategies. an example is cop’s use of the phrase “possessing the nations”, which is partly in response to the perceived hostile environment, but also driven by ethnic culture and theology (adedibu, 2013b: 405-23; mtata, 2011: 345). at a time when it is important for bmcs to engage effectively with white british culture, these evangelistic approaches are very likely to have the opposite effect to that desired, with their apparently excessive (if metaphorical) territorial claims being antagonistic to british culture (neate, 2020: 12-13). the processes of understanding and engaging effectively with white british culture appear essential tools in enabling bmcs to make evangelistic inroads among indigenous british people, yet bmcs have often been criticized for their inadequate efforts in this area (adedibu, 2013b: 407, 418). israel olofinjana (2020: 62) argues that bmcs’ church planting strategies must “engage the local people and community in which they are situated”. adedibu (2013a) robustly proposes that bmcs must break free from their cultural captivity, listen attentively and “develop appropriate cross-cultural skills to communicate the gospel to postmodern people in britain”. john neate—cultural perceptions 37 social context for evangelism in our current, postmodern western society, previous certainties are questioned and new approaches to evangelism are needed. george hunter describes it well: as the enlightenment has faded, postmodern people are increasingly suspicious of people and institutions that claim authority, and they are increasingly dubious of ultimate explanations. they are rediscovering their intuition, and they own and trust their feelings more. they take in the world through what they see, touch and experience – not just through what they hear – and they explore spirituality and the supernatural. (2010: 103) the personal stories told through the lives of christians therefore become increasingly important, and integrity in their words, actions and behaviours (the incarnation of the gospel) is vital (hunter, 2010: 103). challenging his own church, opoku onyinah (2014: 128), international chairman of cop from 2008 to 2018, echoes this message, arguing, “whereas modernity emphasized the message of evangelism, postmodernity emphasizes the incarnational message as expressed in a relationship. evangelistic lifestyles must reflect one’s spirituality.” alongside recognition of the importance of incarnational relationships for effective evangelism in a postmodern context, an understanding of the journey by which people become followers of jesus is also vital. a journey of faith in jesus is a process in which relationships are an essential component (booker, 2005: 4). in other words, relationship comes first, rather than last, and this understanding offers a significant challenge to some of the commonly adopted methods of evangelism used by cop-uk (neate, 2021). relational approaches to evangelism a very wide range of evangelistic techniques is deployed in contemporary uk society. examples include disciple making movements (dmm), alpha courses, street pastors, healing on the streets, schools outreach, compassion-based programmes, street evangelism and door-to-door visiting (booker and ireland, 2005: 4). some of these programmes attempt to respond to the need, in a postmodern context, and see faith as a journey or process. others, however, such as street evangelism, appear to largely ignore the cultural realities of the western e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 38 context. in the essentially one-off transactions that occur between a christian and a hearer in street evangelism, there is a key missing element – the element of relationship and friendship, and the consequent building of personal trust. christopher heuertz and christine pohl (2010: 41) rightly ask how we can expect an individual on a uk street to “confess their sins to complete strangers and give the rest of their lives to a god to whom they may have been introduced only a few minutes earlier?” onyinah (2014: 122) emphasizes the importance of the church developing practical, relationship-based evangelistic strategies. “evangelistic lifestyles must reflect one’s spirituality: by extending invitations to friends to join and investigate that spirituality through jesus christ. this is a journey of friendship [my emphasis] where the invited friend is introduced to jesus christ and the salvation he offers” (onyinah, 2014: 128). with friendship very much on the agenda then (evangelical alliance 2012), it needs to be recognized that there is also a risk of friendship evangelism being viewed as an “instant fix” to the challenge of cross-cultural mission, with people who are not yet christians “targeted” as friendship evangelism “projects”. this is something to be avoided at all costs. as heuertz and pohl (2010: 42) argue, “befriending someone merely so you can tell them the gospel is a form of manipulation and a violation of trust.” rather, the demonstration of true love for someone who is initially a stranger is surely to value them authentically, consistently and unconditionally. research approach the overall objective of this research project, undertaken in early 2021, was to explore whether cross-cultural friendships by members of cop-uk with white british people might offer a potentially more effective means of sharing the good news and love of jesus christ than the more traditional evangelism approaches currently used by cop-uk. while summary data is included in this paper for all key areas included in the research, the particular focus here is on the experiences and attitudes of cop-uk members and leaders towards white british culture. taken together these are important influencers of cross-cultural engagement and friendship. john neate—cultural perceptions 39 research methods and metrics a mixed methods research approach, using questionnaire, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussion, enabled the quantitative data from questionnaire-based responses to be cross-checked with the in-depth, qualitative data collected via individual and group interviews and discussions (cresswell and cresswell, 2018: 217). three, geographically spread cop-uk districts (reading, leicester and leeds) formed the basis for this research, generating 143 completed online questionnaires. fifteen zoom-based, semi-structured interviews took place (five each from the three districts), with participants holding a wide range of roles and offering a broad spectrum of perspectives. finally, an evangelism leaders focus group discussion was held (five participants nominated from the three research districts). this provided the opportunity to reflect on key themes emerging from the semi structured interviews and to discuss these in a broader cop-uk leadership context. a good overall gender balance was achieved, with a 52:48 male to female ratio among questionnaire respondents. almost half (49 per cent) were aged 18-34, with well under ten per cent aged 55 years or older. akan-speaking assemblies have an older demographic, with nearly 70 per cent aged 35-54. by contrast, in piwc assemblies, a nearly similar level is seen in the 18-34 age group. the majority of respondents (83.2 per cent) were born in ghana, 14 per cent elsewhere and only 2.8 per cent in the uk. some 72.1 per cent of respondents had lived for over five years in the uk, with 46.2 per cent for more than ten years. however, only 0.7 per cent of respondents reported having lived their whole life in the uk. the research questionnaire gathered a wide range of participant information, including (a) gender, age, country of birth, length of time living in the uk, area of residence, length of time as a member of cop-uk, and cop-uk assembly attended; (b) the composition of participants’ close friendship groups; and (c) attitudes toward, and experiences of, friendship with white british friends, and views on white british culture. attitudinal responses were assessed using a series of statements which participants were asked to score in terms of the extent to which they agreed or disagreed, using a likert-type, ordinal scale (jamieson, 2004). the identification of the ethnicity of participants’ closest circles of friendship was based on robin dunbar’s research conclusion that human beings, irrespective of ethnic background, have a limited amount of social capital to be invested in friendships. dunbar (2018: 35) suggests that approximately e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 40 40 per cent of our total social effort is devoted to just five people (the five most important to us), with another 20 per cent given to the 10 next most important. in other words, 60 per cent of our social effort is divided between just 15 people (those most likely to provide us with support). using this approach, questionnaire participants were asked to identify, first, their closest five friends, and then, their next closest ten friends. in doing so, they were asked to state the ethnic background of each identified friend (classified as ghanaian, black (other), white british or white (other)). key research findings given the need for effective evangelistic approaches by cop-uk, in the specific context of postmodern britain, a key measure of success is whether “cut through” is being achieved to the uk’s indigenous population and whether white british people can be found as part of cop-uk assemblies. a disappointing picture is painted by the research however, with ghanaians forming the overwhelmingly dominant group in the districts surveyed, with only a tiny representation of white british people (just 0.12 per cent overall). it is important to note that while english-speaking, piwc assemblies were created to appeal to multicultural audiences and to reach the indigenous population, the evidence from the research suggests that there is no discernible difference in their ability to attract white british members. the research results clearly show that certain evangelism tools currently adopted by cop-uk – particularly the ubiquitous street evangelism – may not be working, and that a new approach may be needed. indeed, only 11.9 per cent of respondents agreed that familiar methods of evangelism from ghana worked as well in the uk, with two thirds (67.9 per cent) disagreeing. two particularly interesting paradoxes are revealed, concerning the potential role of cross-cultural friendship between cop-uk members and white british people in sharing the good news and love of jesus christ. the first of these is that while four-fifths (81.8 per cent) of questionnaire respondents believe it is important to find ways of reaching white british people for jesus, and nearly three-quarters (72.1 per cent) of respondents believe that making friends with white british people is a good way to share jesus christ’s love with them, only around half of this number (37.8 per cent) believe that it is important to have white british friends (with 30.8 percent disagreeing). this suggests that while the idea of friendship with white british people as an evangelistic approach appears attractive to many, a significantly smaller number see john neate—cultural perceptions 41 it as their personal role to form such friendships. this disconnect would clearly need to be addressed if cross-cultural friendship were to be developed by copuk as a new route to evangelism. the second paradox, given the potential for greater levels of in-group community in traditional, akan-speaking assemblies, is that questionnaire respondents from this constituency report that they are more likely than piwc members to identify the importance of having white british friends. this suggests that counter to expectations and to cop-uk policy, piwc members are not necessarily more engaged in the drive for multiculturalism than their akan assembly friends. this finding is also supported by the questionnaire data showing that there appears to be little difference between piwc and akan-speaking assemblies in the number of white british or white (other) friends reported. while piwc members report a slightly greater number of friends overall than members of akan assemblies, this appears to be due to having more ghanaian friends, rather than a broader demographic of friends. the research points clearly to the relative lack of white british friends held by cop-uk members. seventy-two per cent of questionnaire participants listed none of their top five friends as white british and 68 per cent of respondents listed no white british friends among their next ten closest friendships. this paucity of close white british friends was also identified in the qualitative research. it might be anticipated that the younger adult members of cop-uk would hold a greater number of white british friendships than their older peers (given the multicultural environments of further education institutes, for example). however, analysis shows that a greater proportion of those in the 18-34 age group than the 35+ age group report having their top five friendships with people of ghanaian and black (other) ethnicity. it is a universal phenomenon that human beings tend to develop close friendships predominantly with people from the same ethnic background (bagci et al., 2014: 126; lessard-phillips, fajth and fernandez-reino, 2020: 9). if cop-uk decided therefore that increased emphasis should now be placed on building cross-cultural friendships in achieving their ambitious evangelistic vision, the current behavioural patterns of its members would need to be radically challenged to encourage the creation of space for friendships with white british people. one consequence would be a substantial break with default, ethnic “self-grouping”. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 42 attitudes to white british culture – a negative lens? the willingness and enthusiasm felt by cop-uk members to engage effectively with white british people and their culture – and the desire to invest in crosscultural friendships – is likely to be significantly influenced by their attitudes towards that culture. questionnaire responses gathered in this research reveal that only a quarter (26.6 per cent) of participants report liking white british culture, with 60.1 per cent registering a neutral reaction and 13.3 per cent expressing active dislike. apart from perceived negative aspects of white british culture, practical communication challenges were also identified as potential barriers. for example, 57.3 per cent of respondents believe that white british people are more direct in their communication style than ghanaians. this is borne out by research into high and low context cultures, demonstrating that a greater degree of “coded” language is typically used in african culture than uk culture in which communication is more explicit (meyer, 2015: 29-60). a further barrier was identified in terms of perceived attitudes to privacy, with 53.1 per cent of questionnaire respondents believing that white british people have a greater tendency to protect their privacy. there is also a belief that ghanaians and white british people seek different things in friendship; 39.2 per cent of respondents affirm this view, with only 26.6 per cent disagreeing. it would be valuable to explore this issue via future research and discussion. in the semi-structured interviews and focus group discussion, white british culture was often characterized in terms of “bad habits”. for example, drinking alcohol and going to nightclubs were perceived as challenges to be overcome through evangelization. one respondent commented, “it might be a cultural thing – but in ghanaian culture and in my church … we do not drink … and obviously, alcohol is a big part of the british culture. so, if i need to cut through to them [white british people], i will have to go … that’s friendship” (respondent 14, 2021). considerable wariness was expressed about the moral risks of engaging with white british culture, and the need to “protect the heart” from bad moral influences. illustrating this point, another respondent commented, “for example, as a christian, you cannot say i want to have a friend, so let me go to some places that for us we believe is not right as a christian to go … like nightclubs and the rest” (respondent 6, 2021). overall, a significant tension emerged through the research. while participants were highly motivated by jesus’ modelling of spending time with “sinners” and the marginalized in society, strong fears were also expressed about becoming “polluted” by worldly values, with several respondents citing st paul’s injunction not to be “yoked together with unbelievers” (2 cor. 6: 14 (niv)). john neate—cultural perceptions 43 one leader participating in the focus group discussion raised a particular concern in this context; that strong cultural pressures existed within cop-uk (and perhaps wider african society) which an individual would need to resist if they were to pursue friendships with those perceived as somehow “unacceptable”. the leader asked, “if i am approaching someone who is gay or lesbian, what would the society or the community of my fellow ghanaians or my fellow africans [think] when i begin to relate myself with them?” (member b, 2021). interestingly, no positive facet of white british culture was spontaneously volunteered through the research responses (for example, music, theatre, dance, walking, leisure activities, sport, active and accountable democracy). several explanations are possible. one explanation might be that respondents have not engaged in the breadth of white british culture in a way that would enable them to identify its positive features. another explanation is that respondents might be aware of the various dimensions of white british culture, but still do not feel positive about any of them. a third explanation is that cop-uk members perceive white british culture through a dominant, negative lens or narrative, which prevents positive attributes being recognized and appreciated. some credence was given to this last potential explanation by a member of the evangelism leaders focus group who said, “there may be certain things that you [the british] do. it’s not a sin even in the bible, but then because we have this kind of mentality or mindset about your culture, we will just generalize everything about british people and say [that] what they do is wrong” (member c, 2021). ironically, to the extent that the third of these explanations may have some validity, there is a danger of cop-uk’s leadership and members repeating the attitudinal mistakes (but now in a british context) first exhibited by western missionaries to africa in the late eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in which african culture was denigrated (magesa, 2017: 114). the importance of contextualizing cop-uk’s evangelism approach in the uk was however, identified by a number of respondents who recognized that to bring influence in british culture, it is essential to avoid the risk of attempting to superimpose a form of perceived “superior” ghanaian culture. the cop-uk should respond to relevant western needs, for example isolation and loneliness, rather than focusing on the more familiar ghanaian issues related to material need (focus group, 2021). e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 44 a relational approach my clear intention from the outset has been that this research should not simply be aimed at achieving an academic goal, but that it should also be essentially practical, providing a useful and relevant framework for the leadership of copuk in its ongoing development of evangelism strategy for the uk. with this in mind, i adopted a consciously relational approach throughout. this approach reflected my preferred personal style, but also recognizing its vital importance in gaining support for the conduct of the research and for subsequent relations with cop-uk. as an “outsider” to cop-uk, i was entirely dependent on cooperation with the principal of birmingham christian college (a senior leader within the church and nominated contact point for the research) and several district pastors (effectively “gatekeepers” of cop-uk) to open the doors to the recruitment of research participants. this relational style underpinned the semi-structured interviews and evangelism leaders focus group discussion. the result was that trust was built with interviewees, and free flowing, warm discussion generated, in the examination of a research topic itself focused on the role of cross-cultural friendship. respondents were noticeably open and non-defensive in reflecting on copuk’s current attitudes, behaviour and practices, and in considering potential future changes. it is apparent that intentional development of close cross-cultural friendships with white british people has not previously been a significant element of cop-uk’s overall thinking on evangelism. however, significant enthusiasm for a new approach was identified through this research (and “crystallized” through the research process itself). for example, several respondents described the personal benefit they had experienced from friendships with white british people, particularly in terms of providing opportunities to learn more about white british culture, and calls were made for cop-uk’s leadership to be intentional in providing training sessions for its members on this topic (focus group, 2021). the emerging enthusiasm of research participants for the role of crosscultural friendships with white british people as a new evangelistic emphasis sends an encouraging signal that this approach has the potential to gain wider traction within cop-uk. the relationally-based research process, and subsequent discussions with a number of cop-uk’s senior leaders, have already resulted in several positive outcomes. these include opportunities to speak with groups of cop-uk leaders about the research project, my appointment as visiting lecturer at birmingham christian college (teaching on my research to john neate—cultural perceptions 45 cop-uk local leaders), an intent to bring together selected leaders from copuk and from the vineyard church in the uk (of which i am a member) to discuss the opportunities and challenges of cross-cultural friendships, and a clear desire by the head of cop-uk in the uk to work collaboratively in progressing the issues identified in the research. conclusions cop-uk (in common with many other bmcs) experiences a very significant gap between its evangelistic aspiration to “possess the nations” and the practical situation within its individual assemblies, where there are only very low levels of participation by white british people. the literature suggests that in the postmodern context of the western world, the evangelistic imperative has shifted to a recognition of the importance of the incarnational nature of christianity (our lives modelling the love and good news of jesus christ), the journey of faith understood as a process rather than a one-off transaction, and evangelism pursued best on a relational basis. the data suggests however, that cop-uk continues to rely heavily (though not exclusively) on various forms of street evangelism which are essentially one-off transactions, rather than incarnational and relational. while it is clear from this research that cross-cultural friendship with white british people as a means of sharing jesus’ love and good news had not previously been identified as a priority by cop-uk (and cop-uk members have very few such friendships), considerable enthusiasm has been identified for the intentional development of thinking, teaching and practice in this area. the research also identified a largely negative perception by research participants of white british culture, posing significant challenges to engagement with that culture and to investment in cross-cultural friendships. perseverance in meeting these challenges is likely not only to result in missional benefits for copuk, but also to lead to greater mutual confidence, as the “mystique” of white british culture is progressively penetrated through cross-cultural friendships. the relational approach adopted both to the research process itself and to follow up discussion, coupled with the refreshing willingness by research participants to reflect on current attitudes, behaviours and ways of thinking within the life of cop-uk, has enabled the opening up of a very positive dialogue with senior cop-uk leaders about relevant future action. initial feedback from senior leadership of cop-uk suggests that while the results of this research echo general understandings of the situation already held within the church, the crystallization provided by the data provides a powerful impetus for action. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 46 the research findings from this particular case study have potential relevance, in the increasingly secular and postmodern uk context, for other black majority churches, for other minority ethnic churches, and for everyone who is concerned to enable the god-given contributions of all ethnic groups to be “brought to the table” in god’s wider evangelistic mission. readers are invited to consider how these research findings might be applied in the various settings in which they are active, aware that the detail of application will need specific local adaptation. references adedibu, babatunde. 2012. coat of many colours: the origin, growth, distinctiveness and contributions of black majority churches to british christianity. blackpool: wisdom summit. ———. 2013a. “faith without borders: maximising the missionary 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mcguigan, jim. 2006. modernity and postmodern culture. 2nd ed. maidenhead, uk: open university press. meyer, erin. 2015. the culture map: decoding how people think, lead, and get things done across cultures. new york: publicaffairs. mtata, kenneth. 2011 “‘how shall we sing the lord’s song in a foreign land?’ african disapora christianity as space and place of imagination.” in african christian presence in the west: new immigrant congregations and transnational networks in north america and europe, edited by frieder ludwig and j. kwabena asamoahgyadu, 335-55. trenton, nj: africa world press. natcen social research. 2017. “british social attitudes: record number of brits with no religion.” (september 4, 2017). https://natcen.ac.uk/news-media/press-releases/2017/ september/british-social-attitudes-record-number-of-brits-with-no-religion. neate, john p. g. 2020. “black majority churches in the uk: positive influence or missed opportunity?” unpublished essay, ma african christianity, liverpool hope university. ———. 2021. “the role in evangelism of cross-cultural friendships by members of the church of pentecost with white british people in the united kingdom.” unpublished masters diss., liverpool hope university. nyanni, caleb opoku. 2018. “the spirits and transition: the second generation and the church of pentecost uk.” phd diss., the university of birmingham. http://etheses. bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/8557/. olofinjana, israel o. 2020. “reverse mission: towards an african british theology.” transformation: an international journal of holistic mission studies 37, no. 1: 52-65. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265378819877902. onyinah, opoku. 2014. “new ways of doing evangelism.” international review of mission 103, no. 1: 121-28. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/a368074623/aone?u=livhope&si d=aone&xid=a35261a1. ———. 2020. “distinguished church leader essay: the church of pentecost and its role in ghanaian society.” in african initiated christianity and the decolonisation of development: sustainable development in pentecostal and independent churches, edited by philipp öhlmann, wilhelm gräb and marie-luise frost, 183-94. london: routledge. https://natcen.ac.uk/news-media/press-releases/2017/september/british-social-attitudes-record-number https://natcen.ac.uk/news-media/press-releases/2017/september/british-social-attitudes-record-number http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/8557/ http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/8557/ https://doi.org/10.1177/0265378819877902 https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/a368074623/aone?u=livhope&sid=aone&xid=a35261a1 https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/a368074623/aone?u=livhope&sid=aone&xid=a35261a1 john neate—cultural perceptions 49 interviews and discussions interview with district pastor a. 2020. july 2. virtual. interview with respondent 6. 2021. march 8. virtual. interview with respondent 14. 2021. march 19. virtual. discussion with member b, focus group. 2021. march 25. virtual. discussion with member c, focus group. 2021. march 25. virtual. discussion with focus group. 2021. march 25. virtual. 87 surfing with the spirit or sinking into the sea? elements enabling christian character formation in a postchristendom culture mike harrison mike harrison is suffragan bishop of dunwich in the diocese of st edmundsbury & ipswich in the church of england. before this mike was director of mission & ministry in leicester diocese for 10 years and previously was a parish priest, most of his ministry being in south london. his doctoral studies were in the field of doctrine and his interests include christian formation and leadership for christian formation. abstract this essay focuses on that dimension of sharing in the missio dei individually and corporately which involves the formation of christian character. in particular what should be our first considerations when seeking character formation for participation in the missio dei? this article will suggest that our attention initially should be focused elsewhere than behaviour or direct attempts to change character. further, while aristotelian approaches are particularly popular in the contemporary (especially secular) literature, this essay considers the significance of dimensions of christian character formation which are often e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 88 underplayed by such approaches, not least loving attachment relationship to the divine and accountability-in-community. while space precludes an exhaustive account of influences on christian character development, the essay considers aspects of experiencing christ-centred community in shaping christian character, utilizing recent insights from the field of neuroscience. it concludes with an example taken from an anglo-catholic setting of how eucharistic worship can contribute to the formation of christian character and thus of sharing in the missio dei. keywords: christian character formation; christian spirituality; church; eucharist; missio dei; neuroscience introduction the new testament is full of descriptions and injunctions relating to christian character formation (such as mt. 5-7, gal. 5, eph. 4, phil. 4, col. 3) stating the telos in various (related) ways, be it “following christ”, “putting on christ”, being “conformed to the image of his son” or through other expressions. such formation is about sharing in the person and way of jesus christ and being caught up in the movement of god in jesus christ towards the world – and thus it is about participating in the missio dei. as such one significant dimension of individuals and christian communities being caught up in the missio dei is through genuine christian character formation. attention will be paid in this paper to how engagement in the missio dei through christian character formation is realized through experiencing community centred on christ, utilizing in particular recent insights from neuroscience. to define terms here: “character” here is understood to be that “settled pattern of will, thought, feeling and bodily actions that reflect what we have become as a result of how we have habitually lived our lives” (copan, 2016: 207). “formation” is about shaping our wills, thoughts, feelings and bodily actions in particular and regularly habitual ways. missio dei is understood as a sharing in god’s purposes in the world as embodied by jesus christ in his teaching, life, death and resurrection. this “sharing” or participation includes, yet goes beyond, that participation by which we continually receive our being from god in a manner appropriate to our humanity. it also means (following davison, 2019: 35) a realization of christlikeness insofar as we receive this aright – a receiving which is god’s gift giving us capacity and receptivity so to do. consequently our sharing in the missio dei includes developing christlike mike harrison—surfing with the spirit or sinking into the sea? 89 character, that settled pattern of will, thought, feeling and bodily actions reflecting that which is perfectly embodied in christ. the wider conversation around character formation has been informed by recent high-profile moral derelictions of duty. for example, in england, organizations such as the police have underlined how mere instruction in moral values or institutional norms fails to deliver the moral behaviour required of those in positions of authority. small wonder then that initiatives such as the jubilee centre for character and virtues at birmingham university and the oxford character project have sprung up to research and enable character development in different professional fields. these and other recent initiatives are strongly influenced by aristotelian approaches. they emphasis attractions including human telos as “happiness”, human flourishing with virtue as its own reward and human agency in forming character. they incorporate a sense of how virtues are caught, taught and sought, virtues as dispositional clusters involving perception, motivation, behaviour, desire and emotion, practical wisdom’s significance in virtuous behaviour, the non-necessity of any religious belief system and the influence of affect, situational variables and community. yet curiously hauerwas (1995: xiv), arthur (2021: 3) and others note a lack of progress in this aristotelian approach to character formation. perhaps the lack of progress relates to hesitancy about “imposing” values threatening such sacred cows as “autonomy” and “freedom”. or perhaps there is little consensus on what is human good. freedom or happiness are popular candidates but both provide little moral content or practical guidance for the shaping of our characters. our post-kantian western world has arguably reduced our sense of self to one whose only action is to “choose” and who at core has no telos, virtues, vices, practices, communities, emotions, story, authority or character; indeed unrecognizable to our ancestors. one can also see potential issues with aristotelian approaches from a christian perspective. these issues include the stress on self-sufficiency, selfdevelopment and self-mastery. further issues revolve around a neglect of virtues like humility, compassion and justice for the poor; the absence of the christian virtues of faith and hope and love, along with the absence of divine activity or its inspiration. intellectual capacity and human agency are elevated above all other capacities. there is evidence of problematic views on women and slavery and eudaimonia, with related concepts like flourishing and fruitfulness easily sliding into cultural ideals of success and the presumed “objective” universality of core virtues. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 90 aquinas and other theologians have built judiciously on aristotle’s approach, understanding christian virtue to be not so much what humans achieve but what god grows within us. however while human will-power and determination are engaged rather than bypassed, nevertheless this approach depends on the transforming power of god’s grace, god being virtue’s prime agent, exemplar and end.1 in contrast to secular notions of making our own character the account here more readily speaks of being formed in relation to god in christ in such a way that god’s character in christ comes through (e.g. gal. 2.20). recent work in the field of positive psychology and human flourishing also connects with character development. in the field of neuroscience mcgilchrist (2019) points out how the right hemisphere of the brain operates faster than the left hemisphere and is responsible for producing reactions to circumstances before we have a chance to consider how to react. hence the right hemisphere is a leading source of our character, in that our reactions reveal the “natural”, “settled” or “characteristic” way of being and responding. thus character formation involves the challenge of accessing the right hemisphere, through for example the body, imagination and affective relationships. such insights suggest ways of going beyond hauerwas and others in considering how christian practices access the right brain’s character settings and thus shape christlike character in ways enabling participation in the missio dei. christianity in its scriptures and ecclesial life has consistently underlined the significance of character formation in following jesus’ way and teaching. furthermore there are a number of areas essential to christian character formation including encountering god in christ, experiencing community centred on christ and individual and corporate following of jesus’ teaching and way. hence this paper will utilize recent insights from neuroscience to examine how engagement in the missio dei through christian character formation can be realized through experiencing community centred on christ. encountering god in christ foundational to character formation are our loving attachments, a truth attested to by theologians and neuroscientists alike. examples such as the life 1 see e.g. herdt, 2008: 89 and passim for a perceptive discussion of aquinas’ infused virtues. mike harrison—surfing with the spirit or sinking into the sea? 91 model (friesan et al., 1999) offer a relational theological foundation promoting attachment with god and human persons as a key component of spiritual and psychological change. contemporary neurobiological models support loving attachment as the mechanism for maturity development and healthy interpersonal skills (schore, 1994). such attachment has a significant research base in terms of its importance in childhood development adult relationships and indeed attachment with god (see wilder, garzon & johnson, 2020 for an overview). fundamental to jesus christ’s character is his relation with his father, that loving attachment affirmed at baptism and on the mount of transfiguration and elsewhere in the new testament. thus participating in the missio dei as defined above includes growing this loving attachment. benner (2003: 88) writes that “meditating on god’s love has done more to increase my love than decades of effort to try to be more loving” and effecting changes benner had given up hope of realizing. this is unsurprising from the perspective of neuroscience. jennings (2013: 234) observed that meditating specifically on god’s love increases growth in the prefrontal cortex (where we make judgements and experience godlike love) and thus increased compassion, empathy, altruism and also increased sharp thinking and memory – ie it stimulates the brain to heal and grow itself as we worship a god of love. however as any seasoned preacher or pastor knows it is not enough simply to assert god’s love for us in a propositional way. such propositional statements are not necessarily appropriated. indeed it is not apparent that there is always an abiding awareness of god’s deep love even among christian leaders. gerald may calls the sort of knowing of love that is essential for transformation “contemplative knowing”. this knowing of love results from meeting god in a contemplative state (may, 1982: 135). benner (2003: 76) in a more ignatian key writes: it comes from sitting at the feet of jesus, gazing into his face and listening to his assurances of love for me. it comes from letting god’s love wash over me, not simply trying to believe it. it comes from soaking in the scriptural assurances of such love, not simply reading them and trying to remember or believe them. it comes from spending time with god, observing how he looks at me. it comes from watching his watchfulness over me and listening to his protestations of love for me. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 92 in a different vein maggie ross ponders the creatio continua in a way designed to deepen awareness. she gratefully receives these wonders as loving, personal gifts (ross, 2018: 119). what ross, may and benner are describing here are ways of deepening an attachment relationship of love with god, conscious of how such relationships are critical to shaping behaviour and transformation. such insights are not new. khouri (2021: 67-8) suggests that how we attach to god and others has more influence over the formation of character than anything else. khouri notes that the brain first receives information via that part of our brain that focuses on attachment before continuing to our emotional and identity centres. this means that who and what we are most closely attached to shapes how we process and respond to sensory information (khouri, 2021: 157). after leaving our attachment centres, the sensory information passes to our alarm and emotional centres (generating awareness of dangers and feelings about incoming data) and thence to our identity centre. this helps us work out how to respond, consistent with “who i am” and “who my people are”. all of which takes just one sixth of a second and happens faster than most conscious thought. (only then do we find the region of our brain responsible for logic and reason employed.) these connections between neuroscience and emotional processing underline that a crucial dimension of character formation is a loving attachment relationship with god. critical to this is grasping, heart and soul, god’s loving attachment to us. wilder, khouri and others understand such attachment as beginning with grace. grace is not simply the accurate but dry description of “unmerited favour” but, more affectively, “the god-given gift of intended, unearned relationship with him as his special and favourite son or daughter” (khouri, 2021: 12).2 fostering this attachment requires imagination and affect as much as cognition, a growing awareness that one is “‘the sparkle of joy in god’s eye” for example. a homely example comes from marlena graves whose three-year-old child caught marlena looking at her admiringly and with great affection and so asked “mommy, why looking at me like that?” marlena replied “because i love you and delight in you.” marlena then added “god looks at you that way too.” her curiosity piqued, the three year old said “you mean god looks happy at me?” “yes” said marlena, “god always looks happy at you!” the three-year-old 2 favourite here does not imply exclusivity or superiority here as god’s relational grace is not competitive. mike harrison—surfing with the spirit or sinking into the sea? 93 paused and then replied “then i look happy at god, at you, at daddy, at sisters” (graves, 2020: 75). more widely, research on character formation shows benevolent loving service being rooted primarily in grasping god’s love personally. lee et al. (2013: 21) revealed that “our single most important finding is the extent to which experiences of divine love are related to a life of benevolent service”. such research accords with aristotle’s view that affect and emotion influence the shaping of virtuous character. the research also accords with wesley’s view that encountering god’s pardoning love personally creates the possibility of a responsive heart delighting to love god and our neighbour with peace and joy. if developing loving attachments is critical for character formation how do we foster such loving attachments in ecclesial community? preaching and teaching is certainly part of it, but there are plenty of people who have received teaching on god’s love without personally appropriating it. the neuroscientist and psychiatrist curt thompson (2021) suggests that, analogous to a child’s growing loving attachments, all persons need four elements in place to grow loving attachment to god – being safe, seen, soothed and secure. space precludes a description of each of these elements but closer examination of being seen provides a helpful example. the process of being seen, emphasizing the benign and compassionate gaze of the divine through liturgy, prayer and daily life can help hugely. thompson suggests face-to-face meditation where one appreciates the face of god shining upon you communicating “you are my son/daughter whom i love. i am so pleased with you that you are on earth.” all the while one is invited to sense god’s eyes looking directly, to not look away as you imagine god speaking these words. this is followed by remaining emotionally and imaginatively still for a few minutes, reflecting on one’s feelings and god’s feelings. thompson (2010: 143-4) argues that over a period of weeks, with consistency and repetition, this will change the practitioner’s neural networks, echoing similar experiences in scripture. among other practices there is also the apophatic and contemplative dimension of attentiveness which fosters attachment relationship with god. this attentiveness is not about doing or having but being before god, renouncing the idolatry of human agency, refusing that clinging and grasping rooted often in egoic fear and that presumption we can manipulate god by method. the paradox of intention is to the fore here. we shape character by relinquishing the activity of so doing and by simply attending in the presence of god. writing of this paradox, shaw (1988: 202) says, “something else acts, and i am to be attentive. my action thus participates in a larger vitality in which my life is embedded … life is embedded in a larger sustaining whole, and yieldedness to e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 94 this, participation within it, is the fulfilment of human existence.” ross (2014: 35) argues that such meditative practice (alongside other practices) enables access to character settings in the brain, what she refers to as “deep mind”, “and intent is supremely important in this process, for meditation accesses the deep mind and the attention of the deep mind is influenced by intention”. specifically in terms of character formation, the time of silence and stillness is not itself primarily understood theologically as our work or activity. nevertheless the framing of such practice as intentionally seeking to be in the presence of the self-giving love of the trinity (unlike vipassana for instance), basking like sunbathers in the love of god, being irradiated with the light of god’s love (as ross puts it elsewhere) can contribute to the shaping of christian character. tell me the old, old story the story that the ecclesial community is living and communicating is also critical for character formation. hauerwas (1981: 116) points out that the development of character happens in the context of a community shaped by a narrative. or as macintyre (1981: 216) observed, it is only possible to “answer the question ‘what am i to do?’ if i can answer the prior question ‘of what story or stories do i find myself a part?’” the difficulty with hauerwas’ position is, however, as gill (1999: 14) points out, is that hauerwas’ later work so distinguishes christian communities from worldly secularity as not to notice the overlaps and influences of christian and “secular” narratives. this makes for an unhelpful idealizing of churches which fergusson (1998: 66) sharply observes exists nowhere else. nevertheless the christian narrative has plenty of examples of revelation involving realization of being part of quite a different story from the one you thought you were in. examples include the road to emmaus, peter’s recommissioning and the conversion of paul. what triggers the change in story here is often an experience whose intensity, clarity and significance gives an overarching authority to aspects of the gospel story, transforming character. part of the contemporary challenge is that it is not about exchanging a single story for a second single story in seemingly hauerwasian mode but that for many of us, our work life, church life and family neighborhood life participate in fundamentally different narratives and are oriented toward different horizons … most of us remain divided mike harrison—surfing with the spirit or sinking into the sea? 95 between competing narratives. in fact, this is one of the singular features of our pluralist, post-modern society: the loss of the meta-narrative. each community and each person must construct meaning and identity as he or she sees fit. (hagley, 2013) what is needed is for the christian narrative to have such authoritative influence on our patterns of will, thought and feeling that it brings a coherence to the multi-faceted narratives, practices and commitments by which we live and thus shapes christian character. ‘my people’ a key driver of such coherence is the strength of attachment to a particular people shaped by a specific narrative. who “my people” are and how “my people” understand themselves narratively is highly significant in shaping character, making some ways of being and acting entirely straightforward and others beyond the pale. in his popular work atomic habits james clear (2018: 116) points out that there are three groups of people whose habits we imitate – those close to us (our “tribe”), the many (the “crowd”) and the powerful. the influence of “my people” can be extraordinary. for example consider the twenty-one christians led out to a libyan beach by isis militants in 2015 who were then beheaded for being christian. western media focused on the horror of such savage and cold-blooded murder but not on the extraordinary fact that these twenty-one had not been passive but had audibly professed their faith in jesus christ just before and even during their decapitation. mosebach (2019) researched these men, twenty of whom were from the egyptian coptic church. villagers where the men’s families lived told mosebach that the men were not especially different from any other christians in the village. the coptic church is a church of martyrs and any of them in the village would rather die than betray the faith. the villagers added that their deaths didn’t intimidate those left but gave christians courage because the martyrs spending their last few moments alive in prayer proved the strength of their faith. there was no call for revenge from anyone, not only because jesus’ teaching was the primary authority here but also because the martyrs’ witness simply outshone such darkness. the characters of those coptic martyrs had been deeply shaped by the community to which they belonged, resulting in sacrifices that appeared largely unintelligible to western media. such witnesses’ e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 96 brave witness to their faith embodied christlike character unto death and thus is a startling participation in the missio dei as defined above. who “my people” are can be deeply impactful in societies where there is persecution, segregation and ancestral continuity. in contrast, cultures that devalue the past and promote individualism invite a shallowness about “my people” that is less impactful on character. wilder underlines the significance of “my people”, arguing that “character is housed and remembered in the fast-track structures”. for wilder (2020: 42), the part of the brain which runs faster than conscious speed is managed by the right brain. wilder points out that identity is a rather protected brain function and that access to establish or change identity and character is limited to those who are attached to us significantly; “the fast track only allows ‘my people’ access to the character settings” (wilder, 2020: 43). accountability ecclesiologically this begs the question of how we might better enable christian community to be about “‘my people” shaping character. recent decades have seen the development of ecclesial groups with different charisms. examples like neocatechumenate, focolare, sant’egidio and some forms of new monasticism have been more intentional about formation of “my people” together. the history of the church shows that renewal has sometimes come through these initiatives, such as wesley’s methodist class meeting and bands in eighteenthcentury england. relatedly, wilder (2018: 23) notes churches in the west nowadays rarely see character transformation because of six specific reasons: they lose a group identity; focus on beliefs over relationships; misuse the power of shame and emotions; accept self-justifications; hide weakness; do not love enemies. the ecclesial initiatives just mentioned address such themes to lesser or greater extents. there are no doubt dangers with developing an ecclesiola in ecclesia – the little church within the church. these dangers include fracturing the church, creating “levels” of discipleship and with it separation, splitting and sectarianism. yet jesus’ own pedagogy with his disciples was that of a small group who travelled, ate and prayed together as a relationally close cohort and presumably jesus was intentional about doing so to create the conditions for formation and (accountable) apprenticeship. without accountability and a readiness to face the truth about ourselves through personal relationships we are vulnerable to self-delusion rather than transfiguration. worse, we may be disregarding god’s movement towards us and our participation in the missio dei. the accountability mike harrison—surfing with the spirit or sinking into the sea? 97 is in part about being freed by the gospel from the hell of sisyphus-like labours of self-justification. we open ourselves together to god’s healing as we exist in truthfulness, freedom and fearlessness which is able to be with others without rivalry, refusing to judge and calling ourselves to account. role models of particular significance among “my people” for character formation are those examples of christian living whose way of being makes us (at our better moments) think “gosh, human beings can be like that in christ, that is how i would like to be”. indeed, the jubilee centre for character development asserts that in an educational setting the single most important “tool” to impact a student’s character is the teacher’s own character (arthur et al., 2017: 16). role models deepen our understanding of christian character, showing its promise, strangeness and attractiveness. paas (2019: 193) points out that “the idea that everyone should have his or her unique high-quality experience of god is a product of modern consumer society rather than an authentic christian thought”. rather god demonstrates godself to the community of the church and gives more light to some than others, for example “saints”, bible writers, apostles. this is why faith is and needs to be communal, so that individuals’ experiences ensure communal upbuilding. as such “the first response to the giftings and testimony of others must not be envy or scepticism … but wonder: what is it god wants to tell us through this testimony?” (paas, 2019: 194). and how are we being formed by it? of course the idea of “exemplars” can invite a sense of hierarchy, superiority and self-regard. we need to care for ourselves and others to appreciate that genuine christian exemplars are individuals who are ever more profoundly grasping the depth of their need for god, each with their own vulnerability to projections and delusions. brain skills, emotion and embodied cognition related to role models and exemplars and also foundational for character formation are what coursey, wilder and others describe as “brain skills”. (this is a misnomer in some ways as such skills involve cognition, emotions and the body (including the brain) in their realization). “brain skills” are relational skills that “equip us to effectively respond to the onslaught of shifting, moment-bymoment circumstances in the most efficient manner” (coursey, 2016: 3). such e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 98 skills shape our character as the skills become dispositions. an example is the skill of appreciation which leads to a grateful disposition. we learn brain skills as we grow, most particularly as infants. gaps in brain skills can be transmitted through the generations. acquiring skills requires interaction with more skilful brains, but only those with whom one has a positive emotional attachments. these skills will not spread without bonded relationships (and here joy is important as providing a bond). once acquired, these skills need repeated practice to become ingrained habits. to develop these skills requires attachment love, a sense of “my people” and knowing how “my people” would act under conditions we experience. how “my people” act is the reference for our first reaction. these skills are not learned through reading but through repeated observation of those we are positively attached to who embody such skills. there are all sorts of such skills and coursey counts nineteen brain skills which he argues build joyful community. while not specifically virtues these brain skills are essential to virtuous living and provide a good example of indirect but practical ways of taking forward character formation. take for example the skill of “returning to joy,” which offers assurance that even when things go wrong, we are not abandoned and left in our upset. returning to joy comes from strong attachments to others and a deep sense of who we are that will not get lost when we are in pain. this skill provides an emotional capacity enabling consistency and resilience under stress, enabling for example the love of enemies, patience, kindness. consider for example six basic, unpleasant emotions of sadness, anger, disgust, shame, fear and despair. when we realize such emotions, are we able to return to joy straightforwardly? people who nurse their anger for days, weeks or even years, are clearly not. the longer it takes us to return to joy, the more emotionally exhausted we become. parents who have not learned this skill cannot show their children how to properly manage and quiet big feelings. so a parent who cannot manage disgust for instance is changing a baby’s nappy and receives the gift of some streaming diarrhoea. if the response is disgust then the baby’s lip will begin to quiver, shame is initiated and crying follows. but a skilled parent stays connected, with interactive smiles and ‘glad to be together’ sounds, helping the baby learn “returning to joy” in relation to disgust. staying connected when intense negative emotions kick in is critical and such connection enables the return to joy. for each of us there are particular emotions we need help with. we need to locate people who have the skill to return to joyful relationship from that emotion. we could also ask friends who have this skill to tell us stories about how they returned to joy. this returning to joy involves a gratitude that is expressed in the midst of difficulties. jesus in the midst of the apparent failure of people/towns hearing mike harrison—surfing with the spirit or sinking into the sea? 99 his message actually gives thanks (mt. 11.28-30). again jesus gives thanks at the last supper when facing abandonment by disciples and crucifixion. or again, jesus gives thanks to the father in the sorrowful context of lazarus’ death before reviving him. these skills are but one example of the wider field of embodied cognition and embodied emotion and how cognition, emotion and behaviour are intricately related to one another. particularly relevant for our purposes is how the right brain, which as we have seen is the seat of character settings, makes possible “empathic connection, as well as understanding how others feel, what they mean not only by what they say in context … but by their facial expressions, their ‘body language’ and tone of voice” (mcgilchrist, 2009: 66). research continues to underline the significance of embodied cognition (beilock, 2017). as bourdieu (1990) says, “the body takes metaphors seriously” and our bodies are students even when we don’t realize it. recent studies go beyond damasio (1994) and show the importance of emotion in understanding and working with behaviour. for example johnson (2017) suggests all aspects of cognition are mediated, influenced or even initiated by emotion. the importance of emotion and its embodiment in understanding and working with cognition underlines the earlier points about the significance of loving attachments in shaping that settled pattern of will, thought, feeling and bodily actions that form character. thus christian character formation through ecclesial community and conforming to christ’s teaching and way, which is a dimension of participation in the missio dei, must pay attention to embodied cognition and enactive emotions. by and large, it seems we don’t know and then act. rather we know by acting, and our bodily habits affect what we do. examples: character formation in ecclesial community the foregoing discussion suggests that the first questions we should be asking in regard to character formation for participation in the missio dei are not so much “how do i improve my behaviour?” or “how do i change my character?” but rather “how am i practising my belovedness?”, “who are my people?” “to whom am i accountable?”, “what is my/our story?”, “to what am i paying attention?”, “what (brain) skill needs attention?”, “how am i forming character through bodily gestures and movements?” and “what is my body teaching me?” bodies matter and are places of formation and worship of one kind or another. while space precludes detailed consideration, one example is that of e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 100 liturgical formation, in which acts of sitting, kneeling or standing, whether it is eating bread and wine, crossing ourselves or waving palm branches occur through our bodies. another example is benson’s christ’s pieces, an intentional christian community in brisbane, australia, which takes the bodily processes of habit formation seriously and registers the interrelatedness of the cognitive and the affective, leveraging the senses to capture the imagination and re-orient desires via a litany of practices rooted in mundane activities such as showering (benson, 2019). jesus points out the significance of the physical. he calls for discipleship of the eye and notes the danger of being entrapped by the evil one when we swear oaths, of being showy in prayer and fasting. jesus sums these up on in terms of a physical, affective and cognitive doing of what he says in mt. 7. other collective practices include the intricate connections of the physical, affective and cognitive in the christian community. gratitude, respect and honouring can be transformative and are worthy of serious consideration. to approach christian praxis through the lens of character formation invites a particular way of engaging with the christian habitus. as gill points out much recent anglican theology understands worship to be central to both ethics and theology. hence as an anglican author let me end with an example from worship, in particular the eucharist. this is also for practical reasons, given it is more straightforward to shape already existing practices rather than introduce different practices in a world often complaining of initiative-fatigue. having said this, we should remember the non-instrumental nature of worship and of the eucharist. the eucharist is not some instrumental tool for achieving some “higher” purpose such as character formation. rather character formation is simply part of what happens when eucharistic worship is undertaken in the spirit of christ and “the eucharist is the core of the missional identity of the church … of its openness to christ who builds community out of strangers by sharing himself with them” (paas, 2019: 199). very briefly consider the eucharist undertaken in an anglo-catholic church setting, holy trinity, eltham, where i was sometime vicar. as part of the preparation for confirmation, one sunday eucharist was accompanied by a commentary explaining why we did what we did. even before the service the physical action of honouring the lord’s presence, whether bowing to the altar, the cross or genuflecting at the tabernacle is already enabling the body to practise the presence of god and offering due regard to the lord. through the service gestures of sitting, kneeling, standing, crossing oneself and singing further enable the body to contribute to the formation of worshipful character. registering the love of god through the eucharist is fundamental – whether in the initiating love of the father who not only gathers us but gifts us with the mike harrison—surfing with the spirit or sinking into the sea? 101 very fabric of our being, the liberating forgiveness of the son who absolves us or in the creative power of the spirit who draws us into union with our lord. the good news of jesus christ and the story of which we are a part is rehearsed as we listen to scriptures and the sermon, appreciating that with this god we are safe, seen, soothed and secure come what may. the giftedness of life and creation is distilled in the bread and wine. the personal nature of this giftedness is distilled in jesus, the language of “given for you” indicating representation and even substitution, all evoking praise, gratitude for the one who does all the trusting, obeying, suffering and dying for us. we participate in hope and anticipation, picturing the eating and drinking in the kingdom of god. the gradual sororal and fraternal relocation of those with whom we receive strengthens that sense of “my people”. this communal sense is further enhanced as we rehearse our identity in the eucharistic prayer as a community centred on christ. hence we are a people who seek to love our enemies and bless those who curse us, who know we are weak and help each other to grow where we are weak, who see what god is building in others and who create belonging (wilder, 2018: 233). finally we seek to embody christ’s way in relation to those around us as jesus’ words “do this” soak into our bodies and minds personally. while the eucharist helps relocate others in christ we slip from this relocation between eucharists. thus at every eucharist we are led to consider what habits, practices and skills can reshape our desires and sharpen our eucharistic living outside of the formal liturgy. we submit our relationships, agendas, meals and all that is involved in the liturgy after the liturgy to jesus’ presence and activity. thus the eucharist shifts from being a pious remembrance for personal encouragement to a social reality of christ present among us. the sacrament shifts from being a performance of a redemption achieved in the past to being an inbreaking of the future kingdom of god in the present, which inbreaking pervades our lives more and more (cavanaugh, 1998: 222). the evidence that character is shaped through such eucharistic worship (among other things!) is inevitably anecdotal. however my experience at holy trinity, eltham suggested there was a gratitude embodied by members of the congregation which in comparing notes with neighbouring ministers (of various traditions) was not the case. this generosity was embodied in paying rising parish costs and some significant examples of “good deaths” rooted in a felt awareness of being recipients of a generosity beyond merit or expectation. such dispositions suggested to this vicar some settled patterns of will, thought, feeling and bodily actions were being re-formed in people as a result of how they had habitually lived their lives, not least as devout members of eucharistic community. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 102 references arthur, j. 2021. a christian education in the virtues: character formation and human flourishing. abingdon: routledge. arthur, j., k. kristjansson, t. harrison, w. sanderse & d. wright. 2017. teaching character and virtue in schools. abingdon: routledge. beilock, s. 2017. how the body knows its mind: the surprising power of the physical environment to influence how you think and feel. new york: atria books. benner, d. g. 2003. surrender to love. downers grove il: ivp. benson, d. 2019. “a litany of practices” in practical theology 12(3): 253-6. bourdieu, p. 1990. the logic of practice. cambridge: polity press. cavanaugh, w. 1998. torture and eucharist. malden, ma: blackwell. clear, j. 2018. atomic habits. london: 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the church that transforms. colorado springs, co: navpress. —, e. garzon & e. johnson e. 2020. “a christian multi-modal approach to therapy utilizing inner healing prayer: the life model.” journal of psychology and christianity 39(1): 49-64. — & m. hendricks. 2020. the other half of church. chicago: moody publishers. ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 1 117 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef15515 b o o k r e v i e w s doi: 10.54195/ef15515 chitando, ezra, and ishanesu sextus gusha (editors). 2022. interfaith networks and development: case studies from africa cham: palgrave macmillan. isbn 9783030898069 reviewed by kimion tagwirei this book unravels the needful integration of faith-based networks and sustainable development in africa. the editors are seasoned academics and practical theologians. ezra chitando is a well-grounded and respected professor of history and phenomenology of religion at the university of zimbabwe and theology consultant on hiv for the world council of churches, who has researched and published extensively about religion and development, security, gender, sexuality, climate change and related matters. dr ishanesu sextus gusha is a highly progressive priest in palma de mallorca, spain, in the anglican diocese in europe and is a former new testament lecturer with the university of zimbabwe who has researched and published a great deal on interfaith dialogue, peacebuilding and biblical theology. they present an enriching book with enlightening and empowering contributions by experts and theologians from different african countries. the book connects religious networks with sustainable development. the church carries a holistic mission of proclaiming and demonstrating the gospel in all areas of life, for example through kerygma (preaching total salvation), diakonia (attending to the needy, advocating for peace and justice) and koinonia (ecumenical, congregational and social fellowship). thus, the call for the interconnection of faith-based organizations (fbos) to sustainable development deserves the attention of practical theologians, missiologists, ecclesial practitioners and stakeholders. in the introduction, ezra chitando remarks on how “despite the importance of the interfaith movement globally, it continues to be neglected in scholarly discourses. while there is a growing realization that religion is strategically placed to contribute 118 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef15515 towards development, there is still some hesitation among scholars to invest in researching and publishing in this area” (3). chitando notes that religion and development as a discipline in universities continues to be an encouraging testament to the consideration and endorsement of faith as integral in developmental discourses. observing that, generally, secular and religious worlds appear distant from each other and were for decades kept like separate compartments of life, he laments that “most developmental discourse and programming has assumed a secular orientation, falsely believing the secular to be superior to the religious … yet, interfaith networks are critical players in the quest to meet the united nations (un) sustainable development goals (sdgs) agenda 2030” (4). consequently, this book addresses the theme of interfaith networks and development in africa, with particular attention to sdg 10 (addressing inequalities) and others. engaging with practical reflections on interfaith initiatives and networks, this volume delivers new data and case studies from varied african contexts. it pays heed to the rising significance of interfaith networks in quest for the betterment of lives across the world. commendably, the book calls researchers, policy makers, activists and other stakeholders to invest in researching and enhancing interfaith networks and development in and beyond africa. bearing in mind that there are some voices that doubt the contribution of religion to sustainable development, each chapter presents different types and roles of interfaith networks towards meeting the un’s sdgs from diverse african settings. the initial chapters provide theoretical reflections and examples of international interfaith networks that are active in developmental work. after the introduction, sokfa john in the second unit explores key considerations for interfaith networks and development in west africa. he scrutinizes the united religions initiative in west africa, and proffers pivotal factors that determine one’s understanding of the structure, role and contributions of interfaith networks and their potential for sustainable development. his chapter suggests that spiritual and value foundation, size of network, brokerage, connections and other factors influence the effectiveness of interfaith networks and development. this is highly commendable because it upholds flexibility, empathy, inclusivity, courtesy and collaboration in networking and engaging faith towards sustainable development. 119 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef15515 thereafter, ahmed ragab, emma rachmawati, grace kaiso and matthias brucker revisit the contribution of the faith to action network to development with a special focus on africa. appreciating that religious praxis is deeply rooted in communities, they say that “faith organizations reach large numbers of people with messages on health, gender equality and peace that resonate with local beliefs and culture and provide social services through sustained networks of support” (47). fbos profess and propel the reconciliation of sdgs, human rights as well as faith teachings and values. the authors capture the growing influence of fbos on humanity through establishing life-bearing entities such as schools and hospitals. this concurs with my researches (tagwirei 2022: 3), which add that, besides education and health, some fbos, especially churches, have also invested in real estate and agriculture. resultantly, they have deepened and widened their influence on humanity. therefore, this book is greatly creditable for demonstrating that ignoring religious organizations in developmental deliberations is retrogressive and regrettable. befittingly, the authors lament that “there is a lot of disagreement between faith actors and non-faith actors. faith to action network believes that too much attention is given to those voices that propagate disagreement, and insufficient space is given to voices that seek agreement and constructive engagement” (62). they recommend a shift of attention from differences to common interests towards enhancing constructive voices for inclusive sustainable development. complementarily, ishanesu sextus gusha in chapter 4 applauds the monumental work of king abdullah bin abdulaziz’s international centre for interreligious and intercultural dialogue (kaiciid). gusha heralds that kaiciid facilitates interfaith and intercultural dialogue for peace and sustainable development under an interreligious governance of state and religious representatives from judaism, christianity, islam, hinduism and buddhism in austria, saudi arabia and spain. subsequently, florence iminza and esther mombo end the section with the work of the programme for christian–muslim relations in africa (procmura) towards peacebuilding. they historicize procmura as a capacity building and relational organization that affirms the principle of partnership, collaboration and networking in communities. aptly, their review confirms the promising potential of fbos in advancing the accomplishment of sdgs in and outside africa. in chapters 6–9 the book promotes the integration of interfaith networks and gender. based on researches in tanzania, ghana, botswana, uganda and mozambique, separate contributions tackle femininity, masculinities, inequalities and tragic violence with religious tolerance, dialogue and social transformation. 120 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef15515 chapters 10–13 discuss african and global interfaith networks and development. armed with case studies from selected african countries and international of interfaith networks, authors share various potentials, challenges and possible contributions of fbos in development. they give examples such as the inter-religious council of uganda (ircu) in uganda, zambia interfaith networking group (zingo) in zambia and evaluation of interfaith networking in ghana which mirror the need for correspondence and reciprocal collaboration between fbos and secular institutions for sustainable development. together, the contributions indicate that fbos possess more than spiritual influence. they display that fbos are blessed with human, financial and material resources that can be harnessed towards the attainment of sdgs. chapters 14–16 present diverse themes of interfaith networks and development. chapter 14, by ezekiel abdullahi babagario, delivers the theme of education and interfaith development in northern nigeria. the author remarks that “education is power, it is an avenue where enlightenment is passed from one generation to the other” (266) and reveals that it inspires and enlightens people towards tolerance, harmony, co-existence and development. following that, tapiwa gusha and ishanesu sextus gusha interface environmentalism with interfaith dialogue through a case study of the southern african faith communities’ environmental institute (safcei). the work of safcei upholds environmental stewardship. in conclusion, nomatter sande brings the volume to its end with an incisive discussion of interfaith communities from the african diaspora. taking migration and globalization into account, his chapter corresponds sustainable development with engagement, integration and dialogue. while focusing on interfaith trajectories in the united kingdom, the author engages with the united states of america and southern african contexts. largely, he reconciles diversities of interfaith networks with their promotion of tolerance, dialogue, integration and cooperation. for ecclesiology and missiology, this book inspires intersecting diaconia and koinonia with global interreligious discourses towards inclusive sustainable development. overall, it teaches all of us to appreciate and maximize tolerance and co-existence as well as collaboration. taken together, all chapters observe and bless the marriage of interfaith networks to sustainable development and bemoan attempts to divorce them. i strongly believe that this is a transformational resource for religious, secular, academic and governmental, non-governmental, collective and individual considerations for sustainable development. its submissions are greatly insightful about the potential, problems and strategies of accommodating and utilizing fbos to realize african and global sustainable development. recommendations from its different chapters can be contextual121 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef15515 ized and applied in and outside africa. all in all, this book motivates multiple further researches and publications in correspondence with changing contexts. about the author kimion tagwirei, practical theology remote research fellow, university of zurich, switzerland kimion22tc@gmail.com mailto:kimion22tc@gmail.com ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 1 106 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19198 b o o k r e v i e w doi: 10.54195/ef19198 hartman, tim. 2020. theology after colonization: bediako, barth, and the future of theological reflection notre dame, in: university of notre dame press isbn: 978-0-268-10653-9 reviewed by pieter labuschagne hartman’s book delineates the arrival of colonization and christendom in africa as intricately linked, interdependent and mutually reinforcing phenomena that have wielded a profound influence on church history spanning the last seventeen centuries, particularly in the context of the unfolding western pursuit of expansion and dominance. the book is divided into two sections. the first addresses the contemporary state of western christian theology. it elucidates the effects of pluralism and secularization, which have given rise to cultural hegemony; the deterioration of the inherent connection between christian faith and political authority; and the transformative impact of globalization on the erstwhile objectives of colonization. the second part examines theology through the lenses of christological, contextual, cultural, constructive and collaborative reflection. this involves a comparative study of the responses of two twentieth-century theologians to the colonial-christendom complex within their respective contexts. the first theologian, karl barth (1886– 1968), a swiss-german scholar, addressed the challenges posed by christendom and the escalating secularization of europe. barth grounded his dogmatic reflections on god’s self-revelation in jesus christ, rather than relying on official institutional structures (including the church) or societal consensus. the second theologian, kwame bediako (1945–2008), from ghana, presented a post-colonial theology. writing from the global south, where christianity experienced substantial growth following the withdrawal of western missionaries, bediako espoused the belief in the infinite translatability of the gospel of jesus christ. he contends that the gospel could be incarnated in africa as a non-western religion, distinct from the influences of colonization. there are striking similarities between their theologies: both couple christianity with political power; both develop theologies that are independent of the 107 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19198 colonial-christendom complex – even before it collapsed; their work indicates the way forward for christological, contextual, cultural, constructive and collaborative theological reflection; both respond in the same way to nineteenth-century european protestantism, in wanting to break the connection between the gospel and the colonial culture that had been forged in africa, and a similar religion that was promoted in europe; they are both interested in matters of revelation, religion and culture. at the age of 25, bediako underwent a profound conversion to christianity that played a pivotal role in the rediscovery of his african identity and spirituality – he believed that turning to christ made him more african than western. half a century earlier, at the age of 28, karl barth, then a pastor in switzerland, also underwent a significant awakening that substantially redirected the trajectory of his life. barth wanted the church to confront the state rather than align itself with its policies. when his theological mentors supported the military policies of kaiser wilhelm ii, barth lost faith in nineteenth-century theology. over the past five centuries, christianity has witnessed a decline in europe, attributed to the phenomenon of secularization, while the church in the global south has experienced remarkable growth in the last fifty years, following the end of colonization. hartman, therefore, rejects the european-driven progress propagated by christianity in the nineteenth century, supported by three pivotal failures: world war ii, the holocaust and the movement towards colonial independence. another shift identified by hartman involves a transition from community-oriented values to an emphasis on individualism, where societal approval no longer served as the arbiter of meaning; individuals themselves assumed the authority to legitimize their own meaning. in anticipating this postcolonial critique of universalizing standards in christianity, barth and bediako offered jesus christ, as the only universal truth, as the only alternative. the second part of the book presents a fivefold approach to contemporary theological reflection. christological reflection in 1933, barth authored a pamphlet critiquing church reform, the establishment of a national bishop and the collaboration of christians with the nazi government. he emphasized the revelation of god in jesus christ as the exclusive theological authority. prior to its confiscation by the nazis in july 1934, over 37,000 copies of this pamphlet were printed. meanwhile, in africa, bediako confronted distinctly different challenges as he defended the centrality of jesus christ against syncretistic movements such as afrikania, islam and african traditional religions. he proclaimed a christocentric theology, 108 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19198 with emphasis on the possibility of being both christian and african; christianity was a non-western religion inherent to africa; it was christ who brought missionaries to africa, not the other way around. for barth and bediako, immanuel, christ with us, is the foundation and substance of theological reflection. we can learn the following from them about the rationale and methodology for a christological focus of contemporary theology: (1) the gospel of jesus embodies a prophetic and indigenous character; (2) all revelation is a manifestation of god’s self-revelation; (3) this revelation is intended for all humanity; (4) it is an ongoing process; and (5) the universality of christ serves as the grounding for theological reflection. contextual reflection christina afua gyan (1900–1987), was a yam farmer, midwife and oral poet from asempaneye in eastern ghana. her expressions of prayers and praises to god were inherently contextual, communicated in the twi language. images from her immediate environment served as background for the various names that she ascribed to jesus, such as hero, the python, great rock, big tree, chief of police, the elephant hunter, and the bravest of muscle-men. bediako praises gyan’s work as an exemplary instance of contextual theology. by employing ancestral and royal titles to refer to jesus, gyan underscored the presence of christ in africa prior to the arrival of western missionaries, challenging the notion that european vocabulary was necessary to encapsulate african theology. it should be noted that the gospel and culture intersect in a specific locale, with the questions posed and the theological responses offered intricately tied to that place, a perspective both barth and bediako adhere to, notwithstanding the tendency to interpret western theologians, such as barth, without due consideration of their context. barth asserts that much of his theology emerged as a response to the people, events and circumstances surrounding him. while recognizing context as the foundation of theological reflection, he maintains that it should not dictate or confine theology. context, as hartman contends, inevitably shapes our comprehension, a fact not always appreciated by westerners engaging with africa. both barth and bediako reject the notion of religion as mere projection, seeking to discern the essence of jesus beyond human projections. they contend that god’s revelation is accessible to all people, through the universality of jesus. 109 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19198 cultural reflection culture is the location of revelation, though explaining the role of culture in theology is challenging and complex. both barth and bediako emphasise the significance of culture but neither formulate specific methods for its analysis. for barth the gospel was unique and identifiable amid culture, while bediako believes that it is impossible to separate the two. constructive reflection at times bediako goes too far in his emphasis on the interplay between the bible and elements of african culture, like drawing a direct line between jesus, the ancestors and the traditional akan festival, in a sermon that he preached in 1990. though bediako claims that western theology is more syncretistic than african theology, the opposite seems to be true when he claims that revelation occurs in and through culture. this elevates cultural theology above the pure gospel. in contrast, barth emphasizes that there should be no synthesis of the bible, christ, ideas, religion or culture. there is no place for christ plus culture; no system of thought should be placed above christ or the bible. though barth and bediako have differing views on syncretism, the question must be asked whether there is not an element of syncretism present in all christians. bediako promotes a new african theology that must make room within the historically inherited traditions for new ideas – an approach that starts with african culture and approaches the bible from within culture. barth holds that god’s self-revelation begins outside of culture and penetrates culture through christ’s ministry. collaborative reflection in comparing barth and bediako, it becomes clear that contemporary theological reflection must be attentive to voices beyond one’s own immediate context. in the process one can learn valuable lessons: • african christians should learn to avoid the false dichotomy of either fully embracing or fully rejecting african traditional religions (atrs), which will result in a balanced theology of ancestors, without embracing all the teachings of atrs. • westerners could learn more about primal imagination. • westerners could be more self-critical about the combination of theology and culture that often becomes religion, more than revelation. • westerners should learn more about kinship with brothers and sisters in africa. • changing contexts present a challenge to western and african christians to rethink and to rearticulate theology. 110 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19198 • theological thought must move beyond the dichotomies of saved/lost, christian/ pagan, white/black and even western/african. • in our globalized, secular, pluralistic societies, the church must become outward-focussed. the main contribution of the book is that for theological reflection to remain vibrant in a changing world, collaborative theology is not only a possibility, but a necessity. about the author pieter labuschagne, head of course development, south african theological seminary. pieter@sats.ac.za mailto:pieter@sats.ac.za ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 2 1 ecclesial futures – 2023 – volume 4 – issue 2 e d i t o r i a l 2023 – volume 4 – issue 2 editorial volume 4 issue 2 steve taylor welcome to another issue of ecclesial futures and another fine set of original research contributions on development and transformation in and through christian communities. i begin with thanks to the thirteen authors and six book reviewers published in this issue, along with the fourteen anonymous peer reviewers who have provided constructive, thoughtful and engaged feedback. thanks also to my colleagues nigel rooms (co-editor), patrick todjeras (editor of book reviews), chris pipe (copy-editor) and the team at radboud university press and open journals for their skill and care. original research this issue of ecclesial futures offers seven original research articles and six book reviews. the articles range over four continents, including contexts in oceania, africa, united states and europe. the focus of ecclesiological research includes local congregations, dioceses as a denominational structure and theological colleges. the research articles include empirical studies of placemaking, denominational renewal, reverse mission and migrant hospitality, along with methodological reflections on researching in theological partnership, church mobilization and missiological research. in a first article, rosemary dewerse, roxanne haines, and stu mcgregor offer a case study of the application of regenerative development in a local church community in a rapidly changing inner-city suburb of aotearoa new zealand. the article describes the application of participatory, place-based, whole-of-systems approaches in a congregation with a long history and a growing commitment to decolonising their thinking through relationships with land and indigenous peoples. historically, regenerative development has been applied to urban design and development projects and community development. dewerse, haines and mcgregor describe how frameworks that value nature and indigeneity were applied to a local congregation. in an initial phase, five storylines were explored at cityside members. these included tangata whenua (indigenous) stories; geological, ecological and water stories; neigh2 ecclesial futures – 2023 – volume 4 – issue 2 bourhood stories; church history; and cityside stories. in a second phase, a set of processes sought to articulate an essence of place and establish “why cityside, here?” a third phase offered trajectories for long-term development. alongside descriptive work, the article evaluates the potential of place and narrative in church health and renewal. rather than locate renewal as the responsibility of church leaders, regenerative development values working with the ecology, geology, sociology and anthropology of a place. mission shifts from saving to serving, from doing something to the community, to working with the vocation that arises from placesourced potential. theoretically, the article addresses an absence of place and narrative in the church growth and missional literature. practically, the descriptive nature of the article resources practitioners working with congregations and organisations. finally, a local church gained a transformed understanding of their future viability. ecclesial futures welcomes original research not only of local churches but also of denominational structures and in a second article from aotearoa new zealand, the focus shifts from a local congregation to a diocese. catherine rivera conducts an ethnography of a diocese, participating in the intentional communities they offer to young adults and experiencing what she describes as a “broad theological table”. she finds that intentional communities provide important spaces of belonging and faith formation. in a rapidly changing world, the structured set of spiritual practices offered in these intentional communities enhance well-being. economically, the intentional communities offer financial stability and free up community members to spend more time in social activism. rivera finds that a second factor that attracted young adults was the practical outworking of a “broad table” approach to diversity. for a generation attuned to practices that exclude others, ecclesiologies willing to maintain unity amid doctrinal or theological differences nurture the faith formation of young adults. the ethnographic data is brought into conversation first, with romand coles’ theory of receptive generosity and second, through framing the western church as marginal. on a local and daily level, a broad table encouraged partnerships and gave missiological shape to being a good neighbour. a recognition of the increasing marginality of the denomination shaped the willingness of the diocese to incorporate emergent and neo-monastic groups as intentional communities. the result was renewal, for individuals and the diocese. rivera’s research shows the importance of denominational structures making spaces of belonging and identifying with marginality. the value of partnerships is also a feature of a third article. the article by dustin benac, hannah coe, juli kalbaugh, tatum miller and erin moniz outlines a new research methodology. rather than accept the current silos between congregations, theological schools and nonprofits, the article describes how scholarship and religious practice can cultivate belonging and connection. the article provides a 3 ecclesial futures – 2023 – volume 4 – issue 2 theological fieldnote based on a year of the program for the future church. participants were invited to be collaborative in exploring solutions to the pressing challenges facing the church today, and in a programme structured around convening points. these included connecting in celebration, discerning in collaboratory, and deepening through contextual research hubs. the article helpfully describes the processes that animated these convening points and the interweaving that was refracted over time. a number of foundational assumptions are present. a first is that organizations are living realities in which belonging can be cultivated. a second is the value of active engagement of participants from different academic disciplines, sectors, denominations and organizations. a third is the importance of place and the richness that results when gatherings are held in different locations. a fourth is the worth of participants as co-authors and the ways that experiential narration is deployed to ground the new research methodology in embodied reflection. what results is a life-giving contribution to discussions around theological imagination and a description of how theological work can be located not in libraries and classrooms but in context and with communities. the nature of cross-cultural dynamics in partnerships is provided in a fourth article. adebisi adenekan-koevoets explores the possibilities and limits as african churches attempt cross-cultural mission in the west. adenekan-koevoets uses qualitative methods to illuminate the dynamics as nigerian-initiated churches in london reposition themselves from “migrant enclaves” into communities engaging with wider british society. the article begins with an analysis of ecumenism and documents which demonstrate how african pentecostal churches experience ecumenism as dominated by a european perspective of religion. concerns that bring african christians together include the supernatural, holistic theologies and responding to poverty and violence. these concerns are in contrast to european ecumenical concerns, which historically have focused on sacramental life. the recent development of receptive ecumenism, which values an “exchange of gifts” are seen as helpful. the article then reflects on ecumenism in cross-cultural mission by drawing on ethnographic research of three african pentecostal churches in london. churches that are larger in size and have a greater proportion of young university-educated members are better positioned to engage ecumenically and in community care. the intercultural capacity of key leaders is a significant factor, as are initiatives that begin with a commitment to personal relationships and friendships. there is also value in shared interdenominational events, particular when occasions are designed which encourage participants to learn from each other. the article helpfully documents the diverse ways in which african pentecostal churches already participate ecumenically, through community care initiatives. finally, the article outlines differences between first and second-generation-led nigerian churches. an emerging generation of african europeans are committed to the contextualization of pentecostal 4 ecclesial futures – 2023 – volume 4 – issue 2 beliefs and practices, both in terms of outward-facing evangelism and the future shape of ecumenical engagement. this emerging generation offers new possibilities for the ecclesial future of the church in the west. in a fifth article, pieter labuschagne offers a missiological research model for his context in south africa. the article works with an understanding of missiology as an independent field of theology and research as a practice that should result in the sharing of good news. given these stated aims, labuschagne interrogates an approach to practical theology developed by the loyola institute for ministry in the 1990s. this approach is summarized in an acronym of lim: l = life-situation identified i = interpretation of the life-situation m = model preferred scenario this practical theology approach is affirmed by labuschagne for the ways in which it locates theology in dialogue with lived experience. however, the lim approach needs to be examined in light of missiology. first, ways to integrate themes of missio dei, christocentricity and contextuality into every step of the practical theology model are presented. second, mission action is introduced as an outcome. the result is a missiology schema, presented in diagrams that are clear and compelling and in an acronym of limm: l = life-situation i = interpret the life-situation m = model preferred scenario m = missional action the article asks important questions about the place of missiology in research and in relationship to other academic disciplines. the diagrams and acronym offer clarity. labuschagne provides a practical resource shaped by a depth of theological reflection that deserves to be tested in other locations. moving from south africa to united states, in a sixth article, mark harden researches how congregations might be invited to assign practical theological meaning in assessing their readiness for church mobilization. given a shortage of empirical research on church mobilization, harden constructed a framework of ministry practices to analyse mission readiness for church mobilization. a literature review resulted in the development of six constructs: relational bonds, role of church leaders, dedicated support staff, belief in the plan, commitment to action and available essential capabilities. harden drew on these six constructs to develop a self-assessment tool, called church performance readiness inventory. given the importance of practical theology, harden constructed an analytical framework to be utilized alongside the 5 ecclesial futures – 2023 – volume 4 – issue 2 self-assessment tool, as a way of integrating praxis and ecclesial theory in conversational modes accessible to lay participants in local congregations. the article includes the results of a pilot study, in which the self-assessment tool was tested in a local congregation with a vision of becoming a multicultural church. participants completed the church performance readiness inventory self-assessment and the results were workshopped with participants. practical actions were brainstormed and theological concepts that could helpfully shape the future were identified. the article notes the need for further research to understand how the self-assessment tool and the analytical framework might continue to inform this local church in their mission. what is helpful from the article is, first, insight into how a self-assessment tool can be used in a congregational change and, second, how lived theologies can be discerned around a self-assessment tool. in a seventh article, sue holdsworth researches ministry among migrant communities. holdsworth begins with auto-ethnography and her experience of the impact of different agendas as christians sought to offer hospitality to migrants. she undertook ethnographic research, participating over two years in four different churchbased intercultural initiatives in melbourne, australia. holdsworth’s article brings current understandings of pastoral care and mission into conversation with empirical data. the ethnographic data revealed ways in which pastoral care can be hindered by poorly constructed theologies of mission. the lived witness of these churchbased intercultural initiatives was diminished when volunteers neglected spiritual practices including prayer and collegiality. witness was enlivened when christian teachers sought to cultivate a strong sense of god’s presence. the article works with a pastoral theology in which the pastoral carer progresses from sympathy, through empathy, to interpathy. however, movement is not automatic. learning is required. holdsworth observed empathy and potential. all initiatives held the possibility of long lasting, mutual friendships. yet across the four church-based intercultural initiatives, holdsworth observed a lack of sustained attention to formation, prayer and reflective practice. seeking to integrate current literature on pastoral care and mission with empirical data, holdsworth argues that mission is better framed as pastoral care. the article returns to where it began. church-based intercultural initiatives can express love of god and neighbour through intentional cultivation of pastoral practices of empathy and compassion, hospitality, and spirituality. cultivation includes training in interpathy and team gatherings for prayer and reflection. in the mutuality in relationships, conversations about faith can naturally emerge. in grateful thanks as a journal, we honour the memory and rich contribution to missiology of professor therese d’orsa, who died suddenly on 7 may 2023.  dr therese d’orsa was a 6 ecclesial futures – 2023 – volume 4 – issue 2 passionate advocate for catholic education, professional learning and new voices in the theological landscape. in that capacity, therese offered significant gifts as a member of the editorial board of ecclesial futures. her responses to correspondence was always prompt and her reviews showed particular skills in nurturing scholarship among women. therese served with the sisters of st joseph in communities in australia, india, the philippines and vanuatu. in 1997, she became the director of catholic education and director of religious education in the diocese of sale. then in 2007, she became the inaugural professor of mission and culture at bbi-taite – the australian institute of theological education. ecclesial futures gives thanks for the life of therese d’orsa and offer our prayers to jim, her spouse of many years. with warm welcome as a journal, we welcome dr fides del castillo to the editorial board. fides is currently associate dean, school of innovation and sustainability, de la salle university, philippines. dr fides del castillo brings research expertise in basic ecclesial communities, christianities in the philippines and kenotic christology. fides has a rich range of networks including as president, network of professional researchers and educators, international association of mission studies and as a recipient of lamin sanneh research grant with overseas ministry study center, usa. partnerships as a journal, we continue to be delighted with the unfolding partnership with radboud university press and open journals. through diamond open access, original research is available free to authors and reader. all our issues including archives are stored at https://ecclesialfutures.org/, thanks to the generosity of wipf and stock publishers, radboud university press and open journals. finally, we are grateful for our partnership with you. to receive updates via the newsletter, sign up at https:// ecclesialfutures.org/. about the author steve taylor is director angelwings ltd and flinders university, adelaide, australia. contact: steve.taylor@flinders.edu.au https://ecclesialfutures.org/ https://ecclesialfutures.org/ https://ecclesialfutures.org/ mailto:steve.taylor@flinders.edu.au 5 problems with “pioneering” mission: ref lections on the term “pioneer” from germany, south africa and the uk ben aldous (corresponding author contact: ben.aldous@cte.org.uk) principal officer for mission and evangelism at churches together in england, the national ecumenical instrument. previously he was an anglican priest in cape town (2013–19), durban (2010–13) and a church planter in cambodia (2004–10). ben is a missiologist and passionate about intercultural church. he has published widely on fresh expressions and contextual theology. he is currently writing a book for scm press on the missiology of kosuke koyama. luke larner anglican priest and ordained pioneer minister, having served as a lay pioneer for some years before ordination. he is currently studying for a professional doctorate in practical theology at the university of roehampton, researching anglican missional pneumatology through action research with anglicans involved in community organizing. formerly a bricklayer, luke is interested in intersectional approaches to theology which engage social class. adrian schleifenbaum studied theology in oberursel, marburg, nottingham and heidelberg. in his dissertation, he analysed the relationship between church and civil society. currently he lives with his family in gießen, germany where he works as a pastor. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 6 rajiv sidhu an anglican deacon currently studying for a professional doctorate in practical theology at the university of roehampton, researching the relationship between christofascism and racism within the church of england through action research with anglicans who have experienced racism. previously a teacher of geography, rising to assistant principal before embarking on ordination training. he continues to be passionate about issues of exclusion, geographical space, class, culture and faith. abstract this paper brings together four voices in an autoethnographic manner to ask questions about power, and missionary imperialism in the birthing of new contextual churches. these narratives come from three nations, each with a history and inheritance of cultural and missiological imperialism. the narratives explore our own wrestling with being men in ecclesial settings, inhabiting spaces of power, while seeking to do so critically. the paper opens up a conversation about the term “pioneer” as default language in many of the historic denominations in the uk, germany and south africa. it explores the use of the term and also asks how the language can be problematic. finally, it offers the term “pilgrim” as an alternative word which we believe will be more sustainable. keywords: pioneer, imperialism, colonialism, mission, power, liberation introduction this paper brings together reflections from south africa, germany and the united kingdom on the use of the word “pioneer” in the birthing of new contextual churches. ben draws on experience as a priest in the province of southern africa. adrian reflects on his visit to the uk ten years ago and questions the helpfulness of the term in his own german context. finally, luke and rajiv write together considering their work in the uk. we ask if the word “pioneer” has simply been adopted without any real critical appraisal. the paper sets out the problems inherent in the term before briefly explaining the autoethnographic research method we employ. we move on to address the issues of the language in the south african and german contexts before ben aldous—problems with “pioneering” mission 7 returning to the uk and finally offering an alternative term we think may be more effective. pioneering: a term inherent with problems “pioneering” and “pioneer ministry” is finding increasing currency in historic denominations in the uk, especially the church of england and other mainstream church bodies. increasingly those putting themselves forward to ordained ministry are being offered the opportunity to train as a pioneer via a special training pathway. lay people too are inhabiting roles allowing them space and freedom to start new initiatives in places where the church has struggled or failed to connect with people. the church of england defines pioneers as “people called by god who are the first to see and creatively respond to the holy spirit’s initiatives with those outside the church; gathering others around them as they seek to establish new contextual christian community”.1 the oxford dictionary’s first definition of the term pioneer is, ‘a person who is among the first to explore or settle a new country or area’ (2020). that this is the primary definition of the word raises a major issue in view of the church’s history of corroboration and even involvement in the colonising of the majority world. for us, this is not a distant history, but one that we are in danger of repeating in the present day. perhaps we already are. if a pioneer is someone who becomes the “first to settle” a new area, and who opens it up for “occupation and development by others”, what might this mean for the inhabitants of the spaces the church seeks to reach through pioneering mission? the ongoing discourse between pioneering, fresh expressions and church planting within the church of england is a crucible within which these complications become red hot. jonny baker points out that, ‘the word pioneer is a metaphor and therefore laced with possibility and ambiguity’ (baker & ross 2014:2). going further, he questions whether the term, ‘once used at the edge is now used at the centre has become uncomfortable or shifted its meaning over time.’ but there is unfortunately little to no wrestling with the negative notions of exploitation, subjugation, power, colonialism and residual imperialism in the word pioneer and therefore its negative effects. we suggest that this word needs to be rigorously scrutinised and made redundant. 1 https://www.churchofengland.org/life-events/vocations/vocations-pioneer-ministry. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 8 both of the contexts in which i (luke) have exercised ‘pioneer ministry’ have been ethnically diverse and economically disparate. as a working-class person, i see a great danger in the church of england, often characterised as dominated by white middle-class people seeking to occupy community spaces which belong to ethnically, culturally, socio-economically and even religiously diverse communities. anglican theologian tim gorringe suggests that to “so easily forget the church’s collusion with imperialism, patriarchy and racism today borders on indecency” (2004:20). i have personally witnessed the way that well-meaning but potentially misguided ‘pioneers’ entered into a space, without paying due attention to their own situatedness, and have ignored and patronised local people who are already doing many good things for the community. however, we all recognise that there is a danger here of getting bogged down in semantics. much of the literature on pioneering takes context very seriously, and often emphasises discerning the work that god is already doing in a context before the pioneer arrives (male 2016:20; baker & ross 2014:22). some of us have written previously on contextual and pioneering mission (aldous 2019, 2021, larner 2016, schleifenbaum 2021) and the vital necessity to understand that god is already at work before we arrive. pioneer ministry emerged in the church of england as a response to the mission shaped church report published in 2004 (2004:6-7). mission shaped church proposed new contextual forms of church for a changing cultural landscape, often called fresh expressions of church (2004). the document recognised two ways to do this, “progression” planting and “pioneer” planting. progression planting builds on a significant existing presence of christians in a network or area, whereas “pioneer” planting is aimed at planting in ‘places and cultures in which at present there are few, if any, known christians’ (2004:110). this is interesting language given that the document is focussed on the english context. it is hard to imagine a place in england where there are few if any known christians, one wonders if some ‘particular’ form of christian is being sought? the report wisely recognises that pioneer teams should work with smaller resources and numbers of people because “large groups might appear to be like an invasion of do-gooders to the present inhabitants” (2004:111). instead, a small number of “gifted, resilient and visionary people” is seen as essential (2004:111). the parallels to the colonial use of the word pioneer bear a close resemblance. indeed, the theological underpinnings of mission shaped church share this problem, drawing from the creation mandate, and seeking a church which can “reproduce” and “fill all creation” (2004:93). the implications of this for people of other denominations and especially other faiths is alarming. mission shaped pioneers, it would seem, really are the first to settle and ben aldous—problems with “pioneering” mission 9 prepare a place for occupation and development by the church. the expectation of finding communities with few or no known christians feels dangerously close to the ‘doctrine of discovery’ – a “set of legal principles that governed the european colonising powers” which “emerged from a series of fifteenth century papal bulls” and allowed european catholic nations to “expand their dominion over ‘discovered’ land” (charles and rah, 2019:15). the problem with the doctrine of discovery is, “you cannot discover lands already inhabited” (2019:13). for luke, indeed for all of us as authors of this paper, this is a major problem with pioneer ministry – it too often sees new places as areas of potential discovery and colonisation, not as places where god is already at work among the indigenous people. linked to the doctrine of discovery, we also acknowledge anthony reddie’s (2018:12) challenge to white theologians (like some of us writing this paper) to take a critical look at their whiteness and to reflect upon the ways in which white supremacist thought and action has exerted a profound and corrosive influence upon the christianity faith. the historical thought forms that have arisen from white normativity have not only advantaged white people, but also exerted unimagined pressures and negative traits upon black people. in many ways, therefore, this is an autoethnographic and confessional piece of writing reflecting back on our journeys in ministry and detecting the fissures and ruptures of our own privilege and superiority complexes in other intersections of identity. additionally, reddie (2018:11) reminds us that, white practical theologians may reflect on the fluid complexities of what it means to be a human being, but they rarely foreground their own embodied reality as a white person as they do so. for too long now, many white theologians have written as if their very whiteness (or maleness) carried no ethical or epistemological weight in their attempts to undertake constructive god-talk. there appears to be a new willingness in the uk context at least to begin some of this work, evidenced by the substantial number of people who attended the #dismantlingwhiteness webinar hosted by oxford centre for religion and culture.2 but this point is important. one of the fundamental problems of 2 http://www.rpc.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/dismantling-whitenesssymposium.pdf. http://www.rpc.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/dismantling-whiteness-symposium.pdf http://www.rpc.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/dismantling-whiteness-symposium.pdf e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 10 whiteness is that it has been rarely interrogated, turned over or questioned. for reddie (2018) whiteness has been epistemologically weighed, measured and found wanting.’ the assumption is that as white people we will/should/can occupy the centre of gravity. whiteness according to willie james jennings is more than simply a skin pigment issue but rather an ontological issue – a way of being in the world. jennings (2020:9) says that the, “use of the term ‘whiteness’ does not refer to people of european descent but to a way of being in the world and seeing the world that forms cognitive and affective structures able to seduce people into its habitation and its meaning making.” moreover, he clearly articulates that the ideology of whiteness leads to a formation predicated on, “the image of a white self-sufficient man, his self-sufficiency defined by possession, control and mastery” (jennings 2020:9). whiteness above all else desires control and tends to make love secondary. whilst this may seem tangential to pioneering we wondered about the extent to which well-meaning pioneers have been complicit in this way of being. given the site of existential anxiety that most historical denominations operate from it is hardly surprising that the gift and potential of pioneering has at times been co-opted or appropriated by the centrifugal force of the institution. the institution has a tendency to manipulate and coerce the fragile things at the edges and propel them towards the centre by their institutional gravity. as ‘pioneering’ becomes more acceptable as a term, in the church of england for example, it is embedded into the strategies and structures of the organisational language of the institution most readily seen in the recent vision for the c of e in the 2020s which claims to want to be a simpler, humbler and bolder church and where the mixed ecology is the norm. research method: a word on autoethnography in this paper we have loosely employed an autoethnographic method. ‘autoethnography connects the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social, and political. in autoethnography, the life of the researcher becomes a conscious part of what is studied’ (ellis 2008:48). autoethnography brings into play both the internal, personal reflections of the researcher and the cultural context that they inhabit. by recalling snippets or fragments of interactions and conversations in a setting these can act as key moments in self-conscious reflections on practice. heather walton (2019) has reminded us that autoethnography has become gradually more important for theology and theological reflection. drawing from walton (2019:6) we wish to write ourselves into a deeper critical ben aldous—problems with “pioneering” mission 11 understanding of the ways in which our lives intersect with larger sociocultural pains and privileges. taking these seriously, we each reflect on how we have inhabited privileges and witnessed pain, sometimes of our making, however inadvertently. this is what ellis and bochner (2003:213) call ‘epiphanies’. these are, ‘remembered moments perceived to have significantly impacted the trajectory of a person’s life...times of existential crises that forced a person to attend to and analyse lived experience.’ therefore the ‘epiphanies’ that follow act as a way of bringing into focus a particular issue or problem we have encountered in the use of the language of pioneering and fresh expressions during our ministries. each of us have lived in different cultural contexts (whether cape town, east london, frankfurt or luton) each with its own set of complexities. by reflecting on particular moments from our own stories we believe we are, ‘disclosing our location and assumptions upfront, in order to contribute with humility and responsibility’ (vellem 2017:1). south africa: simply neo-colonialism and the import of british ideas? in 2011, whilst still a new priest in the anglican church of southern africa (acsa) in the diocese of natal i (ben) was offered an opportunity by the then bishop to speak off the cuff on fresh expressions during a clergy gathering. i was ill prepared as i was asked 20 minutes before i was due to speak. on the hoof i tried to give a simple account of the shifts in culture and the church’s sometimes inadequate response to those changes whilst explaining the missional impetus of fresh expressions of church and potential in a nation in a place of flux in a post-apartheid, post-colonial, dying-embers-of-christendom context. i asked if any of the clergy had a response. right from the back of the cathedral’s colenso hall a senior zulu priest in his mid 60s stood up and said, ‘this sounds like neo-colonialism to me. it’s just the import of british ideas.’ i mumbled an insubstantial reply and sat down probably looking as bemused as i felt. and so began a journey of research around fresh expressions and whether it was an authentic missiological process or tool for a southern african context. is it simply a form of missiological imperialism? when the main protagonists of the movement in south africa were initially white middle class heterosexual evangelical men what does the movement have to say, with any cultural and ecclesial sensitivity to the largely black, poor, high anglo-catholic anglican church? from my experience in south africa for 10 years, usually not very much. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 12 but more than the external implications of this priest’s terse comments began a reflection of my own role as a white, middle class, english (cornish) man occupying a central space of power in the oldest and one of the largest evangelical anglican churches in south africa. what right did i have to be there? was my advocating for fresh expressions in a province largely shaped by high church anglo-catholic spirituality actually a form of evangelical imperialism when evangelicals were almost always white and of english descent? in south africa the still lingering wounds of apartheid continue to fester in racial tensions and ongoing disparity. the #rhodesmustfall movement, continued issues around service delivery and mistrust and scapegoating across the racial boundaries all reveal problems that mean language is always loaded and potentially problematic. perhaps rather than being a healing balm my presence and advocacy for pioneer ministry was, in fact, more like prickly heat; annoying and certainly not to be welcomed. as i reflect on the fresh expressions movement and pioneering mission in south africa i think it has had minimal impact on the asca for several reasons which i outline below. firstly, whilst it is rooted in contextual theology and is by and large committed to a process of listening, loving, serving, creating disciples and seeing church emerge it has had ecclesiological assumptions that in many ways were as brittle as the ecclesiology of the inherited church it often criticised. too often examples of fresh expressions being lauded looked like what martyn percy calls “evangelical playthings” – made up of people who were bored of sunday morning and would prefer to sip a latte3 in ‘café church’. whilst that may well be contextually appropriate for post christendom white middle class 40-somethings it looks confusingly irreligious and un-anglican to 90% of clergy and lay people in the south african context. my suspicion is that the first parts of the ‘loving-first’ cycle, namely listening, loving and serving were not really embedded into the posture and practices of those advocating for the movement especially in truly navigating intercultural or majority black spaces. often those beginning the journey of establishing a new church already had the end result in mind. in black working class communities, which make up 80% of the country’s population, fresh expressions and pioneer ministry look alien, bizarre and simply out of step with indigenous culture and notions of spirituality. 3 as the twitter handle “star of bethel” so beautifully points out https://twitter.com/ starofbethel1/status/1411282108182564866. ben aldous—problems with “pioneering” mission 13 secondly the language of “fresh expressions” my first bishop told me, with a smirk on his face, sounds like a bakery product. but it’s more than just mere flippancy or cynicism. the term ‘pioneer’ in the south african context cannot be uncoupled from its translated equivalent in the afrikaans language of voortrekker.4 the term is impossible to use without listeners immediately thinking of the great trek beginning in 1836 by the dutch speaking people of the cape colony to the interior of the country. as o’brian (2013:29) states, ‘the journey of the voortrekkers who escaped british rule into the interior would become an important focal point of afrikaner nationalism, and the single most important event in afrikaner history and mythology.’ d f malan used the image of the voortrekker to create a powerful myth for afrikaner identity during the 1930’s, a time when it was in great crisis. this image and its polyvalent sub themes connected to chosen people, the volk, and the need for separation to preserve cultural and racial purity were all the antecedents for the nationalist party’s apartheid policy fully instituted in 1948. the term pioneer is very closely aligned with afrikaner ideology. thirdly, disentangling this history from the term ‘pioneer’ from its dangerous past, i would argue, is almost impossible. therefore, it is perhaps unsurprising that those belonging to historic mainline churches like the anglican church of southern africa, which is now largely black and poor, would find the language of pioneer repellent. whiteness, superiority, violence and imperialism are bound together in an almost impenetrable knot, each strand wrapped tightly into the other. in the late 1970’s at the height of tensions caused by apartheid laws and in the shadow of the soweto uprising, claims of innocence were to be bid farewell. allan boesak (1977:4) writes, it is a farewell to innocence for white people. in order to maintain the status quo, it is necessary for them to believe and keep on believing, that they are innocent. they are innocent because they “just happen to have the superior position in the world,” or in some mysterious way they have been placed in a position of leader ship over blacks by nature, by virtue of their “superior” culture. 4 voortrekkers were the ‘pioneers’ or ‘pathfinders’ who took part in the great trek from 1836 seeking to settle beyond the control of british administration. ironically, they were seeking a freedom from the tyranny of british colonialism but also contributed to the decline and collapse of the zulu kingdom. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 14 but boesak (1977:6) notes that is also necessary for black people to dismantle innocence since, ‘an affirmation of personhood is a powerful act that constitutes a farewell to innocence.’ building in a way on boesak, vuyani vellem (2017) suggests that a black theology of liberation does not simply affirm personhood and dignity of black people but in fact has to participate in un-thinking the west as an epistemological process, ‘rejecting the architecture of western knowledge as the final norm for life’ (2017:1). but vellem says this is not simply an academic exercise but a spiritual one. vellum in his critique of the west starkly points out that, ‘western civilisation is no longer helpful to make any meaningful contribution to black life, especially when one interrogates growing fascism in the west, ostensibly in defence of the supremacy and superiority of one race against all others in the world’ (vellum 2017:3). is it any wondered that the senior zulu clergyman stood up and so vehemently opposed what he saw as cultural imperialism embodied in a white babyfaced priest like me! germany: pioneering like it’s 1989 when “mission shaped church” was published in the uk in 2004, it didn’t go unnoticed within the german church. pastors, theologians and other churchenthusiasts visited our neighbours in the uk in search of ideas and concepts they could apply to a german context (e.g. baer-henney 2015). as a student of theology, i (adrian) made my trip to nottingham in 2011 and volunteered at st. saviour’s church.5 here i met a church that listened to a neighborhood and put the information to good use. in this case, st. saviour’s transformed a traditional church into a soft-play ground that cares for social and spiritual needs. as german visitors to the uk we found something worth considering. a church style that inspired many of us. some left the island with a sense of doubt (koll 2012: 219-236), some were convinced they had found a set of best practices and others were inspired to rethink church in germany (bils 2015). overall, there was a lot of enthusiasm which made us eager to copy and paste what we saw. over the last ten years, this inspiration manifested in publications, meetings, networks, jobs and sometimes even fresh expressions of church. a small 5 http://www.churchinthemeadows.uk. ben aldous—problems with “pioneering” mission 15 and diverse movement came into being, trying to pass on those ideas and concepts that were worth considering. many of our role models in the uk put “mission” at the center of its church-life. this is somewhat alien to church as it takes place within the ekd (protestant church of germany). in my context mission feels like it’s something to be suspicious of. it is for some a practice that belongs to the core of colonialism. maybe it can be accepted in theory, when it’s viewed as the missio dei i.e. a dynamic god is responsible for. but mission as a practice, something that shapes the identity of our church? that was essentially unheard of. being slightly awe struck by the missional church movement i found in nottingham, i grew frustrated with the slow tempo in which this mindset was being worked out in germany. the structurally and financially dominant protestant ekd has old traditions and a management that was slow to react. therefore, it sometimes seemed unwelcoming towards innovation. however, looking back a decade later, i am convinced that part of the reason for this slow-to-arrive concept is not only a slow reacting german church. the missional church movement is also something that cannot simply be copied and pasted. because the concepts we came across as visitors have their faults and down sides. some elements of the movement shouldn’t be copied, really. and when these ideas didn’t gain much traction within a mission-suspicious ekd, there may be good reasons. copy and paste pioneer missioning it is my understanding that passing on inspiration is successful only by transforming the original concepts and ideas. these ideas need to fit into the narratives that shape their destination. a copy and paste approach does not work: at least not completely. copy and paste hasn’t worked for the church plant movement in the 1990s and it hasn’t for the fresh expressions of church movement in the 2010s. part of the reason is that the original narrative we tried to copy has its own logic. it works best in the environment it is derived from. the narrative of pioneering is a good example for that. even within the anglican context, pioneering has its flaws and limits (see the perspectives of luke, rajiv and ben). in the german context, pioneering has a political and ideological ring to it. in germany, whenever one talks about pioneers (pioniere in the german), one would not think of an incarnational style of mission. most assuredly before 1989, one would think of young boys and girls in multi-colored uniforms, standing in front of a flag pole, saluting socialism. “junge pioniere” was the e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 16 name of the socialist party’s youth organization in the german democratic republic. most children were part of that organization. it was meant to shape generations by promoting marxist–leninist ideology among east germany’s young people. through this youth organisation children were meant to dismiss political, religious and cultural ideas of the past, now deemed outdated, and instead of these old values, they were meant to embrace the graces of socialism. this association of young boys and girls standing in front of a flag pole, shouting “für friede und sozialismus – immer bereit!” (“for peace and socialism – always ready”) is not simply a bizarre image. to me, it reveals a telling parallel, that shows the flaws and limits of a pioneer missioning approach, gone wrong. pioneers can often be seen as those who want to change people’s concepts and ideas from the wrong outdated ones to the new shiny mission shaped ones. or put in terms of the “junge pioniere”, to change the invalid outfit for their set of blue colored neck-ties and uniforms. it wants people to stand in front of a flag pole, saluting the right concepts and ideas. as i said this is my idea of pioneer mission, gone wrong. sometimes pioneering mission is not actually interested in the people and neighborhoods the church interacts with. it is interested in expanding the intellectual territory of their concepts and ideas, however just and holy one believes them to be. this however is not necessarily the idea of mission that people have in mind when using the term pioneering. one may use it with an intention that is quite different from the one i have just described. still, this is the effect which the term “pioneering” has on me. moreover, whenever i discussed the term ‘pioneer’ with other german people, i usually get a set of raised eyebrows and a dismissive shaking of the head. further, in german theological discourse, “mission” itself is a highly controversial term, often dismissed for its violent history and the negative effects it has had on people. adding a “pioneering” to “mission” it only adds fuel to the fire. it will simply be viewed as another attempt to gain intellectual territory rather than being fundamentally about serving and loving communities. looking into the missional literature in germany, however i find that this is a perspective not commonly shared. people within the german fresh expressions of church movement use the term “pionier” quite normally (e.g. henney, 2017, 141-158). i believe this is a result of a copy and paste approach. however, there are alternatives which sandra bils and maria hermann have demonstrated. instead of speaking of a “mixed economy”, an ecclesial term derived from an economic logic, they speak of “mischwald” (mixed forest). with this metaphor they describe the variety within god’s kingdom as a growing, flourishing and healthy forest. i find that much more fitting than speaking ben aldous—problems with “pioneering” mission 17 of god’s kingdom in terms of a profit driven competition. maybe we can find a term, that fits a missional style, interested in the social and spiritual wellbeing of the people and neighborhoods we interact with as church. i find some of these ideas resonating in the term “peace-seeking-mission”. because as church, we are looking for peace on earth as much as we are looking for the peace of jesus christ. and in this endeavor, we are not alone. we can find allies within the community we live in. united kingdom luke and rajiv say ‘our skin makes us different.’ whether tattoos, or skin tone, who we are stands out from the crowd within the church communities we serve. my (rajiv) first in-depth grappling with “pioneer ministry” came as i approached the application for ordination training. i had to demonstrate if, and why, i was pioneering. i could not articulate if i was pioneering. i am a second-generation christian migrant, born and raised in the east end of london, with a working-class outlook on life. my multiple identities born of my ethnicity, cultural heritage, and geographical location, should mean that i fulfil the criteria for being “a pioneering presence” by the church of england’s own definition, at the outside of the traditional church of england congregation. south asia may be my heritage, but “arrivals” at heathrow airport is when i am home. but the conversation surrounding pioneer ministry made pioneering sound like cool coffee machines, a good haircut, and a really snazzy instagram profile. the three case studies in the church of england website only reinforce this image.6 the implicit assumption of “pioneering” is of a white middle-class cis gendered world, in which people resource and equip each other before going out on mission into the wilderness of the world. this wilderness defined by cultures and communities outside the predominant culture of the pioneer can be a one-way process. successful pioneering is demonstrated when these communities reflect the culture of the pioneer. such cultural imperialism has no space for someone outside the dominant community. iris marion young outlines cultural imperialism as one of the five faces of oppression (young: 1988). this is the reason i found it difficult to self-identify as a pioneer. 6 https://www.churchofengland.org/life-events/vocations/vocations-pioneer-ministry#na. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 18 the first time i (luke) ever heard of a ‘pioneer minister’ was when i showed up for a college open day for the church mission society ‘pioneer mission leadership training’course in oxford. at the time i was about 9 years into a career as a bricklayer and general builder. a mate from the motorcycle club i belonged to suggested the course to me. the term ‘pioneer’ was new to me, but i liked what the speakers said about “the gift of not fitting in” and “dreamers who do” (baker, 2014:1). this resonated with me as someone who has always felt outside the ‘inside circle’ of church – which i have later come to realise is largely down to my social class. but through the years during which i cut my teeth as a lay pioneer minister in luton, once voted the worst place to live in britain, i’ve begun to question the term ‘pioneer’, especially in relation to the kind of relationship this suggests to the land and to the indigenous people. deacons within the church of england are called “to serve as heralds of christ’s kingdom” (the ordinal). faith in action seeks to actively serve the community, and to meet the needs of god’s people here and now. in that way, there is little difference between the call of a deacon, and the work of pioneers. and yet the concept remains problematic, not least due to underpinning assumptions surrounding privilege, class, and cultural imperialism. mission shaped church embraces the call to “remember the poor” as “incumbent upon all churches exploring church planting or fresh expressions” (2004:7). it notes the influential legacy of base ecclesial communities which emerged among poor communities in latin america (2004:47). but this may not have been a good legacy to draw from. argentinian liberation theologian marcella althaus-reid saw in the becs the continued legacy of western domination and exploitation. privileged male leaders training in european universities, and visiting european bishops saw something strange and exotic in these new forms of church which emerged among the poor (2004:34). had marcella althaus-reid lived to see the days of pioneer ministry, i suspect she would have seen something of the coloniser in this language too. there is good reason to ask what sort of person the would-be pioneer minister is being formed into through their training. this is certainly something i have considered in my own journey. what kind of heritage do the terms “gifted, resilient and visionary” carry? as already noted above i can’t help but think of willie james jennings image of the end product envisaged in much of christian formation – the “white self-sufficient man, his self-mastery defined by possession, control, and mastery” the son of the plantation master ready to take mastery of his inheritance (2020:102). a key problem with the term “pioneer” is that it is only used of one person in the biblical cannon – jesus (hebrews 12:2). the danger of the christian minister or missionary over-identifying with jesus the father’s son, is that those ben aldous—problems with “pioneering” mission 19 shaped and formed in the western academic tradition that jennings critiques, bear more resemblance to the son of the master than the son of man. in this sense, i have recognised my over-identification with the male redeemer who in submitting to the father seems to lose it all, but in reality gains a heavenly reward (tonstad, 2017:261). christianity’s radicalism is this: it serves those who are in need. cornell west affirms that, no matter how much we fail at this, the message of christianity has always been “to serve the least of these” (west 2020). we are yet to hear of an invading or occupying group whose actions serve the marginalised in this way. archbishop tutu celebrates the concept of ubuntu-of your humanity being wrapped up in mine, together we are human. this understanding is beyond binary limitations. and this understanding is at the heart of christian theology. we are all called to partake in the eucharist. whether we term it communion (jennings, 2010) or the mass (leech, 1988); jesus’ actions at the heart of the gospel, in the last supper, are a pilgrim presence: that sees and acknowledges and loves the other without question. it is a love that breaks bread and shares with judas. it is a love that defies death, breaks through all social boundaries, and brings heaven and earth together. such love does not need sales agents; just witnesses – pilgrim witnesses of god’s love. that is how christianity first spread, how it continues to spread, and how it continues to serve the poor, the lost, the oppressed, and the marginalised. as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; world without end. we wonder sometimes whether this fundamental ‘being with’ and breaking bread together can get lost in the pioneer mantra of taking the land. a suggestion for the way forward – pilgrim not pioneer we have sought to show that a search for language and terminology that rejects a narrative around territory, exploitation, power and subjugation is very important if the underlying assumptions inherent in pioneering language are going to be addressed. we propose the metaphor of pilgrim over pioneer. where pioneering has difficult engagements with mission, imperialism, and domination of culture, we suggest adopting stroope’s call towards “pilgrim witness” (stroope, 2017:355). this is not simply as a resolution to the issues named above; but as a liberation of the imago dei in us all. it is only by laying aside the binary understandings of the world that one can fully engage with each individual and community, wholly and holistically. current conversation surrounding pioneer ministry, with inherent cultural imperialism and dominant e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 20 narratives are thus limited by their binary foundation. pilgrim witness potentially allows an engagement with communities as they are; building on the lessons of postcolonial missiology. sanneh is correct, translating the message is key (sanneh, 1989). it’s our understanding that christians are not primarily invited to be pioneers but to be “aliens and exiles” (nrsv) or “strangers and pilgrims” (kjv). what would it look like to see the christian missionary minister in the western context not as a pioneer, but as a stranger and pilgrim? a pilgrim has a very different relationship to the land and to the indigenous people than a pioneer. a pilgrim does not come to prepare for domination, but rather to discover what god is already doing. dutch missiologist stefan pass believes that the use of the terms “aliens and exiles” in 1 peter 2 means that christians are “different” and “without power” (2019:169). he argues that a ‘pilgrim’ denotes a positive meaning of being a stranger, it is a rediscovery of true christian identity, and it is a “clear warning against all missionary dreams of ‘culture change’ and ‘church growth’” (2019:170). we acknowledge that ‘pilgrim’ is itself not without problems and was also used in the context of north american occupation of indigenous lands. in its christian usage, however, it is a chance to see mission as a journey – where god is met in the stranger on the way and at work in already-holy lands to which one travels. it is language that reminds us of its potential misuse, but which offers us a different way – to travel lightly. we suggest this shift from “pioneer” to “pilgrim” may be a powerful contribution to this ongoing debate. references mission-shaped church: church planting and fresh expressions of church in a changing context. 2004. mission and public affairs. london: church house publishing. aldous, b. 2021. ‘liturgy emerges from a wound’ initial observations of developing ecclesial life from an ethnographic study of the community supper at st peters, mowbray, cape town international review of mission 110(1). aldous, b. & moynagh, m. 2021. a mission methodology: learning from “fresh expressions of church,” and the “loving-first cycle” through a case study from cape town mission studies 38(2). aldous, b. 2019. towards an assessment of fresh expressions of church in acsa (the anglican church of southern africa) through an ethnographic study of the community supper at st peter’s church in mowbray, cape town. unpublished phd thesis submitted to the university of stellenbosch, october 2019. ben aldous—problems with “pioneering” mission 21 althaus-reid, m. 2000. indecent theology: theological perversions in sex, gender and politics. london: routledge. baer-henney, s. 2017. ‘vier wünsche. was pionieren in der kirche fehlt’ in herrmann, m. bils, s. & aus der au, c. (eds.) vom wandern und wundern. fremdsein und prophetische ungeduld in der kirche. würzburg: echter verlag, 141–158. baer-henney, s. 2015. fresh x–live erlebt. wie kirche auch sein kann. gießen: brunnen verlag. baker, j. & ross, c. 2014. the pioneer gift: explorations in mission. norwich: canterbury press. baker, j. & ross, c. 2015. the pioneering spirituality: resources for reflection and prayer. norwich: canterbury press. bils, s. 2015. ‘mind the gap: the relevance of contextualization for the training course fresh x-der kurs by kirche2’ unpublished dmin thesis, portland: george fox university. boesak, a. 1977. farewell to innocence: a socio-ethical study on black theology and power. maryknoll: orbis books. charles, mark, and soong-chan rah. 2019. unsettling truths: the ongoing, dehumanizing legacy of the doctrine of discovery. downers grove: ivp. croft, steven j. (ed) 2009. mission-shaped questions: defining issues for today’s church. london: church house publishing. ellis, c. 2008. ‘autoethnography’ in given, l. (ed) the sage encyclopaedia of qualitative research methods. london: sage. ellis, c. & bochner, a. 2003. ‘autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity: researcher as subject” in collecting and interpreting qualitative materials (2nd edition), denzin, n. & lincoln, y. (eds) thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. gorringe, t. 2004. furthering humanity: a theology of culture. aldershot: ashgate. gutiérrez, g. 1988. a theology of liberation: history, politics, and salvation. maryknoll: orbis books. jennings, w. j. 2020. after whiteness: an education in belonging. grand rapids: eerdmans publishing. jennings, w. j. 2010 the christian imagination: theology and the origins of race. new haven: yale university press. koll, j. 2012. ‘fresh expressions?! pastoraltheologische einsichten beim blick über den kanal’ in: r. sommer, u. wagner-rau (ed.): schwellenkunde. einsichten und aussichten für den pfarrberuf im 21. jahrhundert. stuttgart: kohlhammer, 219–236. larner, l. 2016. catching the wind: exploring missio dei in context. anvil 32(1). https://churchmissionsociety.org/resources/catching-wind-exploring-missio-deicontext-luke-larner-anvil-vol-32-issue-1/. lee, j. y. 1995. marginality: the key to multicultural theology. minneapolis: fortress press. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 22 leech, k. 1988. struggle in babylon: racism in the cities and churches of britain. london: sheldon. male, d. 2016. how to pioneer: even if you haven’t a clue. london: church house publishing. o’brien, s. 2013. the construction of a ‘bitter hedge’: narrative, nationalism, and the construction of afrikaner identity in the voortrekker monument. crossroads: an interdisciplinary journal for the study of history, philosophy, religion and classics 6(2). paas, s. 2019. pilgrims and priests: christian mission in a post-christian society. london: scm press. reddie, a. 2018. now you see me, now you don’t: subjectivity, blackness, and difference in practical theology in britain post brexit. practical theology 11(1). sanneh, l. 1989. translating the message: the missionary impact on culture. maryknoll: orbis books. seelinger, w. 1973. western theology. (1st ed) houston: pioneer ventures. schleifenbaum, a. 2021. kirche als akteurin der zivilgesellschaft: eine zivilgesellschaftliche kirchentheorie dargestellt an der gemeinwesendiakonie und den fresh expressions of church. göttingen: vandenhoeck & ruprecht. stroope, m. w. 2017. transcending mission: the eclipse of a modern tradition. downers grove: ivp. sugirtharajah, r. s. 2003. postcolonial reconfigurations: an alternative way of reading the bible and doing theology. london: scm press. vellem, v. 2017. un-thinking the west: the spirit of doing black theology of liberation in decolonial times. hts teologiese studies/theological studies 73(3). walton, h. 2019. what is autoethnography? and why does it matter for theological reflection? anvil 36(1). young, i. 1988. ‘five faces of oppression’ the philosophical forum, 19(4). west, c. 2020. cornell west on cnn with anderson cooper 360° ‒ america as a failed social experiment viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z07wjx4c-ps. _hlk95485040 _hlk96334497 _hlk91151276 _hlk99228587 _hlk92923612 _hlk92923636 _hlk72870314 sample _hlk102057148 _hlk102058336 _hlk102058373 editorial nigel rooms problems with “pioneering” mission: reflections on the term “pioneer” from germany, south africa and the uk setting god’s pioneers free? the need to release lay pioneers from the church of england’s narrative of resourcing and equipping james butler discipleship, mentorship and training which empowers african women for ministry in the diaspora naar m’fundisi-holloway communal maturation and missional discipleship: a congregational study nick ladd joyful disciples: a study of a missing link in considering spiritual disciplines and corporate missional habits mike harrison we want the good life now: insights from lived religion for a whole person and communal approach to salvation in the twenty-first century dejan aždajić book reviews kwiyani, harvey. 2020. multicultural kingdom: ethnic diversity, mission and the church. london: scm press. reviewed by sabrina müller roxburgh, alan j. 2021. joining god in the great unraveling: where we are & what i’ve learned. eugene, oregon: cascade books. reviewed by steen olson susan lucas (ed.). 2020. god’s church in the world: the gift of catholic mission. norwich: canterbury press. reviewed by luke larner olsen, steen, 2020. jacob’s ladder: missional church in the 1970s. st. marys, australia: sa & rl olsen. reviewed by patrick r. keifert 23 setting god’s pioneers free? the need to release lay pioneers from the church of england’s narrative of resourcing and equipping james butler assistant coordinator and lecturer of the ma programme at church mission society, oxford and post-doctoral researcher at the university of roehampton. email: james.butler@churchmissionsociety.org abstract this paper argues that the reason that the church of england has struggled to relate to lay pioneering is because its primary mode of engagement of resourcing and equipping is out of step with the realities of lay pioneering. it argues that despite numerous recommendations to release the laity in mission and ministry, when it happened through grassroots communities which became known as ‘fresh expressions’, the church of england was unable to recognize it. by exploring both the “organizational story” and the “grassroots story”, this paper demonstrates that the problem is the church of england’s reflex to view everything through a lens of resourcing and equipping. this lens means all problems are framed as deficit, in this case of the laity, which are e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 24 remedied through the resources of the church. the paper reveals that this lens causes it to miss the gifts and challenges of lay pioneering, and makes it unable to engage in the mutual relationships called for in the report “setting god’s people free” (archbishops council, 2017). the paper calls for a deeper engagement by the church of england with grassroots stories of lay pioneers and to allow the narrative of resourcing and equipping to be interrupted. it suggests that attentive listening to lay pioneers and their stories can lead to more mutual and reciprocal engagement and as a result enrich the church of england and other denominations. keywords: lay pioneering; setting god’s people free; resourcing and equipping; laity; mutuality introduction at the heart of this paper is a question about lay pioneering. for all the evidence that pioneer ministry is a lay movement and a rich site of mission and ministry, why is it that lay pioneering is the poor relation to ordained pioneering? and why has it been so difficult for the church of england (cofe) to embrace lay pioneering as it has emerged? the cofe website defines pioneers as those who are able to see a new future, and have the skills and gifts needed to make it a reality now. pioneers connect with people outside of church, creating new ways of doing church together in their community. pioneers are leaders of innovation, with a gift for seeing what god is doing and responding creatively to it. (“vocations to pioneer ministry”, 2021) in this paper i argue that the lens through which the cofe has viewed lay pioneering is problematic. i will name this lens as the ‘equipping and resourcing lens’ and describe how the cofe has a tendency to name the problem as deficit and to see the solution as resourcing and training. i will argue that the cofe needs to return to its earlier instincts in mission shaped church, to embrace this as a lay movement which it has hoped to initiate for many years and adopt a more reciprocal pattern of learning and ministry. to do this i will take a hermeneutical approach comparing and reflecting on a number of cofe documents and reports on the laity and pioneering. james butler—setting god’s pioneers free? 25 two stories of fresh expressions a discussion of lay pioneering in the cofe must include the mission shaped church report and fresh expressions. when i teach about fresh expressions i tell two stories. the first is one about the mission shaped church report (cray, 2004), about how it encouraged a growth in these fresh expressions of church, of dioceses encouraging and resourcing these fresh expressions, of the designation of ordained pioneers, and the strategic development fund (sdf). the second story is my story, arriving at university in the year 2000 and meeting a whole group of people who were connecting with the 24-7 prayer movement (greig, 2003) asking what faith meant to our fellow students with little interest in church, and dreaming about small communities who gathered to pray and engaged the wider community through mission and social action. it was a time of seeing similar christian communities appearing in different places. we were excited when we discovered that the cofe had taken notice and wanted to provide a space for such communities where it could learn from them and be renewed by them. one story is told from the perspective of the ecclesial organization, the other from the grassroots. these stories are completely interrelated, but they are two distinctive views on the same story. steve taylor (2019) and sabrina müller (2019a; 2019b) have both engaged in qualitative research around fresh expressions and pioneering and have noticed similar trends. taylor distinguishes between “first expressions” which are “defined as initial experiments in ecclesial innovation”, whereas “fresh expressions” describes “an organisational initiative” (taylor, 2019: 4–5). müller describes the way in which movements like fresh expressions have a relational and dialogical ecclesiology which can seem in contradiction with organizational definitions of church. they certainly offer a critique of institutional church and yet by valuing context and tradition try to find a place within the church, the “mixed economy” (müller, 2019a: 142). müller and taylor will be helpful conversation partners through this exploration of lay pioneering. by keeping these two stories, the grassroots story and the organizational story, in mind i will explore the development of lay pioneering in the cofe and use it to identify some of the possible reasons why the relationship between lay pioneering and the cofe has not been straightforward. the words “grassroots” and “organizational” have been carefully chosen to avoid the unhelpful connotations associated with the language of institutional. following the practical theologian and ecclesiologist clare watkins i see the use of centre and edges within the fresh expressions literature as referring to ecclesial structures and would e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 26 distinguish that from a more “edgeless” ecclesiology seen and experienced in practice (watkins, 2020: 147–50). in search of the laity the kingdom calling report identifies “the idea that the renewal of the church for mission” as hinging on “enabling the fuller participation of the laity became widespread in the decades following the second world war” (faith and order commission, 2020: 4). the report towards the conversion of england (commission on evangelism, 1945) names this clearly, calling for the laity to be recognized as the priesthood in the world, and trained appropriately. similar questions about the recognition of the laity were raised by the report all are called (board of education, 1985) and the formation for ministry in a learning church report (archbishops council, 2003) called for the training of the laity. 60 years of reports recommending that the laity be recognized and release seemingly made little difference. the mission shaped church report offered a different perspective; rather than the need to mobilize the laity, it identified a largely lay movement. mission shaped church mission shaped church (cray, 2004) was an initiative of rowan williams, who had just become archbishop of canterbury. taylor, drawing out themes from his interview with rowan williams, describes how fresh expressions came out of rowan williams’ attentiveness to what was going on. he saw how these emerging groups and communities were developing and wanted to see how they could help shape the church more widely. flowing from a conviction that the church should pay attention to the edges and is renewed from the edges, fresh expressions was seen as a way that the life of the edges could be brought together with the “inherited” church. as taylor states, there is no evidence of [fresh expressions] being rooted in concern about the decline of the church, a desire for managerialism and restructuring or a search for relevance. rather, by deciding to be located ‘in the middle of things’, in the life of churches, and by a practice of discernment which ‘watches’ ecclesial life, an innovation has taken shape. (taylor 2019: 101) james butler—setting god’s pioneers free? 27 “fresh expressions” was the church paying attention to the grassroots story and seeking to discern god’s mission, not an organization responding to organizational pressures. mission shaped church recognized twelve different emerging expressions of church. as the report notes, many of these were lay led, and would continue to need to be lay led. if the missionary challenge we face is to be met, many new initiatives will be lay led. they are also as likely to have emerged unplanned through local discernment of the mission of god, as to have been meticulously planned in advance. this raises new challenges for the discernment, training, recognition and authorization of leaders. (cray, 2004: 135) the church of england should develop procedures that provisionally acknowledge the work and gifting of existing and future lay leaders in church plants and other expressions of church. a pattern should develop that provides training as part of a process of discernment forauthorization, rather than training subsequent to discernment, or the removal of existing leaders for training elsewhere. (cray, 2004: 147) the report identified the challenges this emerging pattern of lay leadership brought to the traditional patterns of training and asked how this emerging leadership could be recognised and trained without disrupting what was emerging. it clearly locates this in a theology of the missio dei, of discerning and responding to god’s mission in the world. the church army’s research into fresh expressions, the day of small things (lings, 2016), brought quantitative evidence of continuing lay leadership in fresh expressions and pioneering. it found that about half of fresh expressions were led by lay leaders, 67% of those lay leaders were women and about 40% were voluntary (lings, 2016: 175). this demonstrated a very different pattern of leadership, one which some found threatening and some celebrated. in a church which had previously lamented the lack of lay participation and over sixty years had set targets to increase it, this surge in lay participation and leadership seemed a great opportunity. this grassroots lay movement was exactly the kind of thing that the cofe had been hoping to initiate. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 28 setting god’s people free it is therefore somewhat surprising that the next big report focused on lay mobilisation, setting god’s people free (2017), has no reference to mission shaped church and only fleeting references to fresh expressions as some of the things lay people are involved in. it fails to recognise fresh expressions as a predominantly lay movement. setting god’s people free has a focus on liberating the laity for fruitful ministry in both church-based ministry and ‘in work and school, in gym and shop, in field and factory, monday to saturday’ (archbishops council 2017, 1). through the exploration of these themes, the report identifies critical shifts in culture and practice which are needed to enable this. 1. until, together, ordained and lay, we form and equip lay people to follow jesus confidently in every sphere of life in ways that demonstrate the gospel we will never set god’s people free to evangelise the nation. 2. until laity and clergy are convinced, based on their baptismal mutuality, that they are equal in worth and status, complementary in gifting and vocation, mutually accountable in discipleship, and equal partners in mission, we will never form christian communities that can evangelise the nation. (archbishops council 2017: 2) in these two critical shifts there is an emphasis on mutuality, on equal worth, and complementary gifting and calling between laity and clergy. in this brief overview of some of the key documents around the laity from the cofe over the previous 80 years, it is possible to hear the two stories speaking but not necessarily recognizing each other. many of these reports begin with the organizational story and a concern for the reversal of church decline. mission shaped church is, at least in its origins, a recognition and articulation of what is happening in the grassroots. so how does this idea of two narratives help us to explore the understanding of laity in the cofe? setting god’s people free from whom? setting god’s people free identifies two key cultural shifts: lay and ordained together equipping lay people, and mutuality and partnership of clergy and laity. while there are some recommendations toward mutuality, the dominant language of the report is about resourcing, equipping, enabling and empowering. this is the organizational story; mobilizing in response to the threat of decline. equipping and resourcing becomes the key lens through which everything is read. this may seem reasonable, and indeed there is an important role for the james butler—setting god’s pioneers free? 29 cofe in equipping, resourcing and training, but inherent in this language is the assumption that learning and resources flow from the organizational centre to the edges. calls for mutuality and partnership become lost.1 to help to illustrate this i will turn to a few examples. the report offers a whole series of ‘stories that illustrate the shifts that are needed’ (archbishops council, 2017: 5). the first story shared, and one which seems to be regularly repeated, quotes a teacher who says, “i teach sunday school 45 minutes a week and they haul me up to the front of the church to pray for me. i teach in a school 45 hours a week and the church has never prayed for me” (archbishops council, 2017: 5). because of the training and equipping lens, stories like this are interpreted as lay people lacking confidence to live out their faith in their daily jobs. the report responds that “the church of england must urgently find ways to ‘liberate’ the laity to become confident disciples in the whole of life”. but that is only one way to read this story, and perhaps not the most obvious. a better reading might well be that the teacher already knows the significance of their work, they are just highlighting that the church does not seem to. rather than lacking self-confidence this teacher is highlighting that their teaching does not matter to the church. the turn to resourcing and equipping would therefore be misplaced and the challenge effectively ignored. the report itself notes that “lay leaders say they struggle with a perceived lack of understanding within the church about their vocation and calling” (archbishops council, 2017: 15), but turns this into the need for the laity to understand their own calling. it laments how lay people lack confidence and “have never been given a vision for their role in wider society” (archbishops council, 2017: 12). “lay people don’t just need theological resources to grasp the range of ways they can be fruitful for christ in the world, they need the theological imagination to see the ways they already have been” (archbishops council, 2017: 14). rather than value what is happening and recognizing the challenge from the laity, the report continually identifies deficit in the laity and the need for the cofe to provide the resources to overcome that. this emphasis on training and equipping draws the focus away from mutuality and towards an understanding of the laity as passive and unaware of their calling. this may be true for some, but it is also clear from the stories that the report itself tells that there are a whole range of lay people who have a 1. i am grateful to tricia frith, an ma student with us at cms, for drawing my attention to the lack of attention paid to baptismal mutuality in the resources which have come from the report. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 30 good sense of their vocation but feel undervalued and unseen by the church. this subtle shift from mutuality to resourcing can be seen in the report where it lists the support lay people would like to have; one of the items is “connections to others to learn from and share with”. however, once this is explored in more detail a few pages later it becomes “easy access to, and signposting of the best available tools, resources, approaches, case studies, stories and experts to inspire and support people in their whole life discipleship and vocational journey” (archbishops council, 2017: 21). what was requested was relational spaces of mutual learning, and yet this was translated into signposting of resources; the “experts” who have the wisdom to release these unconfident and oblivious lay people. framing the problem this way means that the call to mutuality is lost. laity continue to be seen as the ones who need training, and clergy as the ones who train. this leads to my biggest question about the report, what or whom do lay people need to be set free from? in this paper i am suggesting that there is a need to be set free from purely an organizational story and to bring the richness of the grassroots story fully into the dialogue. the problem of training and the need for mutuality the biggest problem with the kind of training being suggested is that it does not seem to work. setting god’s people free identifies this itself. talking about resources it states, “available resources are thin. take-up is also low, reflecting the fact most have never been given a vision for their role in wider society” (archbishops council, 2017: 12). it repeats a similar claim later, noting a “low awareness of the resources and networks that exist” and that take-up of these resources is low because “few have been given a vision for whole-life discipleship” (archbishops council, 2017: 12). the report identifies that the current resourcing approach is not working. but it blames this on lay people claiming that they have no vision for their christian life, which is asserted with zero evidence. david heywood’s kingdom learning (2017) was released the same year as the report and, as heywood notes in the introduction, has a very similar diagnosis. he wants to see “missionary disciples” equipped and released. he emphasises how most learning takes place informally in the midst of life, builds on past experience, happens in relational ways, and often in social spaces (2017: 49–57). he advocates for reflective and relational learning, and yet when it comes to expressing how this is done he turns to programmes of learning with james butler—setting god’s pioneers free? 31 learning outcomes, and sees the clergy or church leader as the one who shapes the learning and knows best what people need (heywood, 2017: 129–44). this is the organizational story, where resourcing comes from the centre and sees a deficit which needs to be resourced. mission shaped church seemed to take a different approach, recognizing a movement of lay leadership within fresh expressions. however, once recognized, the cofe begins to shape it through this organizational lens. the mission shaped ministry course was seen as the flagship training designed by the fresh expressions team, and yet the day of small things report found that only 6.6% of leaders of fresh expressions had done the course (lings, 2016: 165) and that training had not had a big impact on what had occurred. another piece of research carried out by the church army, this time focusing particularly on pioneering in the portsmouth diocese, looked at a different training programme. the diocese ran “how to pioneer” workshops. what they found was that the training did not attract the people it was aimed at. though they were originally aimed at lay people exploring pioneer vocations, many attenders were either clergy or lay representatives of congregations looking to do pioneer ministry themselves (church army’s research unit, 2021: 30). this programmatic approach to releasing lay pioneers did not connect with those lay pioneers it was aimed at. the report notes comments from clergy saying it had been helpful for their congregations moving them from a more passive to active engagement in the church. while this is helpful, the clergy’s perspective perpetuates the organizational story. there is no clear lay voice included in the evaluation. this issue of training not connecting with those who have a particular calling to pioneering or fresh expression has been recognized by the cofe team supporting pioneers. they have developed a new programme called greenhouse which has a much more relational and community approach. it has based the training around teams coming together to reflect and learn from each other. it uses the “loving-first” journey of fresh expressions, which i discuss below as an example of the two stories coming together. it is described as a just-in-time model of learning which uses “the godsend [phone] app, so that teams prayerfully discover what they need to know, when they need it, to move to the next stage of the journey” (donaldson, 2021: 2). it is in the early stages but is clearly recognizing some of the problems of resourcing from the centre and trying to take a more responsive approach. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 32 lay pioneering while lay pioneering has been a significant movement since before the mission shaped church report in 2004, it is surprising how little research has been done into lay pioneering, and how little theological work has been done articulating lay pioneering. much that has been written and explored continues to reinforce the organizational narrative. the guidelines for the development of lay ministry in fresh expressions of church pick up the recommendations from mission shaped church around authorization, training and support (archbishops council, 2007). of the eight recommendations, seven relate to training and one relates to authorization. the focus is on the potential and the initiation of pioneering and fresh expressions, rather than on the fact that there is already a large number of lay people involved in pioneering and fresh expressions. the biggest piece of research done by the cofe with a particular focus on lay ministry is in the mixed ecologist report. it is particularly interested in lay ministry as something which is released by mixed ecology ministers. the research therefore focusses on the experience of ministers as they look to release lay people into lay pioneering. it retains an emphasis on empowerment of lay people by clergy and it notes that “these findings identified the importance of clergy as advocates and enablers, pointing lay leaders towards appropriate training and networks” (perrin and olsworth-peter, 2021: 32). once again, the interest is in the organizational story – how these lay people were resourced and equipped.2 in my own research into small missional communities many lay pioneers did not experience this encouragement and equipping; instead, they faced many barriers and challenges from their churches and leaders who dismissed the need and failed to recognise the lay pioneer’s calling (butler, 2017). jonny baker, a leading voice in supporting pioneering, set up the pioneer leadership training at the church mission society; he describes this different perspective – pioneers have the “gift of not fitting in” and are “dreamers who do” (baker, 2014: 1). he describes pioneering as a difficult gift, one that can feel more like a curse at times. he identifies how the church struggles to understand pioneers and prefers to recognize pioneering when it looks and feels most like church as 2. since this paper was peer reviewed a report has been released by the centre for church multiplication (bruce & brooks, 2022), interviewing twenty “lay planters” about their experience of church planting. it is good to see further examples of the close attention to lay people advocated in this paper and i will engage with it further in future work. james butler—setting god’s pioneers free? 33 it is already experienced. he describes how “there is an invisible gravitational pull that is always seeking to pull pioneers back into business as usual” (baker, 2014: 8). in this view the organizational story is problematic and undermines the gift brought by pioneers, trying to shape them into the organization’s mould. baker highlights the need for leadership as dissent, critiquing the structures and proposing alternatives. in the organizational story, business as usual is preferable to dealing with people who are going to critique and challenge, but baker identifies the grassroots challenge as vital to helping the church fulfil its mission. he concludes: newness that has depth is found by driving to the heart of the tradition and reclaiming it over and against itself, by refounding, and not by rubbishing it and leaving it. in the light of these anthropological insights perhaps it is not surprising that the church has found that this gift is as difficult as it is essential (baker, 2014: 11). the relationship between pioneers and organizational structures of the church is unlikely to be an easy one, and yet it is vital. the problem with the way the church focuses on this organizational story and reads pioneering through the lens of resourcing and equipping is that it closes itself off from receiving the gift and wisdom of pioneers and their communities. there is almost nothing in the cofe’s reflections on lay pioneers, nor on lay ministry more generally, of what might be received from lay people, what lay pioneers might bring as part of their gifting and how the space can continue to be made for that within the organizational story. space within the organization, according to taylor’s reading of fresh expressions, is exactly what rowan williams had in mind when he talked about the church being renewed from the edges. taylor describes how williams saw a need for mutuality in relationships. the edge needs the church and the church needs the edge. the organizational story allows the grassroots to participate in something bigger than their own programme, and the grassroots help the church to be attentive to what god is doing (taylor, 2019: 103). taylor describes fresh expressions as “organisational innovation’ which is designed to draw the whole church into this vision” (taylor, 2019: 117). this describes an organization where there is mutual and reciprocal learning between the organizational story and the grassroots story. the church learns from the grassroots practice, and is able to make space for, support and encourage such practice in a way in which both become mutually enriched. paying attention to pioneering, as williams highlights, could contribute to the cofe discerning god’s mission and seeking e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 34 to participate. but as i have demonstrated, in the subsequent reflection on lay pioneering and on lay ministry in general this organizational story has dominated, the flow is one way, opportunities to be attentive to what god is doing are missed and this pioneer gift of dissent, as baker puts it, has become lost and no longer valued. even more problematically the lens of resourcing and equipping which accompanies the organizational story means that it becomes increasingly difficult to value lay pioneering. the gifts that are present get lost, and a narrative of lay deficit and organizational empowerment become the norm. the rich interplay between organization and grassroots is missing, and pioneers either need to be drawn into the organizational story or leave entirely to thrive. control and making space in his excellent critical survey of church planting, stefan paas notes two types of control which denominations exert on church plants. control through the horizontal planning of the organization and control through the vertical planning of clear ecclesiological or confessional outcomes (paas, 2016: 201–2). he describes how both of these kinds of control stifle church planting. horizontal planning turns to models and patterns, it wants universal principles and risks closing people off from what god is teaching them in the midst of practice. vertical planning asserts that the new community must fit within the confessional tradition, limiting what can emerge. as paas states, ‘horizonal planning makes the mistake of thinking that renewal can be imported from the outside, vertical planning errs seriously in thinking that renewal means to copy the past’ (paas, 2016: 212). we can see elements of these two types of planning appearing in the organizational story, planning based on the managerial and confessional wisdom at the organizational centre, and missing the learning from the grassroots and the opportunities to discern the missio dei. paas turns to innovation as a way the two stories can be brought together and identifies three biotypes of renewal: free havens, which provide a countercultural space far from the centre living out radical solutions; laboratories, which create spaces for a diverse group of people to come together to solve shared problems; and incubators, where an organization makes a space for innovation within its own structures (paas, 2016: 224–39). paas identifies fresh expressions as an incubator, where the cofe has intentionally made space for innovation which can enable renewal within the organization as a whole. again, the richness comes in the space to see what is emerging, to learn from it and respond to it. this is definitely not an abandonment of tradition but faithful james butler—setting god’s pioneers free? 35 improvisation; confessions are seen as authority examples of faithful witness to jesus christ, providing a pattern rather than a “once and for all definition” (paas, 2016: 212). müller in her reflections on church development highlights the importance of mission, relationality and dialogue. she notes that while these emerging church groups such as fresh expressions are a contra-motion and critique of organizational church, the organization also offers stability and continuity to the emerging community (müller, 2019a: 142). but importantly this connection is through relational dialogue rather than more formal structures. within the framework of fresh expressions of church, sustainable church development has to be grounded in tradition and challenged by context. the potential of this approach for church development theories is exactly this fruitful interplay of sound theological anchorage and the actual situation of people, networks, and neighbourhoods. (müller, 2019b: 255) this interplay between the tradition and context called for by müller is closely related to the interplay between the organizational and grassroots stories. the church holds the organizational and confessional tradition, and the grassroots is attentive and responsive to life at the edges. hopefully it has become clear that what i am arguing for in relation to lay pioneering is to move away from a purely organizational story to reengage with what is at the heart of the vision for mission shaped church, a mutually enriching relationship, an interplay between the grassroots story and the organizational story, and a shift away from the singular lens of training and resourcing. reversing the flow what we have been observing in these reports around pioneering is a tendency for the organizational story to view lay people through a lens of deficit and needing to be equipped and trained by the organization. al barrett, in his reflections on the churches relationship to outer urban estates, identifies an ecclesial turn in political theology which positions the “church’s own ‘performance’ as the ‘true’ site of meaning-making, and a participatory politics which overcomes wider society’s divisions of race and class, among others” (barrett, 2018: 85). what he identifies in his case studies is an “outward flow” of resources from the church which reinforces power and privilege leaving them unchallenged. there e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 36 is a “flow which while it originates in god, is directed quite clearly through the church and out into the world” (barrett, 2018: 87). this assumption that resources flow from the centre to the those lacking resources on the edges is a powerful one which prohibits the organization from seeing the gifts, wisdom and resources present at the grassroots, and perhaps more importantly, the challenge to its vision which comes from the grassroots. barrett reveals how this flow privileges the white middle class. as willie james jennings argues, western theological education, and indeed western education as a whole, is about producing self-sufficient white men. education is used as a means to maintain homogeneity and hegemony; the self-sufficient, white man making the world in his image (jennings, 2020: 7). what barrett and jennings both call for is relationality and mutuality. for barrett it is a radical receptivity, engaging relationally and dialogically with those on the edges, being prepared to receive the unexpected and perhaps unwelcome gifts which bring interruptions and an awakening to the work of the god in their midst. for jennings the model is jesus and the crowd, a diverse group of people who would never otherwise be together, listening to jesus. the crowd is not a means to an end, but “the beginning of a joining that was intended to do deep pedagogical work” (jennings, 2020: 13). the logic of flow from the centre to the edges, the domination of the organization story over the grassroots story needs to be interrupted and re-formed. in light of these analyses, it is not surprising that the recommendations in setting god’s people free were reinterpreted through the lens of resourcing and equipping, rather than embracing an invitation to mutuality and reciprocity – a more “edgeless” ecclesiology which seeks to discern the missio dei across the church. examples of mutuality and reciprocity the question is, can these mutual models really develop? there are indications of mutual learning within fresh expressions. in all of the accounts of fresh expressions listening has been absolutely at the heart. when the fresh expressions team was first developed, steven croft the team leader spent a year travelling around the country listening to practitioners (taylor, 2019: 112). listening was a common theme across different emerging communities (müller, 2019a: 140). and listening was picked up by fresh expressions as the first step in the “loving first journey”. this model came straight out of the observations of the fresh expressions team. it begins with listening, moves to loving and serving, then building community, exploring discipleship and then james butler—setting god’s pioneers free? 37 church taking shape, before the process can begin again in the next community (moynagh, 2012: 208). i know from my own engagement with lay pioneers and leaders of fresh expressions that this model resonates with their experience. some only found this model after they were well on the way to developing a fresh expression and found that it matched what they did. for others it was a helpful starting point and fruitful guide through setting up a fresh expression. it is a great example of where attentiveness to lived practice has been brought into the service of the wider movement and the organization. of course, all models come with risks and can be unhelpful when imposed from above, but for many, this model has been affirming and resourcing. the greenhouse programme discussed above draws heavily on the listening first journey and is a good example of how training can be more mutual and reciprocal, focusing on teams who lead fresh expressions rather than individuals, and responding to their needs and context. this paper is part of a qualitative research project into lay pioneering.3 early findings from focus groups with lay pioneers suggest that where reciprocal and mutual work is present it is often at a local level and enabled by strong relationships. this is particularly clear in some of the methodist lay pioneers participating in the project. while they highlight that their experience is not necessarily true for all lay pioneers in the methodist church, they shared about the freedom and trust which is given them in their local district and circuit. the methodist pioneering pathways (2021) offers a national network of support which it describes as a ‘community of pioneers’ and includes lay and ordained together. it offers some formal training but what was particularly welcomed by participants was the regularly online gatherings to share their experience and learn from each other. where it was working well they noted how their local circuit and district had made space for them. they were trusted to get on with their pioneering and not required to contribute to sunday church services. they had “good gatekeepers”, line managers and clergy, who understood what they were doing, supported them, and were able to protect them from some of the institutional pressures. they identified other circuits and districts who were less supportive of their pioneers. their suggestion was that the clergy in those areas be encouraged to attend pioneer gatherings, experience more of what is going on and build better relationships. 3. this research will be carried out in the first half of 2022 with funding from the susanna wesley foundation, part of southlands methodist trust. https://susannawesleyfoundation. org/. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 38 the way forward for lay pioneering? so, how can god’s pioneers be set free? not just free to pursue their own vocation, but to see that vocation in relation to the wider organizational story, and as a gift to it. what i believe is needed is a re-engagement with the grassroots stories of lay pioneering and to enter into these reciprocal and mutual relationships. yes, there is training that can be helpfully offered by the organization, but it needs to move away from this reflex of resourcing and equipping, and turn to a posture of open learning and the attentiveness propose by williams at the beginning of fresh expressions. this is not just a struggle for the cofe. müller’s work (2019a) points to similar struggles in other traditional denominations across europe. these churches need be attentive to what is already happening and to welcome the gifts, challenges and wisdom from the grassroots. they need to embrace a mutual and reciprocal pattern of work and relationship, not simply because this will be a better way of supporting lay pioneers, but because it enables the church as a whole to begin to discern god’s mission together. for me, my next step in this is to engage in a small qualitative research project of listening to the experience of lay pioneers to begin to articulate the gift they bring and the theology embedded in their practice. for church denominations i hope they can find ways of being attentive for the purpose of developing reciprocal relationships, learning and discerning together, rather than simply identifying what needs to be resourced and equipped. references archbishops council. 2003. formation for ministry within a learning church. gs 1496. london: church house publishing. ———. 2007. “encouraging lay pioneer ministry: guidelines for the development of lay ministry in fresh expressions of church.” church of england. https://acpi2017.files. wordpress.com/2018/01/encouraging_lay_pioneer_ministry.pdf. ———. 2017. “setting god’s people free.” gs2056. church of england. baker, jonny. 2014. “the pioneer gift.” in the pioneer gift: explorations in mission, edited by cathy ross and jonny baker. norwich: canterbury press, 1–19. barrett, al. 2018. “interrupting the church’s flow: hearing ‘other’ voices on an outer urban estate.” practical theology 11 (1): 79–92. https://doi.org/10.1080/175607 3x.2017.1416221. james butler—setting god’s pioneers free? 39 board of education. 1985. all are called: towards a theology of the laity. essays from a working party of the general synod board of education. london: cio. bruce, alice, and wendy brooks. 2022. listening to the voice of the lay planters. london: myriad/centre for church multiplication. https://ccx.org.uk/content/listening-lay/ accessed 23 april 2022. butler, james. 2017. exploring the lived theology of small missional communities: uncovering charismatic practices and beliefs to enable sustained engagement in social action. doctoral thesis, durham university. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12849/. church army’s research unit. 2021. pioneering in portsmouth: evaluating the diocese of portsmouth’s pioneer project (2016-2020). sheffield: church army’s research unit. commission on evangelism. 1945. towards the conversion of england: being the report of a commission on evangelism appointed by the archbishops of canterbury and york pursuant to a resolution of the church assembly passed at the summer session 1943. london: the press and publications board of the church assembly. cray, graham. 2004. mission shaped church. london: church house publishing. donaldson, will. 2021. “report on new congregations.” oxford: oxford diocese. https:// d3hgrlq6yacptf.cloudfront.net/61f2fd86f0ee5/content/pages/documents/20211012doc-news-new-congregations-report-v01.pdf accessed 23 april 2022. faith and order commission. 2020. kingdom calling: the vocation, ministry and discipleship of the whole people of god. london: church house publishing. greig, pete. 2003. red moon rising. lake mary, fla: survivor. heywood, david. 2017. kingdom learning. london: scm press. jennings, willie james. 2020. after whiteness: an education in belonging. grand rapids, mi: wm. b. eerdmans publishing company. lings, george. 2016. the day of small things: an analysis of fresh expressions of church in 21 dioceses of the church of england. sheffield: church army’s research unit. “methodist pioneering pathways.” 2021. https://www.methodist.org.uk/our-work/ourwork-in-britain/evangelism-growth/new-places-for-new-people/called-to-pioneer/ methodist-pioneering-pathways/ accessed 23 april 2022. moynagh, michael. 2012. church for every context: an introduction to theology and practice. london: scm press. müller, sabrina. 2019a. “church development from a missional perspective.” mission studies 36 (1): 127–44. ———. 2019b. “fresh expressions of church and the mixed economy: potential and challenges for church development.” international review of mission 108 (2): 241–56. paas, stefan. 2016. church planting in the secular west. grand rapids, mi: wm. b. eerdmans publishing. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 40 perrin, ruth, and ed olsworth-peter. 2021. “the mixed ecologists: experiences of mixed ecology ministry in the church of england.” the living ministry research project. church of england. taylor, steve. 2019. first expressions: innovation and the mission of god. london: scm press. “vocations to pioneer ministry.” 2021. church of england. https://www.churchofengland. org/life-events/vocations/vocations-pioneer-ministry accessed 23 april 2022. watkins, clare. 2020. disclosing church: generating ecclesiology through conversations in practice. london: routledge. _hlk95485040 _hlk96334497 _hlk91151276 _hlk99228587 _hlk92923612 _hlk92923636 _hlk72870314 sample _hlk102057148 _hlk102058336 _hlk102058373 editorial nigel rooms problems with “pioneering” mission: reflections on the term “pioneer” from germany, south africa and the uk setting god’s pioneers free? the need to release lay pioneers from the church of england’s narrative of resourcing and equipping james butler discipleship, mentorship and training which empowers african women for ministry in the diaspora naar m’fundisi-holloway communal maturation and missional discipleship: a congregational study nick ladd joyful disciples: a study of a missing link in considering spiritual disciplines and corporate missional habits mike harrison we want the good life now: insights from lived religion for a whole person and communal approach to salvation in the twenty-first century dejan aždajić book reviews kwiyani, harvey. 2020. multicultural kingdom: ethnic diversity, mission and the church. london: scm press. reviewed by sabrina müller roxburgh, alan j. 2021. joining god in the great unraveling: where we are & what i’ve learned. eugene, oregon: cascade books. reviewed by steen olson susan lucas (ed.). 2020. god’s church in the world: the gift of catholic mission. norwich: canterbury press. reviewed by luke larner olsen, steen, 2020. jacob’s ladder: missional church in the 1970s. st. marys, australia: sa & rl olsen. reviewed by patrick r. keifert ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 1 1 ecclesial futures – 2023 – volume 4 – issue 1 e d i t o r i a l 2023 – volume 4 – issue 1 june 2023 special issue: current missional church perspectives in south korea bokyoung park, seonyi lee this special issue came into being as a result of a conversation with nigel rooms, one of the editors of this journal, during the 15th iams conference in sydney in 2022. in sydney, there were several korean scholars who presented their papers, and many of them were in the christian communities in mission study group track. taken together they showed the strong interest that korean scholars have in missional ecclesiology. seeing such increasing interest on this subject from korean scholars, nigel approached us and enquired whether we, as the leaders of korea iams fellowship, might be willing to edit a special korean edition of ecclesial futures. without any hesitation, we accepted this challenge, hoping that we could contribute to the sharing different voices within the academic discourse which is missional ecclesiology. thus, the collective journey to produce this issue had begun. over the course of this journey, there were also moments of discouragement and disappointment where we might have given up this attempt. going through the processes of writing and translating, as well as the peer-review process, we realized it is not an easy task. but by god’s special encouragement and the work of diligent scholarship, we finally reached the moment of publication. we are thankful to nigel rooms for his persistent encouragement to complete this special issue. it has been about 20 years since missional ecclesiology was introduced into korean missiological discussion, practice and scholarship. after a few years of the initial introductory stage during the early 2000s, korean scholars quickly developed their unique missional ecclesiology from a korean perspective. korean missional ecclesiology was birthed from the realization that the korean church is situated in a very different context from the western world. missional ecclesiology arose in the west from the acute realization that the gospel needs to interact missionally with a highly secularized post-christian culture, korean missional ecclesiology emerged from a totally different situation, especially in its relationship with surrounding cultures. 2 ecclesial futures – 2023 – volume 4 – issue 1 in the pre-christianized culture of modern korean society, korean protestant churches were segregated from their wider society for a variety of reasons. one of them is the theological stronghold of a dualistic worldview that creates such segregation. another reason comes from the contextual factor in which korean churches are located. being a minority in society during the early period of korean christianity, the church had to struggle for its own survival. as a result, a strong sense of christian identity was often identified with a sense of belonging over against the wider majority. furthermore, due to the rapid modernization and urbanization of korea, people often suffered from rootlessness and social dislocation, and the local church was able to provide identity, community and therefore, this same sense of belonging. in developing korean missional ecclesiology, kook-il han has described this unique centripetal and attractional approach in korean churches as the paradigm of “noah’s ark” where the church provides safety from the wider world and which soon became the undergirding paradigm of korean protestant churches. there are positive sides to “noah’s ark”, such as the strong commitment of church members to the local church as well as a strong sense of identity, as we have noted above. in the case of korean christians, the communal sense of belonging was often manifested most clearly in important moments within members’ lives. for example, on occasions of new births, weddings and funerals in the family, the local churches became the main support system of the communal korean lifestyle. when unique contextual factors coincided with more overtly theological approaches, the paradigm of noah’s ark also produced a sense of exclusion as a side effect. for this reason, while the christians in korean churches have strong commitments to their local church, the segregation of faith and lifestyle is apparent. in this situation, korean christianity needs a fresh view of missional ecclesiology that is different from the way in which western churches need a new missional ecclesial approach. understanding the context, missional ecclesiology should be manifested differently according to the situations in which believers live. from the turn of the twenty-first century, while more research on korean missional ecclesiology has developed in academic circles, there was also a booming of the missional church movement in korean protestant churches at a more popular and practice-based level. numerous books on missional churches were produced for local pastors during the last decade in korea. among them are publications by the first generation of scholars of the korean missional movement, including kook-il han, hu-chun lee, hyung-geun choi, dong-kyu choi, seuk-jae jun, byung-bae hwang and others. however, since many of these publications were written in korean; they are not available to international scholars. there are only a few articles published in english, but they are rather scattered in various journals. we believe that this project is one of the first major issues in which korean missional ecclesiology has been dealt 3 ecclesial futures – 2023 – volume 4 – issue 1 with extensively in a single academic journal. we think this is only the beginning, and there will be more publications on korean missional ecclesiology in the future. in this issue, seung-hyun (nathan) chung proposes to reflect on missional ecclesiology starting from the theology of creation. chung carefully investigates the missional church movement in korea during the last two decades. reviewing the current discussion about missio dei in korea and applying the creation theology of jürgen moltmann. chung argues that the missional ecclesiology in korea should include the theology of creation by using the cases of kong3al community and ilbeot church located in gang-hwa island as examples. sung-hyuk nam deals with missional ecclesiology from digital mission discourse. he argues, while online churches are prevalent in korea, there is insufficient understanding of ways to meet the younger generation of non-believers in the metaverse. since online churches generally operate in the analog paradigm, there is a massive gap between the metaverse and the younger generation in the digital paradigm. critical contextualization is still necessary in approaching the metaverse as a digital mission field. nam proposes that korean churches need to understand the metaverse as a space of mission and coexistence. bokyoung park searches for new ways of missional engagement during the time of the covid-19 pandemic and afterwards in korea. she surveyed three congregations as case studies of how local congregations responded to their missional tasks during the pandemic. with some preliminary assessments from these case studies, she suggests three ways of missional engagement through the local congregation in korea, that is, to engage in personal fellowship using narratives, to perform a habitual ethical lifestyle, and to embrace the practice of hospitality. bright myeong-seok lee argues that the decline in social trust in the korean protestant church is a significant social issue that requires attention and action. in his paper, lee examines that one of the factors of decline may be found in the previous dominant method of discipleship training. by using a case study of suwonsung church that demonstrates the effectiveness of its discipleship training and its consequent impact on social trust, lee suggests missional discipleship as a way to overcome church decline. he recommends discipleship which seeks to create a more engaging and inclusive environment that inspires the church to lead and participate in community service. seonyi lee examines the nasom community for mongolian migrants as a model for missional church in korea. analyzing the situation of mongolian migrants in south korea, she reviews the missionary vision and missionary strategies of nasom 4 ecclesial futures – 2023 – volume 4 – issue 1 community and how they are implemented in practice. she argues that nasom community exhibits the missionary potential of the korean church for asia mission. hyeong-kyoon kim explores how korean immigrant churches in aotearoa new zealand can be balanced in their view between missions (plural) and mission (singular). employing interviews and qualitative methodology, kim concludes that missional understanding can be a trigger to interacting between visible belonging as missions and invisible belonging as mission through three missional concepts: the purposed, progressed and experienced aspects of mission itself. he also suggests practical ways that korean churches in aotearoa new zealand can balance missions and mission by following these three missional aspects. an-wei tan argues small missional churches are a helpful alternative in overcoming the problem of the current decline in korean protestant churches – especially the much larger ones. as a bi-vocational minister who started café underwood and ministers with chinese students in korea, tan examines how korean protestant churches faced the new phenomenon of “believing without belonging” and the increase of bi-vocational ministers in general. to respond to this situation, tan argues that the small missional church provides a helpful alternative to the decline of korean protestant churches. in this issue, many of the contributors are emerging scholars, taking their rightful place in the global scholarship of missiology represented in this journal. the korea iams fellowship assisted in editorial help for these articles. as the leaders of korea iams fellowship, we are thankful to god that we were able to give them an opportunity to widen their scholarly opportunities through this assistance. moreover, in this issue, we tried to provide concrete cases of local churches with an analytical view of korean missional ecclesiology so that these articles showcase how korean missional ecclesiology has been implemented in local churches. in korean protestantism, the vitality of the local churches and the strong commitment of christians to their churches are notably famous. for this reason, most of the writings are field-oriented approaches, and we have avoided being purely theoretical in our discussion of missional ecclesiology. we hope that this will give readers more opportunities to catch a glimpse of the korean missional church movement. two small editorial notes need to be made. the first concern is that throughout the issue, the word “korea” is meant to be limited to south korea. all articles deal with the situation of south korean churches. the second is that the whole study deals with protestant churches in korea. therefore, “korean churches” refers to the protestant churches in this issue. it is also important to note that some of writings have 5 ecclesial futures – 2023 – volume 4 – issue 1 already been published in korean and have been translated, peer reviewed and revised to be available to english-language international scholarship. in closing, we want to acknowledge that the last twenty years of struggle by korean missiologists to formulate a missional ecclesiology fitting the korean soil has resulted in a strong missional church movement in korea. this issue is a small achievement in the larger journey of constructing a contextualization of missional ecclesiology that fits the korean context. in this issue, it is true that the missional church movement has crossed over various denominations in korea, including methodists as well as holiness church traditions. all contributors to this issue come from protestant churches and mainly from the presbyterian denomination. we hope that academic inquiries related to missional ecclesiology as well as the ministerial formation of missional ecclesiology continue to develop in the korean context as well as to communicate with the rest of the world. a note of thanks from the co-editor, nigel rooms it has been a joy to see this project come to birth, especially the growth in confidence that the contributors have achieved in working and publishing in english, the (hegemonic) need for which, i recognize, does unhelpfully, for emerging scholars from places like korea, restrict their reach and development. bokyoung and seonyi deserve a big round of applause from our international readers for keeping going when things were, understandably difficult. i want to personally thank them here for their hard and committed work to bring this issue into being. the issue as a whole, i trust, stands as an important contribution to missional ecclesiology from our sisters and brothers in south korean churches and their diaspora. about the authors bokyoung park teaches missiology at the presbyterian university and theological seminary in seoul, korea. she is also serving as president of the international association for mission studies (iams) from 2022 to 2026, and she is the founding president of korea iams fellowship. parkbokyoung718@gmail.com seonyi lee teaches missiology at honam theological university and seminary in gwangju, korea. she serves as an academic dean of korea iams fellowship as well as the convener of gender in mission group in iams. she is also the editor-in-chief of theology of mission, the academic journal of the korean association of mission studies. seonyilee@gmail.com mailto:parkbokyoung718@gmail.com mailto:seonyilee@gmail.com 69 beholding: recovering “right brain” apophatic spirituality for the local church in mission nigel rooms nigel rooms is an anglican priest, missiologist, practical theologian and vegetable gardener. he works part-time for the church mission society enabling churches in post-christian britain to change their deep culture towards embodying the mission of god in their beliefs, attitudes and action. he is also an honorary research fellow at the queen’s foundation, birmingham. in his freelance work he is the editor of the journal practical theology and the co-editor of ecclesial futures, a researcher, facilitator, theological educator and spiritual director. he is associate priest at st margaret’s, leicester and a priest associate of the sisters of the love of god at the convent of the incarnation, fairacres, oxford. abstract this article addresses missional spirituality, that is, what spirituality, individual and corporate, is appropriate and fruitful in churches which seek to participate in the mission of god. the paper engages with neuroscience around how the right and left hemispheres of the brain offer two ways of attending to the world; iain mcgilchrist asserts in the master and his emissary that left brain attention e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 70 has predominated especially in modernity. two christian responses which utilize these truths about the brain are critically examined, one from an american, broadly evangelical school of thought and the other from the anglican solitary, maggie ross. ross’ recovery of the apophatic stream of christian spirituality via the right brain of “deep mind” is preferred without dismissing other approaches. the article delineates the “unintended consequences” of seeking silence before god who is, including the gift of “beholding” and how they connect to what is required of missional churches. some brief suggestions are made as to what might be done to enhance the practice of silence in local churches. keywords: christian spirituality; apophatic; missional: church; neuroscience introduction the question of the relationship between christian spirituality, both individual and corporate, and how the local church1 participates in the missio dei is a very live one. i come to this question as both a spiritual director and a consultant to churches in my work with the church mission society. in writing a book on the theology of spiritual direction i articulated a fractal connection i discern between spiritual direction and the missionary task of the church (chatfield & rooms, 2019: 157-64). beyond my own work in spiritual direction i have to say i haven’t been that impressed with recent contributions to this question such as the collection of essays in finn & whitfield (eds), 2017, which left me feeling there has to be a deeper engagement with the topic. this article is a small contribution to the conversation. as an anglican priest of the church of england i have increasingly valued the belief that, while remaining a protestant body, my church is both reformed and catholic – with the emphasis, in the second half of my life, on the catholic and the sacramental. this isn’t some partisan commitment as these things are often portrayed. rather, i have been drawn into enabling churches to become missional, and i have a growing sense that the future of the western church is dependent on the long christian tradition before the reformation. as my 1 i employ the term “local church” in the title of this article and throughout as an umbrella term for any christian worshipping community that is embedded in its proximate geography and community – sometimes called the “parish”. in the article church without a capital letter refers to such entities alone and church to the wider denominational body or institution (which may or may not include its local manifestations). nigel rooms—beholding 71 lutheran colleague in creating missional churches, pat keifert is wont to quote from jaroslav pelikan that “tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living” (pelikan, 1984: 65). this article develops my writing about the connection between spiritual direction and the church in mission and the spirituality of leadership in such churches (rooms and keifert, 2019). in this article i take a step back into the ancient via negativa of the desert fathers and mothers and their successors from the fourth century onwards before placing that alongside current thinking in neuroscience. i will then examine two schools of thought about how to employ neuroscientific thinking in christian spirituality and discipleship, before coming to some initial implications of this work for the local church in mission. this paper2 therefore develops a “turn to the tradition”, as we might name it, in my own spiritual journey since, for over ten years now, i have been seeking silence in prayer inspired by the carmelite tradition, in such giants as theresa of avila and john of the cross. and while many other traditions are available, i trust it contains a challenge to readers to mine the riches and resources that we have at our disposal from our forefathers and mothers in order to be the church faithfully in our own day. background: why spirituality matters in missional churches ever since the work of lesslie newbigin and david bosch in the late twentieth century it has been clear that the western, so-called “mainstream” churches, both protestant and catholic, have been in the midst of a paradigm shift. in the world around them and in their theology of mission there have been massive changes that accompany the end of the modern, colonial era since around 1950. the well documented numerical decline of such churches is at least in part attributable to their inability to change their behaviours and culture to meet the world as it is in the here and now as opposed to the world as it was seventy years ago. they have become vulnerable even to death, because they have 2 the writing here began life as a paper at a meeting of the international research consortium in adelaide, australia and the international association of mission studies conference in sydney, australia in june-july 2022. i am grateful to those who commented on it in those places. another shorter version was a contribution to a festschrift book of essays to be published in 2023 in south africa in honour of frederick marais. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 72 increasingly lost the ability to embody their faith in the incarnate one publicly in the neighbourhood (walls, 2002: 30). david bosch (1991) for the protestants and steve bevans & roger schroeder (2004, 2011) for the catholics presented the concept of missio dei as the required paradigm shift in theology which is brought forth by the concomitant paradigm shift in the world. this is the understanding that god is mission and therefore missionary by very nature and being, crossing boundaries in creation and redemption. such theology turns upside-down the inherited understanding of how missionary work occurs under conditions of modernity – and also the powers that came with state-church acting during christendom. thus, to turn to some well-coined phrases, “it is not the church of god that has a mission in the world but the god of mission that has a church in the world” and the task of that church is therefore to “find out what god is doing and join in”. a note of caution here however, again from a “catholic” systematic theology perspective, for, as alison milbank (2020:18) points out christians do not live outside of god and god’s life but rather inside the eternal overflow of god’s love. theologically this is termed participation and, while there is much more to be said on the subject (davison, 2019) it does further underline that human agency in mission is likely limited to “getting ourselves out of the way” of god, as we shall see rather than thinking that it is still somehow down to us and our singular effort to “join in”. reception of the missio dei has been rather slow on the ground and not uncontested in the academy, yet it is beginning to filter through to church bodies and particular worshipping communities and as such is now shaping their imaginations and behaviours (clark et al., 2010). even on the ground however there is new evidence emerging that it is openly resisted and brings conflict and contestation (hardy, 2022). for me this is more evidence for the spiritual nature of the task of participating in the mission of god – it goes very deep into the church’s core beliefs and practices. i have written elsewhere of six practical and behavioural shifts that are illustrative of the church turning inside out in this way (carson et al., 2021: 101–15). some practitioners and scholars have called this movement the missional church, where the missional is about the formation of christian community around god’s mission in the world – though the term is not without its difficulty and contestation too. the key word here is formation. missional church is about how the “doing” of the church is wholly derived from its prior “being”. the being of a missional church is focused on how god calls, gathers, centres and sends it into god’s world to participate in god’s mission there. ultimately therefore becoming a missional church is first and foremost a spiritual task. there are two ways to understand this better. nigel rooms—beholding 73 first, following williams (2020), we can state that mission arises from a life of prayer with the emphasis in that prayer on the mutual gaze between lover and the beloved. such a stance removes anxiety (at least about the big picture of how god holds all things, including a declining church) and leads christians naturally into mission: mission is an invitation to live in a new world. it is not recruiting people for a manifesto or a programme … just as prayer, serious prayer, seems to begin in looking in wonder, in the gaze of astonishment, so with mission. what is this new world where things are so different? what is this new world where depths we hadn’t imagined are uncovered and made visible? (williams, 2020:14-15) another way of looking at this is that if local churches are to adopt the missio dei as a way of being, the core skill, or in biblical terms gift, involved in “finding out what god is doing” is that of discernment. we might think of discernment alternatively as “paying attention”, being able to notice, to see – as jesus demonstrates to the religious leaders of his day in john 9. discernment is also clearly a spiritual task, one which too is grounded in prayer. this article works towards presenting a rather hidden and forgotten stream of christian spirituality which is directly connected to the ability to pay attention in the here and now of any moment and arises from contemplative or mystical prayer in silence. it is supported by the long christian tradition, stretching back to the desert mothers and fathers of the fourth century onwards, of the apophatic way or via negativa where words for god and in prayer run out in the face of the one who simply is. somehow the ability to remain present to god in silence is directly related to the ability to notice the presence and activity of god at any other time and therefore participate in the new world that god’s presence and activity is always creating. in the biblical and christian traditions there is a rather forgotten way of “paying attention” that is grounded in the “paradox of intention”, and draws on this negative or apophatic stance which states that trying to reach god can only be done so by letting go of the intention to do so. perhaps this is also the case in mission – if we engage in mission in an anxious, even frantic desire for results we are most likely to be disappointed. in order to understand more how a recovery of the apophatic might work for us in creating missional churches we turn to neuroscientific research on the human brain. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 74 the right and left brains – “the master and his emissary” research into the functioning of the human brain has been magisterially presented by iain mcgilchrist (2018 [2009]).3 mcgilchrist is somewhat of a polymath in that he works at a high level across many disciplines which include neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, philosophy and even the occasional excursion into theology. in doing so he models for the reader what he is explicating which, to do a great injustice to the book of nearly 600 pages (of which more than 100 are notes and bibliography), states that the human brain is divided into quite distinct left and right hemispheres. it is not that left and right hemispheres do different things, as scientific studies have shown that most brain functions occur in both hemispheres. rather they have distinct, what i would call epistemic functions which are related to the evolution of animal brains from birds. birds need to pay close attention to small specks of food (left brain) and have a bigger, even whole or rounded picture of the world around them that contains predators, others in the flock and potential mates (right brain) (2018 [2009]: 27). the two halves need to be kept largely separate in how they attend to the world and this has remained pretty much the case throughout the course of evolution. however, there is, it seems, particularly in humans, an optimal relationship between the left and right brains for flourishing which is constantly under threat because of the way the left hemisphere operates. mcgilchrist (2018 [2009]: 14) employs a metaphorical fable from nietzsche to convey the precarity of the relationship and hence the title of his book. a good and benevolent leader (the “master”) is inevitably effective at growing his influence over lands and requires representatives (the “emissary”) in the burgeoning fiefdom to see to the day to day work. equally inevitably one day an emissary realizes they do not need the master and attempts a hostile takeover. both are required but their relationship has to remain asymmetrical for life to continue to flourish across the lands. thus, mcgilchrist sets himself 3 while not uncontroversial, mcgilchrist’s work has continued with a further massive two-volume extension of his thinking published in 2021 as the matter with things. these volumes contain, amongst other things, a first principles argument for the existence of the sacred in the universe. critiques of mcgilchrist tend to revolve around accusing him of a supposed right-brain tautology which cannot be argued against. such critique ends up, in my view, also being tautologous. what is without doubt is the increasing acclaim for his work, witnessed by his keynote speech at the ai world summit 2022 – see https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=xgbuckwcmpa accessed 9 november 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgbuckwcmpa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgbuckwcmpa nigel rooms—beholding 75 the double task of showing how the different brains offer different qualities of attention or “seeing” of the world. he demonstrates how the left brain has tended over the course of (at least) western history to dominate – resulting in its current virtual hegemony in the post-modern period. understanding the importance of defining what attention is, is vital here – it “is a way in which, not a thing: it is intrinsically a relationship, not a brute fact. it is a “howness”, a something between” (2018 [2009]:29, italics original). the differences in how the divided brain pays attention are key to understanding mcgilchrist’s argument. they have a double effect in that they not only change how we see the world, but they also affect the world itself (2018 [2009]: 5) – the nature of how we see reality and even truth. the left brain divides and categorizes, it objectifies the world, sees things without relation to each other, only as separate entities; it reaches out to grasp the world, take power and rule over it; things have utility for the left brain whether they are animate or inanimate. the right brain on the other hand sees from the whole, understands all things as connected, allows things to simply be what they are and attends to the in-betweenness of the self and any other with which it is in relationship. it is not difficult to comprehend, then, that the ability for much of what happens in spirituality, and particularly apophatic contemplation, resides in the right-hemisphere brain. nevertheless, left-brain “linearity” has predominated over the past few centuries, thus marginalizing the gifts that mystical work can bring. mcgilchrist’s work has been picked up by christian thinkers and writers over the past decade or so and i wish to introduce here at least two approaches spirituality and missional church life that arise from this new understanding of how our brains pay attention. american evangelical neurotheology and practice first a group of american evangelicals4 draw deeply on mcgilchrist and other neuroscientific sources as well as the american philosopher and christian author dallas willard. they develop a renewed understanding of discipleship and christian formation (for example wilder, 2020 and wilder & hendricks, 2020). these works are related to the relatively new field of “neurotheology” 4 it turns out, perhaps not unsurprisingly, that all these writers are male, which i note does skew my bibliography somewhat. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 76 with authors crossing over from medical neuroscience into theology and spirituality such as curt thompson (2010) and andrew newberg (2016 [2010], 2018). let us examine more deeply the work of wilder and hendricks, who are indeed concerned with christian character formation, maturity and discipleship in community, especially when, in their experience, spiritual “growth” seems to plateau and even become very stuck after an initial burst of energy and light. wilder and hendricks locate the most fruitful possibilities for character formation in the right brain since this is where, as we have seen, relationality to the other is attended to (2020: 22). they also point out that much of the function of the right brain is “preconscious” (2020: 21) and therefore not susceptible to cognitive training which is how much discipleship formation in the church proceeds. this is important since it leads directly to the employment of spiritual practices in relational community for growth. spiritual practices are habit forming over time and shift behaviour in much more subtle ways. the argument goes something like this. character formation arises out of “loving attachment to jesus” (2020: 41), which makes theological sense in the light of the summary of the law which is to love god and neighbour (mark 12:29-31). the emphasis in the christian life is therefore placed upon “attachment love” or hesed in the hebrew bible and agape in the new testament. from such attachment arises relational joy which is described as “what we feel when we are with someone who is happy to be with us” (2020: 56) and which again is located in right brain attention. such notions are clearly related to how we learn healthy or secure attachment in infancy following the child psychologists winnicott and bowlby (for example see winnicott, 1991 [1971]). such is the strength of belief here in attachment joy that it even leads the authors to overturn that evangelical shibboleth of the division between the first and second persons of the trinity on the cross as jesus dies which plays out in many contemporary hymns and worship songs. rather the authors claim that jesus “never lost touch of his father’s face shining on him as he was tortured and humiliated” (2020: 60, capitals in the original). character is formed by focusing on increasing the capacity of the christian community to exhibit hesed and joy by “training” the right brains of members with various exercises (2020: 187ff.). in another suggestive development such joyful attachment allows a phenomenon jim wilder names “mutual mind” or intersubjectivity as occurring via the right brain between people (wilder, 2020: 33). i suspect this is related to mihaly csikszentmihalyi’s (2002 [1992]) concept of “flow” in the positive nigel rooms—beholding 77 psychology movement’s study of happiness, which is not unrelated to the theology of joy we are discussing here and polanyi’s notion of “tacit knowledge” (wilder, 2020: 40). all of which raises the possibility of finding a mutual mind with god which further results in the joy and peace of being seen by the divine (2020: 49). wilder connects with the practice of mindfulness (2020: 37) as a precursor to prayerful attachment with god which is helpful, but perhaps because of a fear of meditative practice that does not sit before an other (2020: 38) he will not lean into contemplative prayer or any sense of the apophatic. he seems largely unaware of the paradox of intention which we referred to above and the “nada” or “nothing” on the ascent of mt carmel in the writings of st john of the cross. what we might call the wilder school introduces fruitful spiritual practices designed to “train” the right brain in order to grow joy and character, which mike harrison has explicated helpfully (2022). yet i cannot help but feeling, especially after finishing the the other half of church that christian discipleship for wilder and his colleagues remains a programme based on a certain kind of (even gendered) activism which could lead to ultimate disappointment under the paradox of intention. the practices recommended in these books largely remain cataphatic and therefore do not go quite far enough for me. i wonder whether the left brain emissary has asserted itself and gained the upper hand once more. i believe we must turn to the apophatic in order to actually find the wholeness that wilder and his like are seeking. the right brain, apophatic “beholding” and the missional church therefore, we turn to maggie ross, an american anglican solitary based in oxford, and her two-volume work on silence (2014, 2018). ross almost joyously utilises mcgilchrist to make a claim about how the suspicion and even loss of the apophatic in western spirituality is directly related to the hegemony of left brain attention. ross engages with mcgilchrist’s understanding of the epistemic difference in how the two halves of the brain function from the very start. she offers a schematic diagram (2014: 36-7) for this in relation to her definition of contemplation as “a specific disposition of attentive and responsive receptivity” (2014: 75) in the christian tradition. there is a sense in which apophatic practice has always employed the human right brain – it is simply that now, from neuroscience via mcgilchrist, we have the evidence for it. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 78 it is worth noting here that silence in apophatic prayer is not the technical absence of sound, but a disposition in the one who prays to be solely present, without distraction, to god who is ultimately unknowable. i would suggest this is a simple, yet highly nuanced approach to wilder et al.’s understanding of attachment to god. ross’ schematic shows the proper relationship between left (“self-conscious mind”) and right brain (“deep mind”) attentiveness for optimal functioning. ross summarizes this relationship thus: most people [we might say western people] are trapped in the virtual and noisy world of self-consciousness (left side of diagram). for the mind to function optimally, it must be recentred in the deep mind (right side), restoring circulation between the two epistemologies so that ordinary life draws on its wellspring of silence and transfiguration. then experience is understood as provisional and is continually submitted to silence where it is transfigured. (2014: 36) the self-conscious mind on the left side of the diagram is “governed by the paradox of intention” which ross believes is the key to undermining its hegemony. the deep mind can be accessed only by apophasis which describes by double negation in unknowing, “it is not that, and it is not even not that” (2014: 69) thus coming to know god, whose centre is everywhere and circumference is nowhere. in the middle of the two kinds of mind is a liminal in-betweenness where the connectivity happens. the first two “threshold/effects/phenomena” noted here are attentive receptivity and beholding, which are no doubt connected to wilder’s attachment love, as we noted above. before we continue, a note about the use of the word “experience”. ross, along with much of the christian tradition, is very wary of speaking of (or in fact having) “spiritual experiences”. this is not to deny that they happen or cannot draw us closer to god, but the simple truth is that any experience is we have is ours and therefore by definition cannot be god. as ross states in relationship to the master of the deep mind or right brain, in contrast to the self-conscious emissary of the left brain, “when self-consciousness is suspended there can be no experience” (ross, 2014: 78). here is another departure from the wilder school. newberg (2018: 259-78) has a chapter entitled “escaping the prison of the brain: mysticism” which addresses throughout so-called mystical experiences. newberg seems unaware of any critique of experience in the context of spirituality which drives what i would understand as a non-question about whether we can escape our brains. our brains are a given, as is god; what is nigel rooms—beholding 79 simple but profound is the space between them when placed in proximity in silent prayer. ross devotes a whole chapter in her second book to beholding (2018: 12836). ross thinks that the word behold is “arguably the most important word in the bible” (2018: 129). it is the first word god speaks to adam (gen. 1:29) and the last word jesus gives to the disciples (mt. 28:20) and occurs over 1,300 times (2018: 132). however, many more recent translations elide the meaning to “remember”, “see” and “know” thus offering more evidence for the dominance of left-brain attentiveness in modernity. in beholding ross states that again the paradox of intention applies – it cannot be made to happen. etymologically it is related to grasping (“getting it”, we might say, or having a “light bulb” moment) thus, “one holds or grasps by ungrasping: in beholding the analytic conceptualizing faculty is relinquished” (2018: 129, italics in the original). here is yet another departure from wilder, since while we are not far from “mutual mind” here, in fact there may even be an equivalence, ross would understand such moments as gifts to be noticed rather trained for and sought out. i suggest there is a connection here with the practice of visio divina. if lectio divina is reading the inspired text along with god, visio divina is seeing or perhaps better, imagining the world as god’s creation along with or even as god sees it. this takes us directly to the development of the imagination through poetics, music and art. beholding is a “covenant” word and the beholder therefore, “faces outward, self-forgetful, engaged, and contiguous with the community of the beheld; beholding is receptivity and engagement” (2018: 130). i don’t know of a better description of a missional stance from within the people of god, the church, not least because “beholding is a living, ongoing recapitulation of the self-emptying en-christing process of philippians 2:5-11” (2018: 133). it is also a public act which stands over against the privatisation of religion in modernity (see also chatfield and rooms, 2019: 163). elsewhere ross writes of the importance of understanding the christ hymn as encapsulating incarnation, transfiguration and resurrection where trans-figuration is exactly what happens when the deep mind becomes involved in beholding. with beholding a new set of possibilities erupts in the here and now. what happens is a “shift of perspective, turning inside-out and upside-down” (2018: 134). and here we return to where we started with rowan williams’ definition of mission as discovering the possibility of a different world. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 80 the unintended consequences of seeking god in silence and the missional church at this juncture, as we conclude the article, i want to bring together the threads of what we have been learning. that is, what is the effect, or the fruit, of utilizing our god-given right-brain way of attending to its full capacity and engaging our deep mind through the apophatic practice of silence in relation to the mission of god? we need to delineate its consequences and ask how those effects are helpful in missional churches alongside what might be done to enhance the practice of silence. but before we do that some caveats are in order. first let the reader not take away from this work that the cataphatic and cataphatic ways of praying are of little use. what we are about here is a re-ordering of how the two halves of the brain function, rather than advocating for some equally awful binary opposition of left and right. second, silence in the whole sweep of christian history comes in various forms some of which are deeply antithetical to the purposes of god in the world as diarmaid macculloch has wisely demonstrated (2013). silence in the face of evil, especially when perpetrated by the church, is not what we are engaging with here. and finally, we have to remember the advice given by abba moses to a new hesychast entering the desert to pray, “go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything” (ward, 1975: 139). that is, it is the repeated and habitual entry into silence, which is enough in all its utter simplicity, difficulty and ultimate profundity, that is required. the english mystic text the cloud of unknowing (2001) calls this a “naked intent towards god”. given the paradox of intention which is ever at work in seeking after god, god’s presence and activity, fruitfulness emerges properly as an unintended consequence of the practice of silence. the practice is both an end in itself and a means to an end since it has a deep and lasting effect. let us then gather together some of these unintended consequences. we can work here with ross and place alongside her the descriptions of the effects of a deliberate entering into silence by sara maitland (2008) when she took herself off to live alone in a remote place. i think it helps here that maitland does not become a silent recluse for overtly christian purposes (e.g. as part of any religious community), thus she is able to describe what happens in her with reference to a whole range of other sources. her work is a properly interdisciplinary, even, we might say, secular and scientific examination of the subject. perhaps it combines her right and left brain in helpful sequence. seeking silence is by definition an embodied practice, as ross says, “the mind’s work with silence and its effects involve the entire bodied person” (2014: 45). maitland notes the “extraordinary intensification of physical sensation” nigel rooms—beholding 81 (2008: 48) with all her senses and feelings become more available to her. such intensification occurs in the here and now. silence before god is about being present in the moment, on the theological principle that god is always where we are, not where we imagine we ought to be (usually in some self-conscious nostalgic past or idealised future). presence to the reality of the here and now alongside embodiment are vital signs of the members of a missional church. they are able to be the change they wish to be, fulfilling newbigin’s description of the local church as the hermeneutic of the gospel, being god’s people who “believe it and live by it” (1989: 227). maitland notes what she calls “disinhibition” arising quickly in her new silent state (2008: 52) and she relates this to a lack of self-consciousness (in ross’ terms the left brain is losing its hegemony) and in jungian terms having the persona, or with freud, the superego taken away. such disinhibition can go in several directions, but when placed in a theological frame i am drawn back once again to the christ hymn in philippians and the kenosis of the christ which ross noted was also directly related to the gift of beholding. i once heard (i forget the exact moment) bishop gordon mursell, then bishop of stafford in the church of england, call this phenomenon being “unselfed”. an important distinction needs to be made here since ross thinks it is very dangerous to speak of the destruction of the self. rather by self-forgetfulness which arises in silence the “me” that gets in way of god can be “parked” as i sometimes put it, or laid aside so that, in ross’ terms again – transfiguration of the whole of us can happen. another way of putting this according bishop wolfgang huber, is “free, creative self-withdrawal” (quoted in keifert & rooms, 2014: 14). as corporate bodies missional churches have raised levels of good conflict since something vital is happening and there will always be resistance to such new life (keifert & rooms, 2014: 15). this heightened conflict can only be dealt with if enough members have learnt how to lay aside their own self-conscious desires, and stay silent until they can speak from their innermost hearts where god resides. in my work of consulting to churches we call this a “floated conversation” as part of corporate spiritual discernment. it is truly beautiful when it happens, as it ebbs and flows with the movement of the spirit. we have noted the predominance of anxiety in the contemporary church which reduces its capacity to deal with the very things it is anxious about – a vicious circle. whereas being before god in silence is the antidote to that anxiety. in silence we become connected to the “ground of all being” which in turn grounds us and develops in us, from family systems theory what can be termed a “god-centred self-definition” (rooms and keifert, 2019: 15). selfdefinition in god is what allows us to focus on god’s presence and activity e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 82 and not be distracted from it by fighting or fleeing from those resisting it. and the result of that state of being is the opposite of anxiety; joy. here we are in full agreement with the wilder school. two of maitland’s reflections are based around the emergence of joy during silence (2008: 62, 74) and we have already referred to harrison’s work on the subject (2022). i would add here that fun is part of, if not limited to being joyful. this has been my experience of people who are liberated from anxious church activity into having fun, finding out what god is up to and joyously taking part. while maitland does not specifically refer to a heightened sense of sight, we did hear of other senses being enhanced and we might extend that to seeing. we have already referred to the possibility of visio divina. according to ross this is because silence leads to transfiguration (rather than transformation, which she dislikes as it implies a change of being) and the subsequent “beholding” which changes our perception of reality (ross, 2014: 98). the result of such transfiguration is a new openness and receptivity to the other which welcomes the receiving of hospitality (keifert & rooms, 2014: 16-19) and a reversal of the inherited one-way flow of church (barrett, 2020). given its efficacy, therefore as we have demonstrated here, how might an emphasis on practicing silence and the apophatic be integrated into the life of churches? the individual and corporate seeking of silence both in private prayer by some (i don’t believe this needs to be for absolutely everyone, though i would recommend it for leaders however they come to it as there are many paths) and public worship, as we have demonstrated will de-centre the “selves” of the membership over time. at least two practical suggestions flow from this, though space limits other suggestions. ross has created and road-tested a “contemplative eucharist” (2018: 100-27) which can take up to four or five hours since it includes long periods of silence. this is not to be a very regular occurrence but one can see how it would create the conditions for intentional silence in weekly or even daily public worship. in fact, if a church’s regular worship does not contain periods of silence longer than a few seconds, its missional engagement may be seriously lacking. that is, if a corporate body of christians cannot hold silence together for any significant length of time they are unlikely to be able to last long on a journey to be missional. the spiritual practices that become habits in missional churches (keifert & rooms, 2014) contain the possibility for learning to be silent in community. other specific, intentional groups gather for just this nigel rooms—beholding 83 purpose such as the julian meeting and the world community for christian meditation.5 further, if there are to be christians exploring apophatic prayer they are going to need support from good spiritual directors. i referred in the introduction to my practical theology treatment of spiritual direction (chatfield and rooms, 2019) and, as sometimes happens when writing i realized there is a connection between the discernment that occurs in spiritual direction and the corporate discernment of the missio dei in missional churches. indeed, one might be a “fractal” or microcosm of the other – they are the same shape and only differ in scale. in fact, missional church may simply be spiritual direction scaled up (2019: 162). conclusion i have long believed that the christ hymn in philippians describes the shape of christian discipleship (e.g. chatfield and rooms, 2019: 72) and mission for both the individual and the church. the depths of the cross that we are called to take up in discipleship (mark 8:34) cannot be plumbed without apophasis, without engagement with the practice of silence, without the gift of beholding which arises from within that very silence. we have to give up our anxious activity, embrace our vulnerabilities, even looking the “death” of the church in the face, if we are to find resurrection. if we attend to god’s presence and activity, the missio dei in the world in this way, waiting for the surprises that beholding bestows upon us we have a new missional future and world that we can live into and embody. references barrett, al. 2020. interrupting the church’s flow: a radically receptive political theology in the urban margins. london: scm press. bevans, stephen b., and roger p. schroeder. 2004. constants in context: a theology of mission for today. maryknoll ny: orbis books. ———. 2011. prophetic dialogue: reflections on christian mission today. maryknoll, ny: orbis books. 5 see https://thejulianmeetings.net/ and https://wccm.org accessed 9 november 2022. https://thejulianmeetings.net/ https://wccm.org e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 2 84 bosch, david j. 1991. transforming mission. paradigm shifts in theology of mission. maryknoll ny: orbis books. carson, timothy, rosy fairhurst, nigel rooms and lisa r. withrow. 2021. crossing thresholds: a practical theology of liminality. cambridge uk: lutterworth. chatfield, adrian, and nigel rooms. 2019. soul friendship: a practical theology of spiritual direction. norwich: canterbury press. clark, john, martin lee, philip knights, janice price, anne richards, paul rolph and nigel rooms. 2010. foundations for mission: a study of language, theology and praxis from the uk and ireland. london: ctbi. cloud. 2001. the cloud of unknowing and other works trans. a. c. spearing. london: penguin. csikszentmihalyi, mihaly. 2002 [1992]. flow: the classic work on how to achieve happiness. revised and updated edition. london: random house. davison, andrew. 2019. participation in god: a study in christian doctrine and metaphysics. cambridge uk: cambridge university press. finn, nathan a., and keith s. whitefield. 2017. spirituality for the sent: casting a new vision for the missional church. downers grove, il: ivp. hardy, andrew r. 2022. an ordinary mission of god theology: challenging missional church idealism, providing solutions, eugene or: wipf & stock. harrison, mike. 2022. “joyful disciples: a study of a missing link in considering spiritual disciplines and corporate missional habits.” ecclesial futures 3 (1): 79-94. keifert, patrick, and nigel rooms. 2014. forming the missional church: creating deep cultural change in congregations. p139. cambridge: grove. macculloch, diarmaid. 2013. silence: a christian history. london: penguin. maitland, sara. 2008. a book of silence. london: granta. mcgilchrist, iain. 2018 [2009]. the master and his emissary: the divided brain and the making of the western world. new expanded edition. new haven, ct: yale university press. ———. 2021. the matter with things: our brains, our delusions, and the unmaking of the world. 2 vols. london: perspectiva press. milbank, alison. 2020. “the gift of the trinity in mission”, in lucas, susan (ed.), god’s church in the world: the gift of catholic mission. norwich: canterbury press, 17-34. newberg, andrew. 2016 [2010]. principles of neurotheology. abingdon: routledge. newberg, andrew. 2018. neurotheology: how science can enlighten us about spirituality. new york: columbia university press. newbigin, lesslie. 1989.the gospel in a pluralist society, grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. pelikan, jaroslav. 1984. the vindication of tradition: the 1983 jefferson lecture in the humanities. new haven, ct: yale university press. nigel rooms—beholding 85 rooms, nigel, and patrick keifert. 2019. spiritual leadership in the missional church: a systems approach to leadership as cultivation, l38, cambridge: grove. ross, maggie. 2014. silence: a user’s guide, vol. 1 process. london: dlt. ———. 2018. silence: a user’s guide, vol. 2 application. london: dlt. thompson, curt. 2010. anatomy of the soul: surprising connections between neuroscience and spiritual practices that can transform your life and relationships. carol stream, il: tyndale. walls, andrew. 2002. the cross-cultural process in christian history. maryknoll, ny: orbis. ward, benedicta (trans.). 1975. the sayings of the desert fathers, the alphabetical collection, kalamazoo mi: cistercian publications. wilder, jim. 2020. renovated: god, dallas willard & the church that transforms. colorado springs, co: navpress. ——— and michael hendricks. 2020. the other half of church: christian community, brain science, and overcoming spiritual stagnation. chicago, il: moody. williams, rowan. 2020. “mission and the life of prayer”, in lucas, susan (ed.), god’s church in the world: the gift of catholic mission. norwich uk: canterbury press, 3-16. winnicott, donald. 1991 [1971]. playing and reality. paperback edition. london: routledge. ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 1 111 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef15513 doi: 10.54195/ef15513 b o o k r e v i e w s benac, dustin d. 2022. adaptive church: collaboration and community in a changing world waco: baylor university press. isbn 9781481317085 reviewed by james butler there have been a good number of books which reflect on the changes in church seen over the last couple of decades in the development of fresh expressions, missional communities, missional church and pioneering, but few books have explored the wider networks and the enabling of these new communities and churches. this is exactly where dustin benac’s book adaptive church focuses. through careful and extensive qualitative research with two such “hubs” in the pacific northwest of the united states of america it identifies how they enable the imaginative environment for adaptive change to occur. the focus on this region, made up of the states of washington, oregon and idaho, is because of its post-religious landscape. in the midst of changing social and religious commitments benac identifies a history of religious entrepreneurship in the region and in this book he explores what this atmosphere of innovation and entrepreneurship can reveal about the future of church in the united states. he frames the organizations he looks at as ecclesial adaptations which can help churches to navigate the complex situations they find themselves in within contemporary culture. the book is made up of four parts and each of those parts has two chapters. the first part has chapters introducing each of the organizations, which benac refers to as “hubs”; chapter 1 looks at the office of church engagement and chapter 2 introduces the parish collective. part 2 looks at organizational structures with chapter 3 identifying the primary challenges facing the hubs and their developing collaborative approaches. benac then turns to explore his idea of hubs, distinguishing them from a megachurch or denomination, and exploring the webs of connections they make. chapter 5 opens part 3 with a practical theological account of the hub’s aim of “reimagining church”. he then offers a “theological redescription” of the work of these 112 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef15513 hubs by engaging with bonhoeffer and luke-acts in chapter 6. part 4 develops the account of practical wisdom looking at the way different modes of leadership complement each other in bringing about organizational change. chapter 7 is perhaps the most important in terms of contribution presenting an expansive typology of leadership providing a framework for churches to think about the different skills, gifts and collaboration required for adaptive change. the final chapter looks to the future of church, exploring the “possibilities beyond certainty” and the way these hubs help to sustain these possibilities. the key word within the book is “adaptive” with benac drawing on and developing ronald heifetz’ theory of adaptive change as his lens for understanding the practice of the hubs. heifetz discusses two types of challenge: technical, where the problem is known and the obstacle is primarily resources; and adaptive, where the problem and solution are unknown, where the obstacles are often the received values and practices and where the change needed is structural and systemic. they require more imaginative responses and an ability to explore new possibilities. benac gives the example of the question “what is god up to?” as one which invites new imaginative possibilities. in reading the hubs through this lens of adaptive challenge and change he provides a fresh way of engaging with these new churches and communities, and the ways these “hubs” can support and enable change. i was particularly drawn to part 3 where he engages with imagination and develops a pneumatological account of church and adaptive change. he expands dykstra’s account of ecclesial imagination showing how the practice and outlook of these hubs extend the account of ecclesial imagination to include the wider community connections made by churches across these hubs. following this he engages with bonhoeffer’s life together and luke-acts to describe how church has always faced adaptive challenges and has changed. benac describes his work as “redescription”, making implicit connections between the practice of these hubs and the theological accounts. he sees bonhoeffer and luke-acts as demonstrating the kind of adaptations that are happening in these hubs. through them he identifies the significance of the church as a theological entity and the work of the spirit in adaptive change. he uses these sources to offer a theological rationale for the adaptive church he is calling for, a church which “creates structures for connection, belonging and possibility”. this could be helpfully developed further by drawing more fully on the theological insight from practice to push these accounts further in into developing an ecclesiology of adaptive church. the turn to leadership in part 4 develops a “practical wisdom” for the adaptive church describing leadership in six modes of being with. in helping hubs, like the 113 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef15513 ones in the study, to respond to adaptive challenges, this chapter is key. it provides practical ways in which the diversity of leadership can be recognized in an interconnected way. benac’s focus is on cultivating the conditions for imagination and adaptive change, and how they can take root and grow. while i find the theological accounts in part 3 fruitful for my own thinking there is scope for integrating them more fully into the practical wisdom section of the book. i found myself asking what difference these accounts of imagination and the spirit made to the leadership model proposed. i also would have liked an account of why leadership was the focus of the practical wisdom, particularly given that in my own experience of these kinds of churches and communities it is often lay and focused on the quite ordinary and everyday nature of faith. perhaps this highlights the difference between the us and uk contexts and demonstrates that although there is much that is helpful in this book, there is always some work to be done to make the connection and adaptations between contexts. all that said, i found it a stimulating and enriching book, one which challenged my thinking and provided helpful concepts to explore the ecclesiology of such communities. for those looking for an ecclesiology of church drawing on these new communities, this book provides rich starting points for developing such an ecclesiology weaving together helpful ideas of adaptive change, imagination and theological redescription. for those working in the kinds of hubs, networks and organizations that are the focus of the book, the practical wisdom and conceptual frameworks developed here will provide important and enlightening ways to reflect on and develop their work. i think this book and the work of benac more widely is making a welcome and generative contribution to the development of church in post-religious contexts in the us and europe. about the author james butler, university of roehampton, london; church mission society, oxford james.butler@roehampton.ac.uk mailto:james.butler@roehampton.ac.uk ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 2 a r t i c l e 74 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13329 doi: 10.54195/ef13329 the limm model: paradigm for missiological research pieter hendrik johannes labuschagne abstract this article proposes a missiological research model, guided by three key missiological concepts: missio dei, christocentricity and contextuality (mdcc). the model is derived from a practical theology model that was developed by the loyola institute for ministry (lim). the new missiological model is called the limm model, where the added ‘m’ represents missional action. since the introduction of the term missio dei during the last century, the focus has shifted from missions initiated and conducted by the church, to the one true mission: god’s mission. in the missio dei, god sends his son and the spirit to the world, and through them sends people to the ends of the earth. this means that god is the sender and the content of mission dei. the incarnation of god’s message in every culture is of great importance. the limm model is characterized by the three key missiological terms mentioned above, and it directs the research, from defining the research topic all the way to the practical suggestions for improved ministry. if a research topic does not correlate with mdcc principles, it does not belong i the field of missiological research and another field of theology should be considered. keywords: missiological research model, missio dei, christocentricity, contextuality. 1 introduction ever since his earthly ministry, people have been spreading the gospel in obedience to christ, yet no designated term existed to described this mission. the latin word missio was reserved for the father sending the son and the spirit. this changed in the mid-sixteenth century when ignatius of loyola started to refer to the places and tasks to which jesuits were assigned as “missions” (kollman 2011: 425–26). similarly, missiology as independent theological discipline, was only established in the late 75 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13329 nineteenth century (langmead 2014: 68). as it is a young field, some seminaries still do not recognize it as an autonomous discipline but relegate it to a sub-section of another field, like practical theology. when research methods from these fields are used, it strips missiology of its distinct character. one such method is as an in-house research approach to practical theology that was developed by the loyola institute for ministry (we will call it the lim model). even though it is a practical theology model, lim is also suited for missiological research and some postgraduate students at the south african theological seminary (sats) have used it for their research. this article proposes adaptations to the lim model to repurpose it as a missiological research model. this will be accomplished in three stages: – describe the lim model. – define the three key missiological terms to be incorporated into the model. – adapt the model for missiological use. 2 methodology: integrative literature review integrative literature review was used as research model in this article. it is “a distinctive form of research that generates new knowledge about a topic by reviewing, critiquing, and synthesizing representative literature on a topic in an integrated way such that new frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated” (torraco, 2016: 62). the following principles were adhered to: – limited publications exist on the lim model. to describe the lim model and its historical development, the author used the following as anchor publications: the summary by smith (2016) and publications by professor barbara fleischer, of the loyola institute for ministry. – the author looked at three foundational aspects of missiology: missio dei, christocentricity and contextuality. we refer to the combination of these terms as mdcc. there is a close proximity between the concepts, and they are inter connected, defining the essence of missiology. – the author holds that missiology is an independent field of theology, which directly fulfils the missio dei and that missiological research models should be guided by missiological concepts. – through analysis and synthesis of the research findings, the lim model was adapted for missiological purposes. this aligns with torraco’s (2016: 66) suggestion that integrative literature review, as research approach, must generate new knowledge and pose new questions and propositions for future research. 76 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13329 3 the lim model 3.1 introduction to the lim model during the last few decades the loyola institute for ministry (lim) developed an in-house approach to practical theology (lamont 2018: 2). the only external effort to describe the model is smith’s (2016: 151–60) summary of the model, which is based on a single course document, written by michael cowan (2000) of the loyola institute for ministry. woodbridge (2014: 89–121) briefly referred to the lim model in an article but used smith’s article as only source of information. the current article delves deeper and provides a detailed description of the lim model, based on additional publications by professors from the loyola institute for ministry. the development of the model started with cowan’s (2000: 3) introduction of a process of “pastoral praxis” where theological reflection is in constant dialogue with action. lamont (2018: 3) described this dialogue as a horizontal relationship that requires mutual trust between the conversation partners, as it “creates a democratic, trusting space that welcomes, encourages, and listens to all voices” (lamont 2018: 9). dialogue is a slow, deep conversation that exposes hidden assumptions and leads to new insights, awareness and understanding. cowan (2000 :1) stated that practical theology is not only concerned with understanding the world as it is, but to “contribute to the world’s becoming what god intends that it should be”. he identifies four characteristics of practical theology, namely the correlational, hermeneutical, critical and transformative. the correlational character of practical theology refers to the fact that two things, the world as it is and the world as it should be, stand in a reciprocal relationship. the hermeneutical character highlights the importance of interpreting our world and our traditions. the critical requires that we evaluate our own understandings that influence our interpretations and actions. it is transformational because it brings “the real world into greater harmony with the creator’s intentions”. 3.2 historical development of the lim model for imbelli and groome the major methodological shift in practical theology in the twentieth century was theological inquiry, grounded in the human experience of those doing theology (fleischer 2000: 23). since 1983 when the loyola institute for ministry extension programme (limex) began, the focus was on an experientially based method of theological reflection, founded on the work of david tracey and bernard lonergan (fleischer 2000: 24). tracey’s revisionist model was based on a critical correlation between christian tradition and contemporary understanding of human existence. lonergan identified four levels of critical consciousness which formed the basis for the limex programme: (i) identify an experience to reflect on 77 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13329 (ii)  express an initial understanding of this experience (iii) test this initial understanding, and (iv) arrive at a new decision about the initial understanding and future action plan. the limex programme was further influenced by the work of james and evelyn whitehead. where tracy’s model focused on christian tradition and contemporary understanding of human experience, the whiteheads’ model of theological reflection identified three sources of context: (i) christian tradition, (ii) personal experience, and (iii) the resource of culture. the whiteheads’ contribution was employed in limex for more than seventeen years (fleischer 2000: 26). charles winters of loyola university new orleans added a fourth source to the whiteheads’ tri-polar model. “that fourth source, or ‘context’ as he called it, was the institutional context of ministry: the organizational dynamics and structures that largely shape how ministry is legitimized and who is authorized for what roles in any ministry site” (fleischer 2000: 29). theology that is focused primarily on abstract, universal, or static truth, pays little attention to the dynamics of human conversion. that is why the contributions of lonergan are important: he “proposes that as a human endeavor, theology proceed through the phases that all human learning follows; learning begins with experience and moves through initial understanding, judging (or critical reflection), and decision” (fleischer 2000: 30). lonergan, thus, shifted the focus of practical theology from starting with theological truth, to starting with experience. this approach turns from “deductivism to an empirical approach, from the static to the dynamic, from the abstract to the concrete, from the universal to the historical totality of particulars, from invariable rules to intelligent adjustment and adaptation” (lonergan 1968: 11). lonergan’s four operations (experiencing, understanding, judging and deciding) became the basis for the limex programme (fleischer 2000: 35). it also forms the basis of the four phases of the lim model: 3.3 the lim model 3.3.1 phase one: identify a real-life problem (experiencing) researchers identify a ministry, life experience, or experience of a text that they want to reflect on (cowan 2000: 2). this is something that exists in one’s context that affects the life of believers or the church. researchers must pay attention to (i) the details of their experience, (ii) significant aspects of the experience, and (iii) emotions stirred by the experience. this is an experiential phase: there is no scientific observation and reflection in this step; one simply states the problem and the reasons why you believe it exists (fleischer, 2000: 35; lamont 2018: 2). 78 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13329 this makes the first phase of the lim model refreshingly unique because it invites researchers to express their own, unresearched experience and understanding of a situation. in fact, this phase cannot be undertaken without the researcher’s involvement, expressing his or her own subjective understanding and experience of a situation, without having to justify it with research data. in this regard, smith missed an important aspect of the lim model that distinguishes it from other practical theology approaches. in his summary of the model (2016: 153) he mentions the initial, non-scientific opinion of the researcher, based on his or her understanding, but in his description of how a thesis would look when using lim, smith (2016: 154) omits this distinctive feature of the model. 3.3.2 phase two: interpret the world as it is (understanding) this phase seeks to understand the experience, evaluates the researcher’s initial views, and lays bare meanings, interpretations and questions that arose in the first phase. a dialogue develops between the researcher’s initial experience and the meaning that emerges through the research. a disciplined, practical investigation is conducted to determine the what, the how and the why of the problem (cowan 2000: 2). it is important to determine what the real situation is because one might have been mistaken in your initial experience. this phase uses descriptive research based on literary and/or empirical methods. a historical survey of published works, archived records and interviews are useful to get a clear picture of the historical development of the situation. an important part of phase two is how the problem developed and why it is the way it is. one wants to determine which forces are at work and led to this problem. this sets the direction for the biblical and practical response in the next phase (smith 2016: 155; fleischer 2000: 35). 3.3.3 phase three: interpret the world as it should be (judging) the judging or testing phase is the heart of the reflective process that interprets the world as it should be. for evangelical theologians the bible takes centre-stage in this phase, and other sources as seen as secondary. the focus is on one’s ministerial praxis in light of the four contexts of ministry defined by the whiteheads and lonergan: (i) christian tradition; (ii) personal experience; (iii) culture; and (iv) the institutional context of ministry. this phase is a hermeneutical task that offers a summary of insights gained and judges one’s understanding of christian tradition and human experience, and arrives at suggestions for responsible living (fleischer 2000: 36). 79 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13329 this phase develops a theological model, based on biblical perspectives and the sources of context that were discussed earlier. smith (2016: 155) suggests that the biblical aspect should take the form of a survey or overview analysis of scriptural teachings related to the research problem. one must work though the scriptures and explain how they address the topic. the works of authoritative biblical scholars must be consulted. 3.3.4 phase four: interpret your contemporary obligations (deciding) the decision phase is a summary of the new insights that were gained in the previous phases. it leads to new action in the praxis cycle, which has the potential of bringing positive change to the situation (fleischer 2000: 35). this action plan must reflect the theological findings of the previous step. though implementation of the findings does not form part of the lim model, one should offer concrete and detailed recommendations to remedy the problem that exists, with reference to (i) the historical and empirical analysis of the present situation, (ii) the synopsis of biblical and theological findings, and (iii) practical suggestions to correct the current problem (smith 2016: 156). this must be done with sensitivity toward the people involved, and the recommendations must be described in terms of the context of the contemporary church. 80 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13329 figure 1 schematic representation of the lim model1 4 key aspects of missiological research in order to adapt the lim model for missiological use, we briefly summarize three key concepts which are indispensable for missiology. 4.1 missio dei for several centuries, the church saw itself as the ‘author’ or ‘authority’ on mission, travelling to foreign lands, taking the gospel from western countries to the so-called uncivilized. this view has undergone major changes in the last century, and in modern missiology there is only one mission – the missio dei (whitworth 2019: ix, 5). the basic meaning of the latin term missio dei is ‘the sending of god’ (whitworth 2019: 3). this connects well with the lim model, which takes place “within the wider meta-context of all god’s creation …transcend the limits of human knowing … to learn from creation by listening to god’s voice in the diversity of the natural world” (lamont 2018: 2). the starting point of missio dei is not the ecclesia or the missio humanitatis, but god himself (rosin in whitworth, 2019: 4). we are not sent by the church to make disciples that conform to our ways; we are sent by god, through the missio dei, to draw people 1 this is the author’s own schematic representation of the lim model. 81 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13329 to him (niles 2002: 363). through the missio dei, we become part of god’s family, witnessing to, and participating in god’s work of saving and reconciling people to him ( johnson 2016: xvi). missio dei is god’s mission, which becomes our mission. it propels the church from “worship and fellowship into the frontiers of god’s reign” (sunquist 2013: 16; teer 2020: 535, 553; whitworth 2019: 3). in missio dei (i) god sends his son and the holy spirit; but (ii) god is also the content of this sending (heikkilä 2018: 79). already in the early church, irenaeus and tertullian taught that the son was sent from god. athanasius and the cappadocian fathers expanded this sending of the son from the father, by adding that the holy spirit was sent from the father through the son. augustine referred to it as the “sentness” of jesus by the father (ubeilvolc 2016: 7). an important turning point came in the last century with the formal introduction of the term missio dei. it started with karl barth who gave a lecture in 1932 on the relationship between the trinity and mission (voss 2016: np; langmead 2014: 69; newbigin 1989: 119). he believed that theologians and the church have wrongly defined mission from an anthropocentric vantage point (whitworth 2019: 4). barth’s concept was further developed at the 1952 imc gathering at willingen, germany; the focus shifted to the fact that the church’s mission was grounded in the divine mission (konz 2018: 336; kollman 2011: 433). this was further developed in georg vicedom’s book, which was published in 1958, entitled missio dei (konz 2018: 336). the goal of god’s mission is not the church but his kingdom, and therefore god acts both in and apart from die church (moreau 2000: 637; pocock, van rheenen and mcconnell 2005: 503; mashau 2018: 132). god is missionary by nature, and he calls the church to participate in this activity (heikkilä 2018: 83; voss 2016; moltmann 1977: 64; langmead 2014: 69). three significant changes took place in the understanding of mission in the second half of the previous century: (i) missio dei became the foundation of all mission; (ii) this led to a shift from missions to mission; and (iii) a missional ecclesiology emerged (ott straus & tennent 2010: 376). all fields of theology need to contemplate how the missio dei affects their respective domains. if indeed god is a missionary god, all theology should centre around this. and if the focus of christian faith is on god’s son who was sent to forgive and save, then all theology should seek to understand the missio dei and promote it (langmead 2013: 70). bosch (2011: 494) states that the church stops being the church if it is not missionary. similarly, theology that is not missiological is not theology. missio dei is the essence of mission and missiology (bosch, 2011: 494–96; langmead 2013: 67;whitworth 2019: x, 14–15; wright 2006: 20). 82 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13329 whitworth (2019: 7–8) presents four views of missio dei, defined by prominent missiologists over the last century. (i) david bosch focused on god’s nature and activity as the centre of missio dei. the church participates with god, who is involved in the world. (ii) johannes verkuyl emphasized god’s reign over creation and humanity, with the aim of establishing his kingdom. (iii) for emilio castro, the mission of god was focused on god and his activities, and christians and the church were drawn into communion with him. (iv) christopher wright described missio dei as our participation as god’s people, at god’s invitation and command, in god’s own mission within the history of god’s world for the redemption of god’s creation (whitworth 2019 :8). we can conclude this summary of missio dei in kritzinger’s (2011: 52) words, “it is about the reign of god that has entered into this broken world as a transformative power in jesus; that continues to be manifested transformatively in our midst by the work of the holy spirit … so that we too may encounter other people, thus creating the church as the community of the kingdom, working for and waiting for the coming reign of god.” 4.2 christocentricity it is impossible to conceive of mission without focusing on christ, who is the centre of god’s mission. he is the son of god who became flesh to take away the sin of humanity ( jn 1). driven by the missio dei and his sacrificial love, jesus emptied himself to become one of us.2 “to see the gospel, and our mission, as being not only about spiritual good news, and not even only about people, but about god’s good plans for the whole created order is a fundamental shift in mission thinking” (ross & smith, 2018). 4.2.1 divinity of jesus jesus shares the identity of yhwh, and performs actions that are uniquely and exclusively associated with yhwh: jesus is creator,3 ruler,4 judge5 and saviour,6 the new testament made no distinction between jesus and the god of the old testament (wright 2006: 121–22). if you have seen jesus, you have seen the father ( jn 14.9). the father sent the son and the son obeyed god’s mission to israel and beyond. “the god of israel, whose declared mission was to make himself known to the nations 2 isa. 7.14; 8:8; mt. 1.22-23; 28.20; jn 1.14; 3.16; phil. 1 & 2; rev. 21.3. 3 jn 1.3, 10; 1 cor. 8.6; col. 1.16; heb. 1.2. 4 jn 18.36; eph. 1.20-21; 1 tim. 6.13-16; heb. 1.3-4; rev. 1.5-6; 10.13, 16; 17.14. 5 mt. 19.28; jn 5.22, 27; 9.39; acts 10.42; 17.31; 2 cor. 5.10; 2 tim. 4.8; rev. 19.11. 6 mt. 1.21; lk. 2.11; 19.10; jn 4.42; acts 4.12; 13.23; eph. 5.23; phil. 3.20; 1 tim. 1.15; 2 tim. 1.10; tit. 2.13; 1 jn 4.14. 83 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13329 through israel, now wills to be known to the nations through the messiah, the one who embodies israel in his own person and fulfills the mission of israel to the nations” (wright 2006: 123). the missio dei expresses god’s desire to make himself known. he did that throughout the old testament using various messengers, he did it in the new testament through his son, and he does it today through every obedient servant. wright (2006: 129) points out that our involvement with god’s mission is both humbling and reassuring. it is humbling because it reminds us that we are not the initiators of mission but only secondary messengers and participants. it is reassuring because it reminds us that we are part of the greatest mission of all, with christ at its centre. 4.2.2 the supremacy of jesus christ is supreme over all, and he is exalted above horizontal comparisons with founders of other religions. the only comparison that is possible, is with god himself, and in that lies the truth of jesus’ divine identity. “christocentric biblical monotheism is profoundly missionary … yhwh is god in heaven above and the earth beneath, and there is no other, and that jesus is lord, and there is no other name under heaven given to humanity by which we must be saved” (wright 2006: 131). verster (2021: 122) rightly points out that “without the eternal existence, the cross, and the resurrection of jesus, there is no mission. without the deep christological implications of the divinity of the man jesus christ, the clear understanding of mission is blurred. a theologia crucis, or theology of the cross, must always be the main element of mission and missiology.” missiology is christocentric, and cannot exist without focusing on the cross. “without the cross, no hope and salvation is possible … the cross is followed by the resurrection as proof of jesus as son of god … at the cross, god is present in this tragic world. at the cross, one sees god’s reply to the world. the glory of the resurrection fulfils what happened on the cross” (verster 2021: 123). mission gives hope to a lost world (verster 2021: 125). “when human beings in this world have nowhere to turn to, the church through the missio dei in mission reaches out to them. this is the hope of the cross. only then will mission and missiology have a future” (verster 2021: 130). 4.3 contextuality in our discussion of contextuality, we focus on the integration between the contexts of the researcher and the research topic. 84 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13329 4.3.1 all theology is contextual theology bevans (2018) is famous for stating that universal theology, with universal application, does not exist – the only theology that exists is contextual theology. a particular place, time and culture form the basis of theology. contextual theology comprises two elements: (i) the experience of the past, represented by scripture and tradition, and (ii) the experience of the present, represented by the real-life situation of christians in a particular time and place (bevans 2018: 2; ngubane 2013: 93). contextual theology requires critical dialogue between past and present experiences. the scriptures and tradition aid us in measuring, judging, interpreting, and criticizing our present experiences (bevans 2018: 2). likewise, our experiences measure, judge, interpret and critique the classical sources. according to bevans, contextual theology consists of four elements: (i) the spirit and message of the gospel; (ii) the traditions of christian communities; (iii) the culture of a particular group or region; and (iv) the social changes that occur within each of these communities. pocock, van rheenen and mcconnell (2005: 502) state that the term contextualization was introduced in 1972 in order to encourage mutual understanding between the researcher and the research context. our participation in the missio dei requires sensitivity to our context and the research context. jesus’s incarnation was an example of contextual sensitivity because he emptied himself and took on human form (phil. 2.1-11). contextual research can only succeed if we approach it with an open mind, inviting critical dialogue between the conversation partners (ngubane 2013: 144). some skills to help with this include “‘i’ statements, concreteness, appropriate self-disclosure, gatekeeping, and inviting more information” (fleischer 2016: 80, in lamont 2018: 4). 4.3.2 the dangers of universal theology niles (2002: 363) states that “the word in isolation in and of itself is not good news, but the proclamation and action that shows how the word has become flesh in specific situations, is good news”. historically, missionaries colonized those who were perceived as inferior, by conveying a message that was isolated in and of itself. it is not good news for the oppressed to hear that their ways are evil, and that the only remedy is to conform to the ways of their oppressors. in fact, that is rather grim news (kraft 2011: 6–10). duraisingh (in barnes-davies, 2002: 592) blames two social forces for this, (i) you either stand opposed to the “other”, or (ii) you assimilate life elements and call it “your own”. we must not succumb to forces that silence the “other” but must rather value the “other” as “other”. this shifts missiology from a quest for power and 85 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13329 control to a place of service. instead of only focusing on our own story, which rejects and excludes the “other”, we must allow multi-voiced inter-contextual communion, listening to the different narratives of the “other” and maintaining a creative tension between us and them (duraisingh in barnes-davies 2002: 601). 4.3.3 questioning as key to contextuality questioning formed part of the jewish-christian tradition, and is a still an effective way of contextualization and mutual transformation (kritzinger 2002: 144–45). questioning establishes a special connection between god and humanity. god connects to us through questions and our responses to his questions lead to accountability. humans can also ask god questions and in the process gain understanding. in mark 8.29 jesus asked his disciples who they thought he was.7 when we read the passage today, the same question confronts us. there is no final answer to jesus’ question and traditional orthodoxy and colonial missions were wrong to presume that they had the answer to this question and simply had to export this answer to the rest of the world (kritzinger 2002: 145). “what the church of christ … should seek is not the definitive answer to this question but tentative and provisional answers in concrete contexts … to discover who jesus is for us today and therefore what our missions in his name could look like in our respective contexts” (kritzinger 2002:145). inasmuch as the researcher questions the context, the context questions the researcher. like the examples from scripture, the goal of this questioning is not to find definitive answers but to ask probing questions. in the process we learn about the research context and our own context. “when lim students explore their concerns within their personal ministry context; for example, they often analyze their personality type and explore the strengths and weakness in their communication skills” (lamont 2018 :4). our horizon (thiselton 1992: 44–46), our context, or our cultural environment (hofstede, hofstede and minkov, 2010) influences our epistemology and determines how we interpret the world. “when we do not understand, for example, how much our culture influences our theology, we are easily seduced into believing that we are communicating a gospel free of cultural bias, when, in fact, we may be blind to our own cultural and deminational ethnocentrism. we will confuse what is cultural with what we think is biblical” (whiteman 1997: 137; also see kraft 2011: 30). 7 other examples of questions asked by jesus include mk 8.27, 29; 15.34; lk. 18.41; jn 5.6; 6.67; 8.10; 21.15; acts 9.4. 86 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13329 western logic seeks truth that is applied universally. “this happens when a religion, a nation or a culture is made into a centre, and is the same logic which operated in the colonial conquests, and today continues in the neo-colonial dynamics of globalization” (duraisingh 2002: 363; kraft 2011: 7, 30). missiology departing from this premise promotes an “us” and “them” mentality where the “other” from another context is seen as inferior, and in need of redemption from their ways. missional contextuality is needed where the researcher and the “researched” as partners, or co-workers, learn from one another. “mission as praxis is about concrete transformation…among people, and between the living god and people, leading to people being called, sent, healed, and empowered” (kritzinger 2011: 52). 5 the limm model of missiological research for the limm model of missiological research, we kept “lim” in recognition of the work done by the loyola institute for ministry but added an additional “m” to represent missional action. we renamed each step of the model to correspond to the acronym limm: l = life-situation i = interpret the life-situation m = model preferred scenario m = missional action missio dei, christocentricity and contextuality (mdcc) are three distinct terms that are interrelated and impossible to separate because (i) the father sends the son, (ii) the son comes to live in our context, and (iii) he sends us out to make him known in all contexts (to the ends of the earth, mt. 28.19). mdcc has a key function in the formulation, examination and explanation of every phase of the limm model. it is not necessary to describe every phase of the research in terms of all three concepts because in certain cases one aspect might be more applicable than another. 5.1 the limm model at the time of writing, the limm proposal is nothing more than an experimental model. however, the author intends to test the model in the near future, by researching the challenges faced within the context of his own church, as the church is transitioning from a traditional church model to a cell-church that meets in the homes of believers. 87 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13329 5.1.1 limm phase one: life-situation guided by mdcc, the researcher shares his or her own experience and understanding of the topic under investigation, expounding (i) the details of the experience, (ii)  important aspects of the experience, and (iii) emotions aroused by the experience. this is not based on scientific observations and reflections but the researcher simply states his or her understanding of the problem and the reasons it exists (fleischer 2000: 35; smith 2016: 153). in this phase, mdcc principles are used to examine, evaluate and formulate the research in missiological terms. the researcher uses his or her understanding of mdcc to evaluate the research topic. here are some examples of questions that could be asked: – to what extent is the missio dei promoted or neglected in the current situation? – does the situation sufficiently focus on the proclamation of christ, and how will the research advance the proclamation of christ? – what are the differences between the researcher’s context and the research context? how does the researcher’s context affect his or her view of the topic? what questions are being asked by the researcher and to the researcher? this phase ends with a clear formulation of the research in mdcc terms. 5.1.2 limm phase two: interpret the life-situation the researcher gathers data to interpret the life-situation, by breaking it down into three categories: (i) what is the real situation; (ii) how did it develop; (iii) why is it the way it is? the personal experience described by the researcher in phase one is now scrutinized through research based on mdcc principles. the researcher wants to understand what missiological deficiencies led to the situation. suitable methodologies to trace the historical development of the situation include descriptive research, based on literary and/or empirical methods, and a historical survey of published works, archived records and interviews. note that there is a twofold focus when interpreting the life-situation: (i) the researcher examines the elements of the research problem that was formulated in phase one; (ii) this is not done in a vacuum but against the backdrop of mdcc. for example, when the researcher asks “what is the real situation?” he or she wants to know what the real situation is in light of mdcc. 88 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13329 mdcc is the plumbline of the limm model. it is both a tool to determine what is going on, and it facilitates the discovery of possible solutions. helpful questions that could be asked in phase two include: – how can the present situation be described in terms of mdcc? – what role did the presence or absence of mdcc play in the development of the current state of affairs? – why is the situation the way it is, in terms of mdcc? 5.1.3 limm phase three: model the preferred scenario this phase envisages the situation as it should be, from a biblical and theological perspective. in phases one and two we introduced the research topic and defined it though research, in light of mdcc. phase three follows the same logic: (i) the researcher searches for biblical and theological guidance related to the life situation under investigation; and (ii) the researcher seeks for biblical and theological support that will promote mdcc principles. – what can we learn from the bible and theology about the research topic? – what would an applicable contextual theology be for this research topic? – how should mdcc best be applied to bring the research topic in line with god’s mission in god’s way? 5.1.4 limm phase four: missional action missiological research must never be simply academic but it should lead to participation in sharing the good news across borders to all of humanity. if the outcome of missiological research does not promote mdcc, we have missed the mark. a way forward should be proposed that honours mdcc principles, for example: – to fulfil the missio dei in this situation, one must … – to ensure that christ is proclaimed as good news in this context, one should … – a new contextual theology that directs the praxis in this situation, focusses on … 89 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13329 in the schematic representation of the adapted limm model below, mdcc stands central, and every phase of the model flows from it and through it: figure 2 schematic representation of the limm model8 5.2 potential application of the limm model this paper introduced a new missiological research model, which is being development. in order to stimulate reflection, a few examples are offered that illustrate how this model may be used, either as a diagnostic tool or as a development tool. 5.2.1 as a diagnostic tool as a diagnostic tool, it examines an existing life-situation or ministry, by reflecting on the researcher’s understanding of mdcc and his or her own experience of the situation, as well as the details and important aspects of the experience, and the emotions elicited by the experience (fleischer 2000: 35; smith 2016: 153). the research is developed with a missiological focus; questions such as the following are raised: – how does missio dei inform the current ministry? 8 this is the author’s own schematic representation of the limm model. 90 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13329 – is there sufficient focus on the proclamation of christ, and how can the proclamation of christ be advanced? – what is the influence of the researcher’s context on the ministry context, and vice versa? these findings are compared to the preferred scenario, and missional action is proposed to improve the life-situation or ministry. 5.2.1.1 academic research academic research is one example of how limm can be used as a diagnostic tool, where the researcher identifies a life-situation or ministry that he or she wants to examine. limm serves as the academic research model and the elements of the limm model direct the researcher’s analysis and evaluation of the situation. this is measured against mdcc principles as well as biblical and theological contributions. based on this research, a more effective approach can be envisioned. 5.2.1.2 ministry another example is when a ministry uses limm to evaluate how well they incorporate mdcc principles. for instance, mission organizations could use the model to evaluate their ministry projects in light of biblical, theological and mdcc principles, to determine if their ministries are still fulfilling the organization’s mandate. 5.2.2 development as a development tool, the limm model is used to plan a new ministry, and to determine what is needed to succeed. the researcher explains his or her expectations of the future ministry, including the details and important aspects of the expectations, and emotions aroused by the expectations. the context is surveyed by engaging with, and observing key people and ministries. mdcc principles form the backbone of planning the new ministry and is guided by questions such as: – how will the new ministry proclaim christ? – are there elements of the researcher’s context that could clash with the ministry context, and how can this be addressed? based on these findings, the new ministry is launched. 5.2.2.1 evangelism a church engaged in evangelism and church planting can serve as an example. as they prepare to launch a new ministry, they could use limm as planning tool, to see if their regular approach will work in the new setting. the model brings the church’s 91 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13329 ministry-understanding and prejudice into dialogue with the new context. this enables them to adapt their ministry model to be most effective in the new setting. 5.2.2.2 overseas mission another example is when a person senses a call to serve as a missionary abroad. by using limm as planning tool, the person can learn about the cultural, economic, religious and social aspects of the people he or she is called to minister to. limm will also challenge the person to become aware of, and evaluate, his or her own understanding of mdcc principles, and how missionary work should be conducted. 6 conclusion the lim model, developed by the loyola institute for ministry, is based on pastoral praxis, where theological reflection is in constant dialogue with action. based on mutual trust between the conversation partners, hidden assumptions are exposed that lead to new insights, awareness and understanding. practical theology is not only concerned with understanding the world as it is, but contributes to the world becoming what god intended it to be. it is correlational, hermeneutical, critical and transformative. the focus on pastoral praxis, contextual engagement and contributing to the world becoming what god wants it to be, means that the lim model is an ideal basis for missiology to build on. the aspects of the missio dei, christocentricity and contextuality resonate with the essence of the lim model, and contribute to the development of a new approach to missiological research – the limm model, as proposed in this paper. about the author dr pieter labuschagne is the curriculum coordinator at the south african theological seminary and leads the course development team. he earned a phd from the university of pretoria, and served as a missionary for twenty years with serving in mission. his research interests include postcolonialism, africanization, cross-cultural studies and missiological research methods. contact: pieter@sats.ac.za mailto:pieter@sats.ac.za 92 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13329 references barnes-davies, p. 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practical theology. new orleans: loyola institute for ministry, loyola university. heikkilä, i. 2018. “the world council of churches mission statement ‘together towards life’: mission, evangelism and missio dei.” european journal of theology 27(1). hofstede, g., g. hofstede and m. minkov. 2010. cultures and organizations: software of the mind: intercultural cooperation and its importance for survival. revised and expanded third ed. new york: mcgraw-hill. johnson, a. 2016. holiness and the missio dei. eugene, or: cascade books. kollman, p. 2011. “at the origins of mission and missiology: a study in the dynamics of religious language.” journal of the american academy of religion 79(2). konz, d. 2018. “the even greater commission: relating the great commission to the missio dei, and human agency to divine activity, in mission.” missiology 46(4). kraft, c. 2011. anthropology for christian witness. new york: orbis books. kritzinger, k. 2002. “a question of mission – a mission of questions.” missionalia 30(1). ———. 2011. “‘mission as …’ must we choose? a dialogue with bosch, bevans & schroeder and schreiter in the south african context.” missionalia 30(1–2). lamont, t. 2018. “safe spaces or brave spaces? reflections in practical theology and transformative learning theories.” paper presented at 2018 rea annual meeting, 2–4 november. langmead, r. 2014. “what is missiology?” missiology 42(1). lonergan, b. 1968. “theology in its new context.” theology of renewal. new york: herder & herder. mashau, d. 2018. “standing where god stands: jnj kritzinger as an encountering missionary and missiologist.” missionalia 46(1). moltmann, j. 1977. the church in the power of the spirit: a contribution to messianic ecclesiology. london: scm press. moreau, a.s. (ed.). 2000. evangelical dictionary of world missions. grand rapids, mi: baker books. newbigin, l. 1989. the gospel in a pluralist society. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. ngubane, s. 2013. “towards a christological missiology for africa: on-going relevance of jesus christ in missions in south africa.” phd dissertation. bloemfontein: university of the free state. niles, p. 2002. “toward the fullness of life: intercontextual relationships in mission.” international review of mission 91. 93 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13329 ott, c., s. straus and t. tennent. 2010. encountering theology of mission: biblical foundations, historical development, and contemporary issues. grand rapids, mi: baker academic. pocock, m., g. van rheenen and d. mcconnell. 2005. the changing face of world missions: engaging contemporary issues and trends. grand rapids, mi: baker academic. ross, c., and c. smith. 2018. missional conversations: a dialogue between theory and praxis in world mission. london: scm 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and the missio dei: a canonical, catholic, and contextual perspective. princeton theological monograph series. eugene, or: wipf and stock. whiteman, d. 1997. “the role of the behavioral sciences in miossiological education.” in j. d. woodberry, c. van engen and e. j. ellison (eds), missiological education for the twenty-first century: the book, the circle, and the sandals (pp. 133–38). eugene, or: wipf and stock. whitworth, d. 2019. missio dei and the means of grace. eugene, or: cascade books. woodbridge, n. 2014. “the edna model for doing research in practical theology: a biblical approach.” conspectus 17(3). wright, c.\ 2006. the mission of god : unlocking the bible’s grand narrative. downers grove, il: ivp academic. ecclesial futures 2023 1 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13628 doi: 10.54195/ef13628 a congregational study on mission readiness: toward a practical ecclesiology of practical action mark g. harden abstract the case study investigates mission readiness as a form of church mobilization involving participants and the investigator constructing a framework of ministry practices for analysis. the participants were from a local church interested in improving ministry practices for social engagement. i collaborated with a local church using a self-assessment tool i developed for church mobilization readiness assessments. the input following the assessment results was based on critical realism epistemology and ontology. best practices of mission readiness served as a basis for facilitating participants using critical realism methodology in workshops. the workshops included participants using triangulation and thought operations. the question for the study was: how do congregations assign practical theological meaning in assessing their performance in mission readiness for church mobilization? the results demonstrate how a critical realism methodology helps transform and improve ministry practices. critical realism thought operation methods were appropriate for practical theological analysis in church mobilization. participants contributed additional action items for the framework. this article includes mapping tables with summary descriptions of elements of the framework. the mapping tables highlight transformation points to illustrate the results of participants’ self-assessments and planning activities to improve elements of mission readiness. further study may help investigators demonstrate how the framework is helpful beyond the limited use of the framework. keywords: missional ecclesiology, church mobilization, mission readiness, congregational assessment, church engagement 2 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13628 introduction in recent years, there has been a shortage of empirical research on church mobilization to assist practical theologians in understanding how congregations perform and assign meaning to these practices. although studies were designed to establish an empirical basis for community mobilization best practices, these studies were not focused on church mobilization per se ( joffre et al. 2002; kraftarian et al. 1997; lippman et al. 2016). other studies on social ministry and social action practices may serve as an empirical foundation for conducting studies in church mobilization (dudley 2002; olson 2000; sider et al. 2002). this case study examined multiple practices to observe how congregations experience church mobilization on several dimensions. the opportunity emerged because of circumstances surrounding a collaborative project to assist congregations in assessing their performance and readiness to engage community members. moreover, this study examined the practical theological implications of using an analytical framework to develop a practical ecclesiology of ministry practices. this study assumes that church mobilization is a church praxis phenomenon that requires a congregational level of analysis. church praxis was theorized as a multi-faceted and multi-dimensional practical theological concept defined as a complex set of collective acts or performances by a congregation toward fulfilling its call to participate in god’s mission. in this study, church mobilization is broadly defined as empowering internal and external resources to implement strategies to increase member participation through meaningful social engagement to address one or more issues in the broader environment. the definition of church mobilization resulted from analysing strong predictors of performance and readiness using the church performance readiness inventory for quantitative analysis. the performance criteria consisted of items with scales of readiness that make up multiple constructs. four performance dimensions of church mobilization constructs serve as prospective models. the models for church mobilization were tested using multivariate statistical analysis based on a large sample of church performance readiness profiles. these include (1) mission readiness, (2) spiritual calling, (3) capacity for engagement, and (4) engagement readiness. this study will only discuss the results of one of these dimensions at a local church to lay a foundation for future practical theological investigations. mission readiness was the dimension of church mobilization selected for this case study. specifically, mission readiness refers to a congregation’s collective stake in the church’s personnel possessing the essential capabilities to execute and achieve its mission goals. there were six constructs identified for the self-assessment process in the study related to mission readiness, including (1) relational bonds, (2) church leaders, (3) dedicated support staff, (4) belief in the plan, (5) commitment to action, and (6) available capabilities. the question for this case study was: how do congregations assign practical theological meaning in assessing their performance in mission readiness for church mobilization? an answer to this 3 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13628 question may inform further studies investigating the other dimensions of church mobilization. review of literature relational bonds refer to the psychological benefits members may enjoy because of relationships and social identity (dutton et al. 2010; erdogan et al. 2012) and in an organizational setting (boyd et al. 2014; klien et al. 1986; pretty et al. 1992). relational bonds may help members establish trust (kraftarian 1997), and sustainable working relationships with stakeholders may strengthen their commitment to the mission (diani and bison 2004; lippman et al. 2016; sampson 2003). some studies suggest successful outcomes in clergy-led relational bonding efforts with outside stakeholders (cavendish 2001; morris 1984; olson 2000). this study’s theoretical definition for relational bonds was shared passions with internal and external stakeholders that know and trust congregations and support their public ministry. studies have also focused on leading actors involved in community mobilization practices (laverack and wallerstein 2001; norton et al. 2002), emphasizing the importance of leadership (kraftarian et al. 1997; laverack and wallerstein 2001; norton et al. 2002) and unplanned but expected leadership “from every member” ( joffres et al. 2002). the role of leaders in church mobilization for social engagement has been well documented (barnes 2005; cavendish 2001; lee 2003; mccalla 2005; morris 1984; olson 2000; pattillo-mccoy 1998; unruh 2005). in this study, the theoretical definition for church leaders is those who guide church growth and keep mobilization efforts on track throughout all new or ongoing phases. dedicated support staff was those individuals in the organization positioned to perform specific tasks associated with the mobilization effort (kraftarian et al. 1997; lippman et al. 2016; mcadam 1999; norton et al. 2002; tilly 2004). churches organize their resources to cope with the complexity of the challenges of social engagement and collaborate with community partners (barnes 2005; cavendish 2001; dudley 2002; lee 2003; mccalla 2005; morris 1984; olson 2000; pattillo-mccoy 1998; scheie et al. 1994; sider et al. 2002; unruh and sider 2005). in this study, the theoretical definition of dedicated support staff was church-based staff with logistical and technical administrative skills to assist members in implementing church ministry. belief in the plan involved members having a sense of ownership and feeling heard when providing input, developing a sense of efficacy, and building trust among the stakeholders (buechler 1995; edelman 2001; joffres et al. 2002; kraftarian et al. 1997; tilly 2004). this suggests a relationship between what members believe and the 4 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13628 plan’s credibility. findings suggest that church beliefs are connected to “social-structural realities” until the strategies become implausible (swidler 1986). therefore, churches seek reliable and objective information for effective social engagement. reliable and objective information includes understanding the context, barriers, local institutions and demographics (dudley 2002). additional findings suggest that churches take care to ensure the participation of others in the planning process (dudley 2002). in this study, the theoretical definition of belief in the plan was that members believe it is feasible for the church to achieve its goals with the desired impact. commitment to action findings suggests that this has to do with the members’ commitment to action for church mobilization for social engagement ( joffres et al. 2002; kraftarian et al. 1997). churches use partnerships to sustain commitment over time and use their church’s language of compassion to gain member support (dudley 2002). in this study, the theoretical definition of commitment to action was church members vested in ensuring the congregation’s actions benefit those in need. available essential capabilities were found to have to do with members in the organization who can take immediate action ( joffres et al. 2002; kraftarian et al. 1997; mcadam 1999; norton et al. 2002). churches regularly use volunteers to implement their ministries as a necessity (dudley 2002). this study’s theoretical definition was members with core competencies to execute the plan to achieve the target goals. analytical framework for church praxis in a previous study, the analytical framework for church praxis in figure 1 resulted from empirical observations of church performance and readiness for social engagement. central features of the analytical framework consist of two interrelated and interconnected models of interdependent systems: church praxis and missiological praxis models. the models are conceptual tools to explain, interpret, and translate how congregations observe and experience social engagement as a community. although praxis theory is the starting point for using the framework for modelbuilding, its triangulated elements are sensitive to changes and knowledge about other elements. the framework comprises interrelated and interconnected systems understood within a stratified and differentiated reality (danermark et al. 2002). the principal elements of each system in the framework facilitate a practical theological process toward understanding ministry practices. three elements of praxis and ecclesial theory require a descriptive process for understanding what is happening or what activities participants are experiencing. action is a generalized term that 5 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13628 refers to activities involving one or more actors toward achieving an intended goal. the theory is a generalized term that refers to the implicit logic or rationale of the activities that explain the action. context is the situation or environment of action and theory that enables, creates, constrains or limits activities. the norm in the ecclesial theory system refers to the underlying patterns reflective of the congregation’s culture relative to performance and readiness that influence praxis theory. form refers to a contemporary characteristic or category that describes praxis theory and its significance for church praxis. function refers to the purpose of praxis theory as a description of the expected benefits and rewards experienced by the congregation and other actors. ecclesial elements were observed as using practical and theological reasoning about what was happening. this facilitates a triangulated and correlated theological analysis based on the theories and concepts introduced using the doctrinal theory system’s principal elements. the doctrinal theory’s mission of god element refers to members’ beliefs and knowledge about god’s plan for all creation. the people of god element refers to the church and community’s spiritual identity as perceived by the members. the spirit of god refers to how members perceive the empowering work and ministry of the holy spirit in the church. the doctrinal theory elements are structures and causal mechanisms that theologically correspond to praxis and ecclesial theory elements. figure 1 systems, structures and causal mechanisms of church praxis theory context action norm function form mission of god spirit of god people of god church praxis model missiological praxis model doctrinal theory ecclesial theory praxis theory a previous study validating this framework suggested that six propositional axioms may be used to examine church praxis models. these propositional axioms include the following. 1. when a new praxis theory emerges, a new ecclesial theory will emerge, and vice versa. 6 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13628 2. when one praxis theory element changes, the other praxis theory elements will change. 3. when one ecclesial theory element changes, the other ecclesial theory elements will change. 4. when an ecclesial theory element changes and any praxis theory elements remain the same, the ecclesial theory may also correspond to the praxis theory. 5. changes to any element will influence changes to elements in praxis and ecclesial theory. 6. the doctrinal theory and its theological elements may be true or untrue for a church praxis model. these features and propositional axioms of the analytical framework assisted with examining the congregation’s development toward constructing a practical theology of church praxis. however, the axioms were applied to participant inputs only and set limits on the results. background this study used a critical realism approach to explore and develop a theological-theoretical framework to understand church praxis. a multiple-case study design approach was used to investigate varying degrees of church praxis among conservative or evangelical churches in their respective social context. the convenient sample of churches resulted from collaborating with a national evangelical church denomination seeking to mobilize their churches to address multicultural issues among constituent groups. i developed an assessment tool that measures degrees of performance readiness for social engagement. the denominational church leaders collectively decided to address issues of diversity and inclusion before learning about the study or assessment tool. upon hearing about the tool, church participants requested access to the readiness assessment. the multiple case study validated the instrument i produced and allowed me to collaborate with individual congregations using the assessment tool. this study aims to demonstrate how results can be utilized for theological reflection and improving ministry practices at a local church through collaboration. participants the participants in this case study were from a large church congregation who completed an online self-assessment survey about their mission readiness for social engagement. the church is in the central part of the united states. members were interested in learning what they needed to do to prepare to become socially engaged in the broader culture. the participants comprised 23 men and women selected by 7 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13628 a church leader to participate. participants knew that the entire process of problem-solving and planning would take months and were committed for the duration as needed. according to their eschatological vision, the congregation desired to become a multicultural church, as indicated in revelation 7.9. the congregation was predominantly a church of caucasian americans in a county over 95% caucasian. the church is part of an affluent community experiencing an increased economic divide, with those earning $75,000 and over per household income against a growing population earning less. in recent years, the community has experienced demographic changes related to income. for instance, household income dropped by an average of 25% in the church’s county. however, compared, those experiencing poverty in the u.s. are at four times the county rate. the church is situated within two miles of a growing diverse community that has the potential to influence these changes (grammich et al. 2023). data collection this study used the church performance readiness inventory to facilitate church leaders conducting self-assessments of the church’s readiness to be mobilized for social engagement. the items were on a scale to see how ready churches were for social engagement. the church performance readiness inventory was an online digital survey comprising 18 constructs that functioned as predicates of readiness and action within a multi-dimensional framework. there are 45 behavioral items. the constructs and the instrument items were validated using regression analysis. mission readiness constructs were significantly correlated as a model of predictors for mission readiness. the scale is a continuum that measures poor readiness to ready for action. the response choices ranged from 1 to 6, with 6 points designated for the perceived highest frequency of activities indicating readiness at the community level. the scale responses measured perceptions about the church as follows: 1) almost never true, 2) rarely true, 3) usually not true, 4) occasionally true, 5) often true, and 6) almost always true. questions allowed participants to respond to reflect on their perception of how frequently the actions occurred at the church level. the items measured an aspect of each dimension based on an individual’s perception of the church’s readiness. the interpretation of readiness scores was based on the percentage of members mobilized for social engagement to achieve mission goals. scores computed to indicate strong readiness (equal or greater than 90%), ready (80–89%), moderately ready (70–79%), low readiness (60–69%), somewhat unready (50–59%), unready (40–49%), and not applicable (39% or less). average readiness scores were used to assess performance in each dimension of church mobilization. mission readiness was one dimension measured for this study. each participant received a report of the findings to provide focus group feedback and contribute to an open-ended questionnaire based on a consensus. 8 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13628 procedure i facilitated participant involvement through stages in the assessment and practical theological reflection process. the process involves systematically investigating a ministry practice using nomological analytical methods to build a framework. nomological analytics involves using assessment results, triangulation and thought operations to examine ministry practices to improve performance readiness. assessment results and the adopted best practices were necessary for valid inferences to produce key success factors and new ideas for additional action. triangulation facilitated participants validating practical action with the ministry context and biblical values communicated in tradition. thought operation reasoning about what key success factors were necessary to produce valid ‘concrete’ ministry practices for the framework. after reviewing the average scores on readiness, i guided participants in analytical methods to generate descriptions for the properties of each component part of the framework (see figure 1) during workshop activities. there were three activities. first, participants reviewed and adopted activities of best practices for mission readiness. impact analysis methods based on their experience validated best practices of church mobilization and informed the framework. participants also triangulated new activities with their values and interaction settings for environmental factors. participants also brainstormed for new activities to address issues that emerged during their impact analysis of factors they identified. the participants generated practical action input according to the framework components’ properties. participant inputs were mapped as significant points of transformation for the framework. results a detailed description of the results based on the scoring, interpretation, and additions to improve the elements of mission readiness are in the mapping tables below for each construct. the mission readiness assessment indicated that the congregation was experiencing unreadiness with low and moderate readiness. one exceptional development in the congregation’s performance on the church leaders’ scale indicated they were experiencing a sense of being ready. however, on one action, under church leaders, they were experiencing low readiness. the results of church mobilization for mission readiness were as follows. relational bonds performance was assessed as low readiness. dedicated support staff indicated the congregation was moderately ready. the belief in the plan assessment indicated unreadiness. commitment to action results showed low readiness. available 9 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13628 capabilities indicated low readiness. the participants further assessed these performances in mission readiness using the framework for assigning practical and theological meaning. practical theological perspectives the result of relational bonds was low readiness, indicating a need for performance improvements in praxis theory and ecclesial theory (table 1). participation in activities for relational bonds was insufficient. relational bonds were associated with the biblical concept of compassion because it has to do with helping members experience making a difference in the lives of others. compassion was the motif for creating opportunities for the people of god to establish relationships to address needs in the community. community events promote social interaction with actors representing the issues and can lead to listening sessions to increase understanding of the needs in the community. the spirit of god leads the people of god to experience how showing compassion plays a role in fulfilling a faithful call to participate in the mission of god. table 1 mapping results of relational bonds for mission readiness action theory context create opportunities for members to develop relationships with community partners. (low readiness) organize community listening sessions to learn about community needs.* recruit volunteers to participate in relief services for people in need.* relationships can develop when people with a common interest come together. engaging in volunteer activities will help people to connect with community group members.* participant activities that involve creating opportun for people to interact may insufficient. (low readiness) form norm function educational outreach and social engagement processes lead to learning about opportunities and networking. social engagement events demonstrate compassion.* patterns of infrequent interaction with individuals or groups outside the congregation indicate low readiness. patterns of social interaction with individuals and groups outside of the congregation to increase readiness.* expand social interaction support church engageme the community context. expand social interaction demonstrate support for church engagement and compassion for communit members.* *indicates points of transformation 10 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13628 the assessment results for church leaders (table 2) indicated that the congregation was moderately ready for mission readiness. moderate readiness scores suggested activities related to church leaders may be insufficient for mobilizing the church. the participants’ interpretation was that church leaders might also refer to compassion (as stated above) and the concept of stewarding, which refers to leaders being able to manage and control conditions for the congregation to address issues for social engagement. stewarding involves helping others to understand how to lead, learn, and steward their resources and abilities to engage others. the motif of stewarding transforms how volunteers learn to lead as the people of god. church leaders are empowered by the holy spirit to model compassion and stewarding to facilitate and support healthy social interaction. the goal is to help the people of god experience competence in leaders who are spirit-filled with a congregation seeking to do god’s will. table 2 mapping results of church leaders for mission readiness action theory context train leaders who are responsible for church mission. (moderately ready) recruit motivated volunteers who will support church mission ministries. (moderately ready) facilitate members participating in local ministries through partnerships.* inform members about the impact of their investments in time, money, and talents.* training helps leaders learn how to lead. motivated volunteers will engage when invited to participate. training will help leaders learn how to care for and manage people.* volunteers who are eager to participate will learn what it takes to participate.* participation in training and recruiting for church mission to support church mobilization activities may be insufficient. (moderately ready) form norm function a process for creating leadership resources in the congregation. processes for helping people learn how to engage in mission ministries. awareness raising to help people to learn how to manage how they can engage in ministry.* participation in training activities for developing church leaders is moderate. there is moderate support for helping people to gain experience. there are informational activities to help people to gain experience.* create social support systems to manage activities to achieve mission-related goals. increase capacity for volunteers to engage in mission-related activities. empower individuals to participate.* *indicates points of transformation 11 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13628 the results regarding dedicated support staff suggest that the congregation’s performance and readiness profile were moderately ready (table 3). this score means that positioning dedicated support staff, using social networks, and using technology-based services performance may only result in moderate consistency in mobilizing the church to achieve mission goals. participant reflections about dedicated support staff were associated with the biblical concepts of hospitality and justice. participants understood that congregational readiness improvements required hospitality to increase resources and present valued resources to the congregation. for instance, dedicated support staff would be used to staff youth events to show support to the youth. staff could facilitate more members receiving ‘blessing bouquets’ to cultivate a sense of belonging. a mission goal related to justice is that staff importance is elevated to integrate a sense of justice or morality in defining their role. this will enhance the congregation’s reputation as a place where everyone is important. staff members are the people of god. attending to their needs involves providing them with resources so that the congregation and other actors receive assistance during mission-related activities. 12 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13628 table 3 mapping results of dedicated support staff for mission readiness action theory context place dedicated staff resources in a position to support achieving mission goals. (moderately ready) utilize social network resources to provide space to implement mission activities. (moderately ready) use technology-based services to create opportunities for members to participate. (moderately ready) staff youth activities with members.* expand blessing bouquets regularly for members to reach more people.* assigning staff to specific roles may help support the congregation’s participation. securing unutilized space within the social network may help expand mission activities. staffing youth activities will help youth feel welcome or valued.* positive messages will help to get people involved.* current levels of involvement and participation may be consistent with supporting these church mobilization activities. (moderately ready) form norm function a system for resource administration. they are problem-solving to expand resources. ministry development and innovation. strengthened capacity for these forms of activities.* resource management and development activity patterns suggest that the congregation is moderately ready. increase patterns of the above activities.* improve the availability of resources and opportunities to support mission-related activities. blessing bouquets will help them feel like they belong.* to produce more output for participation to happen.* *indicates points of transformation 13 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13628 in table 4, the belief in the plan performance and readiness profile for church praxis was low readiness. recruiting members to participate in decision-making and planning was moderate. however, the low readiness performance was insufficient for capitalizing on members interested in involvement and supporting those with skills to organize within the congregation. participants understood these conditions as emphasizing a need to focus on the biblical values of responding to god’s call for compassion on all humanity without exception. table 4 mapping results of belief in the plan for mission readiness action theory context recruit members who represent constituent groups to participate in decision-making and planning. (moderately ready) capitalize on members’ interest in being involved in mission-related activities. (low readiness) provide support for members who can organize activities to address needs. (low readiness) create time for members to hear testimonials about fulfilling a call to participate in ministry.* people from different perspectives may provide significant input. members are willing to participate when they have something to offer. members with organizing skills need support to engage fully. individuals with social organizing skills will know how to identify and recruit members for the mission.* there is insufficient support for congregational involvement and participation related to members’ belief in the planned activities. (low readiness) form norm function a process for empowering those who feel excluded. an inclusive approach to identifying volunteers. a process of using authority to appoint people for a specific task. church-based community organizing.* patterns indicate low to moderate readiness to engage constituent groups in decision-making and planning. the activities for including and appointing individuals are insufficient for achieving mission-related goals. the level of awareness will increase involvement.* empower marginalized individuals and groups who may or may not possess organizing skills to support church mobilization activities. increase awareness of the plan.* *indicates points of transformation members with organizing skills could identify congregants in the margins to involve them in providing input for mission activities as the people of god. their input for decision-making and planning to implement mission activities to increase participa14 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13628 tion is essential. asking members to share their testimony about their experience echoes the motif of compassion in finding ways to address the needs and circumstances of others. in table 5, the assessment results for congregational performance and readiness for commitment to action were moderate, with some unreadiness issues. somewhat unreadiness indicated limited access to opportunities to get involved, and that performance would be insufficient because of low consistency with a commitment to action. participants suggested the biblical value of stewarding facilitated understanding of the needs. people must feel confident about how members respond to the congregation’s call to the mission of god. when members hear about the magnitude of the need and the work the congregations do, it will help them think about their role in mission activities. this type of discernment occurs because of teachings and guidance about stewarding. congregations strengthen when members learn how the spirit of god. table 5 mapping results of commitment to action for mission readiness action theory context provide social engagement training to strengthen the congregation’s ability to address community issues. (moderately ready) assist members in the congregation who are passionate about the mission to get involved in ministry. (unready) create opportunities for the congregation to hear from members with ministry responsibilities.* create opportunities for members to assist with individual helping.* members of congregations can learn how to become socially engaged through training. members will participate in addressing issues about which they are passionate. testimonies help people relate to the needs of others.* one-on-one assistance makes helping more acceptable.* levels of involvement and participation are insufficient for consistency to support readiness for these activities. (unready) form norm function teaching activities about how the church’s mission can address needs in the world. guidance about how to participate in god’s mission. testimonials of fellow members.* facilitating helping others.* patterns of teaching members about church mission indicate moderate congregation readiness. the congregation’s patterns of participation in these activities indicate low readiness. personal connections with individuals are regular.* build a sense of collective efficacy and motivate members to use their skills. make an emotional connection with constituents on the fence.* *indicates points of transformation 15 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13628 in table 6, the assessment results indicate low readiness for available capabilities for mission in the congregation. this suggests that congregation members are infrequently working together to achieve mission-related goals. participants connected this to members collectively having a purpose that aligns with the biblical concept of calling. calling means being clear about the relevance of the church in one’s life and understanding that participation produces practical and spiritual benefits and rewards. a member’s calling is personal and may require someone to help who understands the calling experience. the people of god should set aside time and space for members to explore and understand what “called” means. table 6 mapping results of available capabilities for mission readiness action theory context collaborate with members who are already active in addressing social issues in the community. (low readiness) have lay members ready to help others explore their calling at the end of service.* schedule a place after sunday worship for members to assist others in their calling.* members can partner quickly with active members who share their desire to address issues in the community. people are more open to discussing being involved after worship.* finding a less busy setting will help people share views about calling.* levels of involvement and participation are insufficient to support partnering activities. (low readiness) form norm function co-laboring with fellow members in ministry. private discernment conversations.* patterns of co-laboring indicate low readiness to facilitate members working together. patterns of private conversations to participate correspond to the availability of capable people.* create opportunities to experience the benefits and rewards of participation in mission-related activities. assist people to help them reach a decision.* *indicates points of transformation summary few studies in practical theology have examined the nature of church mobilization, while other studies have emerged to establish an empirical basis for community mobilization. this case study examined mission readiness as a model of church mobilization as a congregational-level phenomenon. the guiding question was how congregations could derive practical theological meaning of church praxis while assessing their performance and readiness for church mobilization. 16 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13628 the results indicated that the congregation was experiencing unreadiness, low readiness, and moderate readiness across multiple categories of mission readiness. in one area of church leaders, the congregation experienced readiness. this study suggests that the analytical framework for church praxis was helpful in facilitating a practical theological analysis. participants were able to identify additional action items to support best practices and glean a theological understanding based on the implications of the results. theological concepts included compassion, stewarding, justice, hospitality and calling. these themes facilitated the development of a practical theological perspective about concepts within the framework. it is unclear whether the changes suggested by the participants to improve the model will result in the congregation achieving its mission goals. additional case studies may provide more information to either support or negate these methods for producing findings on church mobilization. about the author dr. mark g. harden is an associate professor and the executive director for church engagement for the gospel initiative at denver seminary in littleton, co. contact: mark.harden@denverseminary.edu references barnes, s. l. 2005. “black church culture and community action.” social forces 84 (2): 1–29. boyd, n. 2014. “a ten-year retrospective of organization studies in community psychology: content, theory, and impact.” journal of community psychology 42 (2): 237–54. buechler, s. m. 1995. “new social movement theories.” sociological quarterly 36: 441–64. cavendish, j. c. 2001. “to march or not to march: clergy mobilization strategies and grassroots anti-drug activism.” in s. e. s. crawford and l. r. olson (eds), christian clergy in american politics. baltimore md: johns hopkins university press: 203–23. danermark, b. e., m. ekström and j. c. karlsson. 2002. explaining society: critical realism in social sciences. london: routledge. diani, m., and i. bison. 2004. “organizations, coalitions, and movements.” theory society 33: 281–309. dudley, c. s. 2002. community ministry: new challenges, proven steps to faith-based initiatives. behtesda md: alban institute. dutton, j. e., l. m. roberts and j. bednar. 2010. “pathways for positive identity construction at work: four types of positive identity and the building of social resources.” academy of management review 35 (2): 265–93. edelman, m. 2001. “social movements: changing paradigms and forms of politics.” annual review of anthropology 30: 285–317. erdogan, b., t. n. bauer, d. m. truxillo and l. r. mansfield. 2012. “whistle while you work: a review of the life satisfaction literature.” journal of management 38 (4): 1038–83. mailto:mark.harden%40denverseminary.edu?subject= 17 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13628 grammich, c. a., e. dollhopf, m. gautier, r. houseal, d. j. jones, a. krindatch, r. stanley and s. thumma. 2022. “2020 u.s. religion census: religious congregations and membership study.” doi: 10.17605/osf.io/6pgrz. joffres, c., d. langille, j. rigby and d. b. langille. 2002. “factors related to community mobilization and continued involvement in a community-base efforts to enhance adolescents’ sexual behavior.” the qualitative report 7 (2). johnson, d. w., and r. t. johnson. 1989. cooperation and competition: theory and research. interaction book company. klien, k. j., and t. a. d’aunno. 1986. “psychological sense of community in the workplace.” journal of community psychology 14 (4): 365–77. kraftarian, s., m. jansen, j. funkhouser, s. o’neill, r. sanchez-way and l. wilson. 1997. effective community mobilization: lessons from experience: implementation guide. center for substance abuse prevention. laverack, g., and n. wallerstein. 2001. “measuring community empowerment: a fresh look at organizational domains.” health promotion international 16 (2): 179–85. lee, s. 2003. “the church of faith and freedom: african american baptists and social action.” journal for the scientific study of religion 42 (1): 31–41. lippman, s. a., t. b. neilands, h. h. leslie, s. maman, c. macphail, r. twine, d. peacock, k. kahn and a. pettifor. 2016. “development, validation, and performance of a scale to measure community mobilization.” social science and medicine 157: 127–37. mcadam, d. 1999. political process and the development of black insurgency, 1930–1970. 2nd ed. chicago: university of chicago press. mccalla, d. 2005. “black churches and voluntary action: their social engagement with the wider society.” black theology: an international journal 3 (2): 137–75. morris, a. 1984. the origins of the civil rights movement: black communities organizing for change. new york: free press. norton, b. l., k. r. mcleroy, j. n. burdine, m. r. j. felix and a. m. dorsey. 2002. “community capacity: concept, theory, and methods.” in r. diclemente, a. cosby and m. c. kegler (eds), emerging theories in health promotion practice and research, (pp. 194–227). jossey-bass. olson, l. r. 2000. filled with spirit and power: protestant clergy in politics. albany ny: state university of new york press. pattillo-mccoy, m. 1998. “church culture as a strategy of action in the black community.” american sociological review 63: 767–84. pretty, g. m., m. mccarthy and v. m. catano. 1992. “psychological environments and burnout: gender considerations within the corporation.” journal of organizational behavior 13 (7): 701–11. sampson, r. j. 2003. “the neighborhood context of well-being.” prospect biol med, 46 (3): s53–64. scheie, d. m., j. markham, t. williams, j. slettom, s. m. a. ramirez and s. mayer. 1994. better together: religious institutions as partners in community-based development, final evaluation report on the lilly endowment program. sider, r. j., p. n. olson and h. r. unruh. 2002. churches that make a difference: reaching your community with good news and good works. grand rapids mi: baker books. swidler, a. 1986. “culture in action: symbols and strategies.” american sociological review 51: 273–86. tilly, c. 2004. social movements. 1768–2004. boulder co: paradigm publishers. turnhouse, m. b. 1987. “role of 14c dating in paleontology.” journal of paleontology 75 (6): 11–15. unruh, h. r., and r. j. sider. 2005. saving souls, serving society: understanding the faith factors in church-based social ministry. oxford: oxford university press. ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 2 b o o k r e v i e w 146 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18345 doi: 10.54195/ef18345 rowlands, anna. 2021. towards a politics of communion: catholic social teaching in dark times london: t & t clark. isbn 9780567242730 reviewed by benjamin aldous anna rowlands is currently st hilda professor of catholic social thought and practice in the department of theology and religion at the university of durham. in this book she gives us a unique and thoughtful account of catholic social teaching in an era of permacrisis. a recent recipient of the joseph ratzinger foundation and razón abierta institute expanded reason award the book offers a rich tapestry of thought exploring the philosophical, theological and historical origins of the developing tradition of catholic social teaching (cst). rowlands herself acknowledges that the book does not aim to offer a definitive or even comprehensive account of cst but rather a way into selected parts of the tradition depending on the reader’s own interest or confession. rowlands too notes that the fundamental ideas in cst can look and feel a little worn around the edges as the notions of human dignity, the common good, subsidiarity and solidarity can at times be collapsed in meaning through their overuse or feel banal in over exposure. as a relative newcomer to the cst tradition i found the book quite dense and sinewy but nevertheless a rewarding effort and i will undoubtedly use the text as a go-to handguide when considering the value of cst in my ecumenical work with churches together in england reflecting on mission. for rowlands the church is necessarily political since it sees in scripture a call to proclaim a social vision of the human person within human and divine community – a social vision which rowlands says is about the human person being fully alive and living out the common good. divided into 11 chapters the first outlines the emergence of modern cst post 1891. rowlands rightly reminds us that “cst in its modern form is as much a tarrying with the ideas that constitute modernity as with its concrete practices” (17). drawing on social encyclicals and apostolic exhortations of popes from leo xiii to francis, she helps the reader to see that cst is far 147 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18345 from being a set and homogenous body of teaching but that each pope brings their own particular nuance and understanding of cst. for example, in leo xiii’s rerum novarum the fundamental model for social order is rooted in the household or family and there is a refutation of the idea of mere contract or transaction as the basis for social justice. francis in fratelli tutti, whilst willing to engage with liberalism as a political philosophy, is outright in his opposition to individualism. chapters 2 to 4 are rooted in an exploration of human dignity, first drawing on philosophical and theological sources (from cicero to mary wolfstencraft) and subsequently drawing on the varying encyclicals. chapter 3 deals with the issue of (forced) migration in and chapter 4 focuses on the questions of social and structural sin with regards to human dignity. in this chapter rowlands helps the reader see ways in which each pope has understood the core elements of human dignity from different angles. john paul ii, the conservative, was very uneasy about the usage of the concepts of social and structural sin simply seeing them as “the multiplication or accrual of individual sinful acts into consolidated, calcified structures” (101). francis, on the other hand, has, during his papacy, continued to move the debate about social sin beyond a question of mere human willing to the context of political-economic relations (102) since cultures of ideologies malform human beings’ perceptions of good (103). francis has expanded notions of human dignity by drawing racism and categories around environmental degradation into the discussion being unafraid of a more wholistic vision and moving away from a personalism of conscience – an important widening. rowlands outlines the long tradition of of the common good in chapters 5 to 7, honestly reminding us that, “an account of the common good that lacks an overt awareness of the operation of power in history and commitment to struggle with others through forging collective identities fails” (114). chapters 8 to 10 deal with the body politic, subsidiarity and solidarity. i enjoyed rowlands’ chapter on the political responsibilities and understandings of catholicism and particularly bringing the work of french social philosopher and mystic simone weil into the equation. weil made an important contribution to the postworld war  2 debates in helping to counterbalance an over emphasis by catholic intellectuals towards personalism and modern rights language. “weil worried that catholic intellectuals and the church were failing to spot the fundamentally problematic anthropology that undergirds both” (192). i found the synopses of the encyclicals of the popes from pius xii to francis helpful. rowlands points out that transnational themes of migration, the environment, global inequalities and degradation of democracy are key interlinked social issues for francis, that have shaped his papacy. 148 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18345 i found chapter 10 on solidarity moving and rowlands urges us to remember the complex narrative which draws us away from naivety. she remarks that “solidarity enters the modern lexicon on the slipstream of the revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, expressing what had been thought of over the centuries in christian usage as fraternity and friendship” (240). yet the idea of solidarity, she says, has been largely secularized over the past century. she again very usefully traces the various papal understandings and use of the term in the encyclicals and other documents. as usual, i found myself asking what the missiological implications of such a book are. certainly, a more nuanced understanding of the major themes of cst. it helps me analyse prevailing concepts like the common good which can be bandied around with little thought on occasions. it will particularly help me in thinking more deeply about imago dei and theological anthropology from the perspective of my catholic friends and colleagues in my work with churches together in england. this is dense and rich – at times so dense that i found it difficult to wade through – but it presents important insights for those with patience from a distinguished catholic theologian. about the author benjamin aldous, principal officer for mission and evangelism at churches together in england, the national ecumenical instrument and an honorary research fellow at the queens foundation in birmingham. ben.aldous@cte.org.uk mailto:ben.aldous@cte.org.uk ecclesial futures 2023 1 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13424 doi: 10.54195/ef13424 nigerian pentecostal mission in europe: ecumenical and secular relations in britain bisi adenekan-koevoets abstract african churches face diverse obstacles while attempting cross-cultural mission in the west. these include the influence of external forces such as racism, lack of understanding of european cultures, lack of worship spaces and various perceptions that many wider indigenous europeans have about africans and their churches, particularly their theological beliefs. these external factors impose real challenges, which are beyond the control of the leaders of diaspora african churches and interfere with the effort to build relations with the wider white indigenous european host population, whether spiritual or secular. this qualitative study explores the different ways through which nigerian-initiated churches in london are engaging with british society, both ecumenically and as a social force within the communities. there are indications that a few of the larger churches are building ecumenical relations with mainline british churches, although this is prevalent at leadership level. similarly, they are well-enough resourced to embark on social community projects which are beneficial to nationals of all races and political activities to court the british royal and political elite and are therefore establishing their presence within and creating pathways to british society. keywords: cross-cultural mission, ecumenical relations, social action, nigerian pentecostal churches, ministry of presence introduction for many academics who are exploring the concept of ‘reverse mission’ of african churches in europe, one challenge involves the dynamics of repositioning themselves from ‘migrant enclaves’ into communities able to engage in diverse relationships with the wider white indigenous european population they wish to evangelize (adedibu 2018: 182; olofinjana 2020). although these scholars do not agree on some of the challenges to the ‘reverse mission’ agenda, there are some common threads linking 2 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13424 their arguments. these external factors impose real challenges, which are beyond the control of the leaderships of these diaspora african churches and are consistent with some of the observations made in my doctoral research (adenekan-koevoets 2021). however, some large nigerian-initiated churches or their branches such as the redeemed christian church of god (rccg) jesus house in london, kingsway international christian centre (kicc) and winners chapel engage in various social activities within their locations and have become accepted features of those communities (cartledge et al. 2019). the leadership of these denominations cooperates with governmental, non-governmental, church and non-church organizations to identify and meet community needs while also building ecumenical relations with british mainline church denominations such as the church of england at various societal levels, thus establishing cross-cultural relations. using empirical research methods, this article first describes ecumenism, discusses pentecostals’ ecumenical engagements and the missional benefits of establishing social projects within host communities. second, it discusses the approach of the first-generation-led nigerian churches to mission in britain, the differing view of the nigerian-british second-generation to this approach and the possible relevance of these conflicting views to pentecostals’ ecumenical engagements. ecumenism and african pentecostals: a brief historical analysis ecumenism or being ecumenical refers to events, actions by individuals and/or organizations or ideas that bring christians from different traditions together to dialogue and act in ways that reflect the household of god (nelson and reith 2017: 5–6). it is a coming together that presupposes that all participants share a belief in the work and person of jesus christ as god incarnate and lord. the most important goal of the ecumenical movement is the building of relationships between the followers of jesus as they encounter each other and seek to spread the message of the gospel and envision the unity of god in the world (robeck 2014: 115). in john 17.20–26, jesus is praying for the church and in verse 21 he says, “that they all may be one, as you, father are in me, and i in you; that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that you sent me”. however, there are reported challenges to this hope for structural unification and a widely held opinion within the ecumenical debate that the dialogue is stuck in an “ecumenical winter” (murray 2014: 3; nelson and raith 2017: 97). this is due to a sense of disappointment among ecumenists about the seeming failure of some of the major initiatives to establish visible expression(s) of church unity. murray further asserts that the movement has transited from the one-way ecumenism of the pre-vatican ii era (which promotes a one-way return of christians to unity in the catholic church) to the life and work or practical model 3 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13424 (which encourages the building of shared relationship and practice across formally divided traditions)] of the early twentieth century. next is the theological dialogue model which specifically addresses doctrinal issues and operates at church leadership level with little effect experienced by members at the local level. the main aim is to clear misconceptions and establish agreements and disagreements about divisive theological topics through bilateral and multilateral dialogues. then there is spiritual ecumenism which started in the 1930s from the work of paul couturier and focuses on the conversion of the heart required for christian unity through common prayer privately and publicly with little concern for practical work or theological dialogue. finally, there is receptive ecumenism which is projected as a way to get out of the ecumenical ‘cul-de-sac’. it focuses on developing and modelling a fresh strategy in ecumenism that takes contemporary realities seriously as well as the abiding need for churches to find an appropriate means of engaging towards achieving a more visible structural and sacramental unity. paul murray describes it as an ecumenism that invites learning from the other on all levels of ecclesial life without asking what other traditions can learn from us and without compromising one’s own ecclesial identity. it emphasises ecclesial discernment of own imperfections and the importance of learning and receiving wisdom and gifts from others to address them (murray and confalonieri 2008: 280; murray 2014: 1–3; hawkes and balabanski 2018; pizzey 2019). although sporadic, pentecostal denominations have been involved in ecumenical conversations from the beginning of the twentieth century although scholars suggest that it has existed in christian antiquity since the era of the apostles (odeyemi 2019: xvii). however, the multiplications and splintering of the movement hindered ecumenical work, causing differences in ecumenical attitudes which over time underscored the need for pentecostals to initially focus on building worldwide cooperation among themselves. this resulted initially in the formation of national pentecostal fellowships in europe, north america, africa, asia and latin america and later an international fellowship. following this, a series of pentecostal world conferences were organized which resulted in the formation of the pentecostal world fellowship (pwf). this is a global cooperative body open to all pentecostals although not all pentecostal groups participate and those from north america and europe are more influential in matters of international cooperation. through the pwf in cooperation with the wcc, pentecostals participated in the first official ecumenical dialogue with the roman catholic church in 1972 and this has become the model for ecumenical conversations between pentecostals and other traditions (vondey 2014: 79–80; stephenson 2018). 4 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13424 from the perspective of african pentecostals, ecumenism as presently conceptualized, particularly by the world council of churches (wcc), is seen as ideological and more focused on liturgy and sacraments as shown by the wcc document the church: towards a common vision. this document portrays the church as a eucharistic community, a definition of faith and christianity dominated by a western or catholic definition which makes ecumenism that is dominated by a european perspective of religion a disincentive for the participation of african christians (rausch 2017: 91). according to pentecostal historian cecil robeck (2015), who was the only pentecostal on the working group that drafted the document, the constitution of the delegates was slanted toward the ancient churches, which made it difficult, for a representative of the “free church” tradition to make any substantive contribution. john segun odeyemi, an ordained catholic priest, in his book pentecostals and catholic ecumenism, notes (and i agree) that african pentecostals, whether in africa or the diaspora, are hardly focused on weekly celebration of the eucharist or sacraments choosing rather to concentrate on biblical authority, demons and spirits, signs and wonders, and indigenous leadership. unlike churches in the enlightenment-influenced west, african pentecostal churches emphasize the supernatural, the oneness of the spirit, soul and body (holistic approach) and everyday issues of poverty and violence confronting their congregations across africa (rausch 2017: 92; odeyemi 2019: 55). many also stress the gospel of prosperity in their context where the majority of the population lives below the poverty line and looks to church leaders for political and economic direction. findings from my phd indicated that although there is growing sympathy for ecumenical participation among the more cosmopolitan african churches and their leaders in the diaspora, pastoral care of their largely black congregations remains a priority. my interactions suggest that suspicion of the ecumenical movement and the wcc persists, particularly among pentecostal members (adenekan-koevoets 2022: 359–77). for example, the world council of churches document does not recognize “church” as a group of christians living by the example of jesus and witnessing to his reign but rather as a eucharistic community. the new churches from the global south including african pentecostals characterize the document as one written from a catholic perspective, too western, eurocentric, and not representative of their position (loughran 2013: 9; rausch 2017). this is where the teaching of “exchange of gifts” by receptive ecumenism becomes relevant. it is a way for the post-enlightenment western church to see that in addition to their often-abstract theological language about faith, there is an experiential aspect to faith through the indwelling power of god, the importance of prioritizing mission, and about the forgiveness of sin that african pentecostals (in their various forms) profess (rausch 2017: 94). pentecostal churches, on the other hand, should train upcoming leaders to 5 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13424 understand the nature and purpose of ecumenism. as keshishian (1992: 2) suggests, unity should not be taken to mean ecclesial uniformity, so it is pertinent that pentecostals maintain the independence of their churches, preserving denominational boundaries while addressing unexplored or unexamined assumptions to improve ecumenical relations (robeck 2015: 5–7). research methodology i adopted an ethnographic approach. data was collected through participant observation, in-depth semi-structured interviews and focus groups which ensured that the research questions were viewed from different angles to give as well-rounded an account as possible. a total of about 80 people and three nigerian pentecostal churches, the rccg, house on the rock (hotr) and winners chapel, participated in interviews and group discussions both in amsterdam and london from 2017 to 2019, although this article refers mostly to the london results. the case studies included two parishes1 of rccg – a small parish of about 30 members named rccglkp located in southwest london and jesus house located in brent cross, london with about 3000 members; hotr, housed in a renovated anglican church building, the ‘rock tower’ in islington with 100-150 members. there were also branches of winners chapel, a small branch (wcil) with 100-150 members and the european headquarters with about 2000 member-capacity campus. congregation size was vital in this study, and this will be discussed shortly. in data collection and analysis, one of the challenges is the issue of researcher bias, whether as an insider or outsider. as a pentecostal nigerian migrant, i was an insider, but as a female educated researcher, i was also sometimes an outsider. this is important because the stance of the researcher can affect the interpretation of the data and therefore the validity of the study. since qualitative research cannot be value-free, it is vital to acknowledge own biases and assumptions and be as neutral as possible (gillani 2021). it was not possible to identify with the researched group in all cases and sometimes not with the same intensity, therefore, i adopted a dialectical (logical argumentation) approach which allows the preservation of the complexity of differences and similarities (kawulich 2012: 154; dwyer and buckle 2009). my positionality as a pentecostal but also a researcher was made clear to participants and i was also very self-aware. in listening to and interpreting their stories, the experiences of the sacred were not excluded from the research. rather, i was open to the way in which those being researched, “intersubjectively” 1 in the rccg, a parish is a congregation or unit of administration ranging from as little as ten regular attendees to large mega-parishes of 4000 members and the number/area is not limited by geographical distance. 6 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13424 experience reality and to use that as my reference point. additionally, ethical considerations around anonymity, confidentiality and freedom to participate were taken seriously, discussed and agreed with participants in advance using consent forms which participants read and signed. ethical approval was received from the graduating institution. research findings in the uk, the rccg is one of the churches that is more ecumenically engaged and in its ecumenical statement, affirms “its commitment to work with other ecumenical partners in the united kingdom and beyond to promote christian unity and advance the gospel of our lord jesus christ” (rccguk 2017) while acknowledging that differences exist within and between christian denominations, the rccg seeks to continue to collaborate based on the love of god that embraces difference “as enrichment to the various valid expressions of the christian faith” (rccguk 2017). rccg’s strategies for ecumenical engagement include inter-church worship, knowledge exchange and partnership with other churches to enhance christian social action and services to the needy within the communities. as a matter of church policy, parish pastors at all levels are motivated to relate in different spheres and cooperate in local prayer meetings and mission activities; findings from my study confirmed this cooperation. agu irukwu, the senior pastor of rccg jesus house, while speaking during a vineyard leadership conference acknowledged some interactions, noting: we have 850 odd churches spread across the nation. i visit those churches, i get the report, i hear about prayer meetings being held with the vicar of the anglican church, with the priest of the catholic church, with the reverend of the baptist church and they are meeting once a month to pray for their community and their cities (irukwu 2018). this statement underscores the fact that there are collaborations between leaders of rccg and mainline churches (anglicans, united reformed, baptists) at local, city and regional levels. as dyer (2019: 110–11) notes, this is particularly successful with the mainline churches which have absorbed a flavour of charismatic styles of worship used in pentecostal churches like the rccg. nevertheless, the need for increased mutual recognition and dialogue leading to a renewed understanding of each other’s ecclesiology must not be overlooked. ecumenism and ecclesiology are linked in the work of christian unity, and it is beneficial for christian communities to develop compatible ecclesiastical operating systems and recognize “church” in one another; this could be a key to a truly multicultural church (gibaut 2015: 222). 7 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13424 another observation is that the size of the congregation has implications for the ability to engage and the level of engagement in ecumenical discussions. large churches like rccg jesus house, with a more diverse congregation not only in stock of human capital (having a higher population of young university-educated members) but also age, are better positioned to engage in ecumenical relations. during my fieldwork, i observed that its members cut across age, gender, economic and educational attainment with an average age of 35 years. in that regard, smaller congregations like rccglkp, made up of much older members, with less stock of human capital (in terms of theological/secular educational qualifications) do not have the capability for effective participation in ecumenical debates with mainline churches who emphasize theological training for their clergy and, in some cases, profess different theologies. this corroborates the findings of cartledge et al. (2019: 20) in their work on london megachurches that size is vital and influences the amount of capital (human, social or physical) available for engaging with local communities. others, like hotr with more members and its own worship premises, face challenges in participating in church networks or ecumenical discussions because their resources are more focused on pastoral care of members; as its lead pastor explained, “our activities as a local church are so consuming” (pastor t, interview 4/2/2020). how have leaders like irukwu become prominently involved in ecumenical conversations? there may be some attributes that differentiate those who are ecumenically engaged from others who are less involved. irukwu is a former corporate banker, well-educated and very cosmopolitan in his approach in both spiritual and secular domains. he was sent to the uk as a missionary from his home nigerian church to pastor the then newly-established rccg london parish. additionally, irukwu is one of the visible nigerians who is a prominent leader in ecumenical organizations like churches together england (cte) where he was pentecostal president from 2017 to 2021. according to davey and reardon (2005: 5), cte has been rooted in inter-denominational consultation and debates at local and national levels since its inception and has been at the forefront of inter-church relations in the uk. in a sermon at the leadership conference of vineyard churches (a movement established by john and carol wimber in 1977),2 irukwu revealed his commitment to inter-denominational relationships and cooperation in the uk. 2 vineyard churches are a movement of churches in the uk and ireland which was started by john and carol wimber in the united states of america in 1977. its goal is to plant, or begin, new, healthy, fully functioning churches which in turn will plant healthy churches (vineyard churches 2012; 2019). it is known by many christians today through its well-known worship songs that are sung in different churches. 8 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13424 when we gather once a year that meeting is a cloud, when i sit in a meeting with leaders of the orthodox churches …, now i’m pentecostal, orthodox church leaders traditionally think pentecostals are rascals, they don’t even understand us. now we think they are archaic and dinosaurs so there is no meeting point. … but we are talking about christ, we are talking about revival we are talking about the persecuted church, we are praying together. i’m praying with the archbishop of canterbury, my wife and i …. we are sitting down and talking about strategies for thy kingdom come (irukwu 2018). irukwu is convinced of an imminent change in the missional, political, social and economic situation in the uk and urges the church to unite and “pray for the cloud to cause a rain over the nation”. he has also involved leaders of british mainline churches in rccg’s programmes, despite differences in ecclesiology and theology. the rccg festival of life (fol) has been a platform where individuals like the archbishop of canterbury justin welby, the british charismatic worship leader lou fellingham, and sam miller of open heavens have participated. the archbishop of the coptic orthodox church in london, anba angaelos, was the special guest speaker at the 2019 festival (rccg 2019). interdenominational collaboration has the potential for achieving one of the central objectives of receptive ecumenism, which is, seeking what one church tradition needs to learn and can learn from others without compromising its own tradition and thereby developing deepened relationships. this is perhaps one way that receptive ecumenism helps towards achieving an ecumenical ethic and strategy for living between the times (murray 2014: 1). pastor e explains that ecumenical engagement is relational, and the interested individual should be able to network across cultures and church expressions wherever they are located. he discussed his ecumenical connections in the uk referring to the period when he left his old church to start a new one: “i spent more time with hugh osgood getting to know him as a person and got quite close to him as a mentor” (pastor e, 11/2/2019). through this relationship building, his new church became actively engaged with cte, the free churches group and the evangelical alliance. pastor e emphasized the interpersonal aspect of inter-church engagement, which, he argues, is only possible through close relationships built over time. as robeck (2015: 9) explained, ecumenical encounters begin with personal relationships and friendships. given time, the friendships can grow into genuine love and care for one another and the potential to mesh into each other’s lives. when this ability to grow into each other’s lives is extended to churches, it results in mutual respect of each other’s beliefs and actions. these interactions can be the basis for critical reflections on institutional differences and create opportunities for change. getting to know christians from different traditions, sharing the joy of being christians, becoming 9 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13424 friends, associates and brethren removes the tag of being the “other” and breaks walls of tension and alienation erected against each other. grassroots level engagement where every day christians engage in “real dialogues” that address the many practical problems that churches face could be vital in this process (murray 2014: 3; rausch 2017: 96). rubbing against each other and gravitating towards each other provide the opportunity for loosening creedal characteristics and bringing christians closer to their original identity as family members. ecumenism brokers relationships, both at micro and inter-church levels, and relationships enable better self-awareness, opening the possibility of gaining another perspective; thus people can move outside of their comfort zones, creating the likelihood of taking seriously those who are different. developing new ecclesial relationships may begin with leadership but this can shift to members if leaders teach it from their pulpits. as rausch suggests, ecumenical engagement needs to be on multiple levels. finally, it is through ecumenical and ecclesial relationships that the church can demonstrate reconciliation and unity to the world and therefore enhance mission (mladin et al. 2017: 25–26). social and political participation my study also indicated that despite challenges, african pentecostal churches provide different types of support to their host communities. these activities include provision of groceries indirectly through food banks and directly to the public as during the 2020–21 lockdowns brought about by covid-19. pastor t explained how his church had collected (from church members) and donated great amounts of groceries to their local food bank and received commendation for their support (pastor t, interview 4/2/2020). in cases where direct distribution to the public was necessitated, the churches cooperate with local governmental and non-governmental agencies to identify and support the needy (burgess 2021: 331). these churches also distribute food packs during festive periods like easter and christmas. an example is rccg jesus house “christmas lunch on jesus” initiative which started in 2007. through the programme, quality food hampers are delivered to individuals, families and homes in communities across the uk who would otherwise face a difficult or lonely christmas. initially started in north london, it has now been franchised to the south-west and in 2021, more than 9000 hampers were distributed across ten london boroughs. others are abigail’s court, which organizes regular visits to elderly care homes, and the novo centre, which provides a safe space for families to help combat the causes of youth-related offences through mentoring of young people and providing alternative social contexts for self-expression (cartledge et al. 2019: 220–26). in addition to providing sustenance and other social services to the vulnerable within british 10 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13424 society, migrant churches like jesus house use these as opportunities for publicfacing engagement at the grassroots to build relationships and do the work of mission. for them this is a way of being rooted in the place and context in which they are located. it is about being part of the communal life and being present, which is deeply human, very personal, communal and god-shaped ( james 2016: 20). other aspects of rccg uk’s social activism include empowerment programmes, such as the african caribbean education project (aces) aimed at improving the educational outcomes of young people of african and caribbean descent (cartledge et al. 2019: 221–8). there is socio-political activism through which rccg congregations and leadership interact with those in the position of political and civic power in ways that have indicated significant forms of “give” as well as “take”. this implies letting these powers see not just what they can do for the church but what the nigerian community is contributing to british society. irukwu has been consistent in cooperating with christian and secular leaders and has a wide sphere of influence in the uk which has been beneficial in rccg’s efforts at building relations across church traditions albeit mostly at leadership levels. for instance, in 2008 tearfund celebrated its 40th birthday at jesus house with archbishop tutu as guest, while in 2015 david cameron (then prime minister) made a key speech at fol (rccg 2015). through these connections with the seat of power, rccg jesus house brings its contributions as a faith-based organization into the limelight and public discourse. for example, as member of parliament, boris johnson visited the novo centre (a drop-in centre run by jesus house to help combat the causes of youth-related offences through mentoring of young people and provision of alternative social contexts for self-expression), while in 2021, as pm, boris johnson and charles the then prince of wales visited jesus house to observe the church premises being used as a vaccination centre for the public during the covid-19 pandemic. they both later commended the church as an example of faithbased intervention that should be emulated ( jesus house 2021, march 7). african churches like jesus house take social responsibility seriously and operate it in such inclusive terms that the british public benefits, including people of other faiths and none and those of diverse cultures. second-generation nigerians: way forward in another paper, i highlighted the inter-generational differences observed among nigerian pentecostal diaspora churches around beliefs and practices and the impact on cross-cultural missional engagement (adenekan-koevoets 2021). the hierarchic power structure, where the first generation constitutes the majority of the leadership, ensures that power is concentrated at the top and trickles down to members 11 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13424 including young people. pastor e describes it as the “very big head and very small body” type, the “kwashiorkor” kind of depiction because that is the reality of our systems of leadership in the diaspora. he argues that such leadership styles will invariably affect the way church missions are planted (interview, 11/2/2019). both hierarchic leadership and power dynamics that concentrate authority in the hands of the first-generation, who are mostly influenced by their nigerian cultural and religious background, institutes pentecostal liturgies that are designed along familiar “home” beliefs and practices. the second generation is wary of hierarchical leadership structures, arguing that they create unequal power relations which allow limited opportunity for youth to influence change. this discourages sincere and constructive discussions between the leaders and members, leading to frustration and diminished participation in church activities (focus group, 23/2/2018). decisions around strategies and practices for evangelism – important for building cross-cultural relations – are made by church leaders who are mostly first-generation nigerians. the result is that methods like street evangelism, door knocking and leafleting – described as “in your face evangelism” (catto 2008: 123) – that worked in nigeria but are less effective in western liberal societies, persist. these young nigerian-british citizens are convinced that there is a need for contextualization and adoption of attitudes and strategies that are more inclusive for non-africans. one of the suggestions is “taking the church outside” to meet the people through conversations, demonstrating the love of god (power evangelism) and building relationships. “apostle paul did not give out leaflets, they [the apostles] just went into the fold … you [need to] make it personal to people. it is about how you make people feel” (focus group, 23/2/2018). the limited level of success of cross-cultural mission by other african migrant churches in the uk is similar as attested to in a study of the ghanaian church of pentecost uk (neate 2022: 33–34). social action is seen as another activity which could be beneficial in bringing the activities of nigerian churches to the british public space and has been useful in creating public awareness and establishing the presence of nigerian churches within different communities. however, it has had limited success in the aspiration of nigerian migrant churches to build cross-cultural congregations. most of these young people were born in europe, others migrated as young children, but all of them went through both african and european socialization processes so they can be described as african europeans. their worldview is neither african nor european but a blend of both and they are therefore well positioned to be the bridge between cultures and begin the process of building cross-cultural denominations in europe. they have the societal reach that the fg does not have but need their seal, zeal, experience and resources. 12 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13424 conclusion this article has discussed the external relations of nigerian pentecostal churches and how their missional aspiration is affected. first, the study indicates that nigerian diaspora churches respond, within their capabilities and available resources, to some of the social problems encountered within their host communities. whether through empowerment programmes, such as the african caribbean education project (aces), care for the homeless and the elderly, food donation to the needy or hampers at festive seasons, large branches of established churches like the rccg or others like kicc have been at the forefront of community engagement in and around london. second, contextualization of pentecostal beliefs and practices, both in terms of outward-facing evangelism and embedded religious and spiritual activities, remain the key to missional success. street preaching, leafleting and other nigerian-tested methods are the preferred practices despite their ineffectiveness in evangelizing white british people. third, although the level of ecumenical engagement is limited, through the actions of some of the more cosmopolitan leaders of these churches there are ongoing efforts on matters of liturgy, joint evangelism, learning, caring and sharing in faith matters and shared worship and prayer sessions. these activities are also means of building personal relationships and friendships which are vital for receptive ecumenical encounters that are based on mutual respect and willingness to learn and accept what the other has to offer. in addition to engaging with those in the seat of british power and politics, nigerian pentecostal leaders also encourage members to serve in various spheres including politics, jury service, magistracy, voluntary service, fire service and so on. these are seen as means of societal participation and engagement through which they can build cross-cultural relations and influence policies that affect their lives. finally, the second generation is a resource that could be the transitional factor towards achieving the aspiration for cross-cultural interactions, church growth and territorial expansion of migrant churches. as one participant noted, kingdom work is inter-generational, and it is important to train our children who are more integrated in western societies and straddle both cultures in the things of god ... so that they have the skill, our seal, and the fervour we have but then they also have the reach we do not have. they in turn can bring their friends who cut across all cultures and races and be more effective than us. they can use their language and technological skills in combination with the culture of their parents as tools to reach the wider community (pastor e, interview 11/2/2019). there is need for the means and ways of achieving the missiological agenda of african diaspora churches, especially nigerian pentecostal churches in this study to be more contextual as the audience and context change. the uk is a different context compared to nigeria and evangelizing white british people requires that 13 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13424 african pentecostal churches design evangelistic strategies that take british thought and culture into consideration. this will be vital for future ecumenical encounters. about the author adebisi adenekan-koevoets received her phd from the university of roehampton in 2022. her research focused on nigerian pentecostals and reverse mission in london and amsterdam. she is passionate about second-generation africans and their engagement in mission and other issues such as identity construction, belonging and social mobility. her publications about young people include “nigerian pentecostal diasporic missions and intergenerational conflicts: case studies from amsterdam and london” in mission studies (brill) and targeted evangelism and knife crime in london: a case of corporate/church social responsibility by migrant pentecostal churches in the uk (galda verlag). contact: debisiade@yahoo.com references adedibu, b. 2018. “mission out of africa: the case of the redeemed christian church of god in london.” in goodhew and cooper (eds), 2018: 169–86. adenekan-koevoets, b. 2021. “nigerian pentecostal diasporic missions and intergenerational conflicts: case studies from amsterdam and london.” mission studies 38 (3): 424–47. –––. 2022. nigerian pentecostals and “reverse mission” in london and amsterdam. doctoral dissertation, university of roehampton. burgess, r. 2021. “religious spaces of care in the postsecular city: nigerian pentecostals and civic engagement in london.” journal for the academic study of religion 34 (3). cartledge, m. j., s. dunlop, h. buckingham and s. bremner. 2019. megachurches and social engagement: public theology in practice. leiden: brill. catto, r. a. 2008. “from the rest to the west: exploring reversal in christian mission in twenty-first century britain.” doctoral dissertation, university of exeter. davey, c., and m. reardon. 2005. “not strangers but pilgrims. the 1980s inter-church process: from councils of churches to churches together.” one in christ 40 (1): 54–72. dwyer, s. c., and j. l. buckle. 2009. “the space between: on being an insider-outsider in qualitative research.” international journal of qualitative methods 8 (1): 54–63. dyer, a. 2019. “ecumenism and pentecostals in britain.” in aldred, j. (ed.). pentecostals and charismatics in britain: an anthology. london: scm press. gibaut, j. s. h. 2015. “the church: towards a common vision.” journal of ecumenical studies 50 (2): 216–48. gillani, d. 2021. “can and should qualitative research be value-free? understanding the epistemological tussle between positivists and interpretivists.” journal of political studies 28 (1). goodhew, d. and a.-p. cooper (eds). 2018. the desecularisation of the city: london’s churches, 1980 to the present. london: routledge. hawkes, g., and v. balabanski (eds). 2018. receptive ecumenism: listening, learning and loving in the way of christ. hindmarsh, sa: atf press. mailto:debisiade@yahoo.com 14 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13424 irukwu, a. 2018. “interceding for the nations.” sermon delivered at the vineyard national leaders’ conference. available at: https://tinyurl.com/55fmbuwk (accessed 3/6/18). james, d. 2016. “faithful presence: a remerging mission paradigm.” anvil: journal of theology and mission 32 (1): 19–26. jesus house. 2021, march 7. facebook post. available at: https://www.facebook.com/jesushouselondon/posts/2847823472123193 (accessed 13/4/2021). kawulich, b. 2012. “collecting data through observation.” in c. wagner, b. kawulich and m. garner, doing social research: a global context. maidenhead: mcgraw-hill higher education: 150–60. keshishian, a. 1992. conciliar fellowship: a common goal. geneva: wcc publications. loughran, j. 2013. “world council of churches 10th assembly.” ecumenical trends, new york: 42. mladin, n., r. fidler and b. ryan. (2017). that they all may be one: insights into churches together in england and contemporary ecumenism. available at: https://tinyurl.com/ywpvdect (accessed 21/11/22). murray, p. d. 2014. “introducing receptive ecumenism.”‘ the ecumenist 51 (2): 1–8. ––– and l. b. confalonieri (eds). 2008. receptive ecumenism and the call to catholic learning: exploring a way for contemporary ecumenism. oxford: oxford university press. neate, j. 2022. “cultural perceptions: a barrier to the role of cross-cultural friendships in mission?” ecclesial futures 3 (2): 31–49. nelson, r. d., and c. raith ii. 2017. ecumenism: a guide for the perplexed. new york: bloomsbury. odeyemi, j. s. 2019. pentecostalism and catholic ecumenism in developing nations: west africa as a case study for a global phenomenon. eugene, or: wipf and stock. olofinjana, i. o. 2020. “reverse mission: towards an african british theology.” transformation 37 (1): 52–65. pizzey, a. 2019. “the path forward: receptive ecumenism and the renewal of the ecumenical movement.” in p. endean, p. van geest, p. murray and m. sarrot (eds). brill’s studies in catholic ecumenism. leiden: brill: 226–34. rausch, t. p. 2017. “the present state of ecumenism.” perspectiva teológica 49 (1): 87–100. rccg. 2015. “the prime minister of great britain rt hon. david cameron at rccg fol london.” available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt-hb1rojjg (accessed 5/6/2020). rccg. 2019. festival of life: more than conquerors. 19 july. available at: https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=-dbzz6xchh4 (accessed 6/6/2020). rccguk. 2017. rccg ecumenical statement: working together to promote christian unity and advancing the gospel. available at: https://www.rccguk.church/wp-content/ uploads/2017/01/rccg-ecumenical-statement.pdf (accessed 14/5/2020). robeck, c. m. 2014. “pentecostal ecumenism: overcoming the challenges –reaping the rewards.” journal of the european pentecostal theological association 34 (2): 113–32. –––. 2015. “pentecostal ecumenism: overcoming the challenges—reaping the rewards: understanding the nature of ecumenism (part 2).” journal of the european pentecostal theological association 35 (1): 5–17. stephenson, c. a. 2018. “observations on pentecostal participation in formal ecumenical dialogue. “ international review of mission 107 (1): 130–41. vineyard churches. 2019. church planting: training stream for church planters. available at: https://www.vineyardchurches.org.uk/training-streams/church-planting/ (accessed 24/6/2021). –––. 2012. how the church began. available at: https://www.vineyardchurches.org.uk/vineyard-vaults/how-the-vineyard-began/ (accessed 24/6/2021). vondey, w. 2014. “the unity and diversity of pentecostal theology: a brief account for the ecumenical community in the west.” ecclesiology 10 (1): 76–100. https://tinyurl.com/55fmbuwk https://www.facebook.com/jesushouselondon/posts/2847823472123193 https://www.facebook.com/jesushouselondon/posts/2847823472123193 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt-hb1rojjg https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.youtube.com%2fwatch%3fv%3d-dbzz6xchh4&data=05%7c01%7c%7c98e97f3a8e364061d53008db4edd0025%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7c1%7c0%7c638190483317714095%7cunknown%7ctwfpbgzsb3d8eyjwijoimc4wljawmdailcjqijoiv2lumziilcjbtii6ik1hawwilcjxvci6mn0%3d%7c3000%7c%7c%7c&sdata=insesprmfqmv3ua1jx4ikawenw2nqhpsyp3n1qi8mxs%3d&reserved=0 https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.youtube.com%2fwatch%3fv%3d-dbzz6xchh4&data=05%7c01%7c%7c98e97f3a8e364061d53008db4edd0025%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7c1%7c0%7c638190483317714095%7cunknown%7ctwfpbgzsb3d8eyjwijoimc4wljawmdailcjqijoiv2lumziilcjbtii6ik1hawwilcjxvci6mn0%3d%7c3000%7c%7c%7c&sdata=insesprmfqmv3ua1jx4ikawenw2nqhpsyp3n1qi8mxs%3d&reserved=0 https://www.rccguk.church/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/rccg-ecumenical-statement.pdf https://www.rccguk.church/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/rccg-ecumenical-statement.pdf https://www.vineyardchurches.org.uk/training-streams/church-planting/ https://www.vineyardchurches.org.uk/vineyard-vaults/how-the-vineyard-began/ https://www.vineyardchurches.org.uk/vineyard-vaults/how-the-vineyard-began/ ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 1 18 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13666 a r t i c l e s doi: 10.54195/ef13666 the metaverse as a digital missionary site1 sung-hyuk nam abstract the metaverse attracts considerable attention in politics, economy, society and culture. unfortunately, seminaries and churches are still in their early stages of missiological research and understanding the metaverse. if we understand the metaverse as a digital mission field, research on the missiological approach is required. we should pay attention to the infinitely expanding and integrating metaverse. overseas, there is already a history of experimental challenges and settlements from decades ago on the potential for churches in virtual spaces. while online churches are famous in korea, there is insufficient understanding of ways to meet the younger generation of non-believers in the metaverse. since online churches are analogue enterprises, there is a massive gap between them and the digital younger generation. paul hiebert’s critical contextualization is still valid in approaching the metaverse as a digital mission field. heidi campbell’s study of the relationship between media and religions, “religious-social shaping approach to technology” reminds korean churches of the value of the metaverse as a new media. both theories show korean churches need dialogue and patience when approaching the metaverse to contact non-believers. missiological discussions on the metaverse should promote a holistic understanding in which the two worlds closely relate rather than a dualistic understanding. the digital living space of the mz generation that emerged with the development of new technology does not conflict with the nature of the christian church. therefore, korean churches need to understand the metaverse as a space of mission and coexistence. keywords: metaverse; contextualization; analog; digital; mz generation 1 this article was originally published in korean as “digital sŏn’gyojirosŏ metaverse segyeŭi ganŭsŏng-gwa tŭksŏng yŏngu. 디지털 선교지로서 메타버스 세계의 가능성과 특성연구 [the characteristics of the metaverse and the possibilities as a digital mission field]” korean presbyterian journal of theology 54 (2) (2022): 103–24. following translation, it was revised and peer reviewed for publication in ecclesial futures. 19 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13666 introduction around the world, the next generation is giving explosive attention to the metaverse. the metaverse has already grown beyond the initial stage to become a substantial it industry for the future, drawing attention from many investors. existing it industries are also checking the potential of the metaverse, and companies such as microsoft, google, apple, nvidia, facebook, amazon and tesla are trying to change the direction of their business and investment. the metaverse is not just in the limelight from the industrial point of view. it is receiving much attention from politicians and artists. in the 59th us presidential election, senator joe biden campaigned by creating a promotional island called biden hq on a metaverse platform called “animal crossing new horizons”. in 2016, the democratic presidential candidate hillary clinton used “pokémon go” in her campaign. on 5 october 2020 jensen huang, founder and ceo of nvidia, a global company in graphics cards and artificial intelligence, delivered a keynote speech at the gtc 2020 keynote address, “the metaverse is coming” (nvidia 2020). according to metaverse users, fortnite currently has 350 million users, roblox has 120 million and naver’s virtual reality platform zepeto has 200 million. in april 2020, the famous rapper travis scott held his concert on fortnite, with 12.3 million people joining and 27.7 million viewers. travis scott’s offline performance revenue was 1.8 billion korean won in 2019, while his performance on fortnite drew over ten times as much revenue at 21.6 billion won. there was also a showcase for bts, the wildly popular k-pop group. teenagers and children in the united states spend 2.5 times as much time on roblox than youtube and 16 times as much on netflix. zepeto is collaborating with korean entertainment companies big hit, yg entertainment and jyp for the next generation with investments of 17 billion won. in addition, 50 million people flocked to blackpink’s virtual fan signing event in 2020. it is also raising sales by collaborating with gucci and nike. in korea, actual missional cases of the metaverse are rare compared to the explosive growth trend of metaverse users. related research papers are also quite limited in quantity and subject matter. the following results are found when searching academic journals through the academic research information service (riss). the search term “metaverse” has seven academic publications, none in theological journals. when “virtual reality” or “virtual world” are used as search terms, there are 1,875 results, with only five published by missionary theological societies. there are 1,635 papers on “augmented reality,” but only two in missionary studies. joo young-min states, “the virtualization revolution changes the landscape of civilization and asks us fundamental questions. nevertheless, it is not easy to find a philosophical consideration for this. today’s discourse on technology is thoroughly organized in the language of industry”( joo 2019: 15). the church treats the metaverse simply as an it industry technology and an economic issue. kim sang-kyun (2020: 264) states, 20 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13666 “we need to think about whether we can completely break down the boundaries between the real world and the virtual world with human technology from various perspectives such as philosophy, religion, and law.” however, academic research by the korean church still concerns the real world rather than the virtual world. kim dohoon (2013) deals with the histological discussion of douglas estes’ overseas case of sim church. kye jea-kwang (2022) defined the metaverse as a digital mission field. hwang byung-bae (2020: 447–50) hinted at metaverse missionary work through “construction and liberation from the municipal treaty” as one of the eight suggestions for the renewal of the korean church. still, academic research on online platforms remains in its early stages, with reviews of previous research rather than actual case studies. nevertheless, it is consistent with the insufficient interests of the korean church in the metaverse. while korean churches’ studies focus on online activities for their members, the overseas church in the metaverse has attracted unbelievers outside the church. therefore, missiological research on the metaverse is necessary to help the korean church convert its perspective from self-centered to others. however, the scope of this research is limited to understanding the metaverse as a missionary sphere. it examines the convergence of missionary studies and the metaverse. it raises key theological issues to serve as a foundation for further research on specific cases of virtual church and missionary contact with nonbelievers on the metaverse. the metaverse the metaverse is a combination of “meta” and “universe,” which means transcendence of the real world and refers to a three-dimensional virtual world. however, beyond the technical scope of the commonly used term “virtual reality,” the metaverse is fluid and evolving to include a wide variety of synthetic realities. still, the technical research group acceleration studies foundations (asf) categorizes four expressions of the metaverse: augmented reality, lifelogging, mirror world, and virtual world. “metaverse” was the first used in neil stephenson’s science fiction novel snow crash (1992), to mean a virtual world that can only be entered through an avatar. a good visualization of this metaverse is in steven spielberg’s 2018 film ready player one. as can be guessed from the movie’s content, the metaverse platform does not end up as a space for entertainment for young people. it includes economic and political power. in netflix’s 2019 earnings announcement, reed hastings (netflix 2019) pointed to the virtual game fortnite, not hbo, in the same streaming industry, as a competitor. in the competition to occupy users’ time, the infinitely expanding and integrating metaverse has become a competitor for other businesses in the real world. 21 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13666 douglas estes (2009: 28–31) distinguishes the virtual world, the real world, the fictional world, the imaginary world, the augmented world and the virtual world. since the virtual world is in its infancy, there is generally much confusion and no simple definition. as a result, there are misunderstandings when people try to describe a virtual world using real or imaginary concepts. to explain the virtual world, estes argues that we must contrast the virtual world with other worlds. first, the real world is where we are reading this article. the virtual world is as real as the real world in its core and essence, though both worlds are different. second, the fictional world is created in the reader’s mind by reading books, watching movies or exercising the imagination. the fictional world is the way of possibility, while the virtual world is the way of reality. third, the imaginary world is another kind of world cut off from the real world. a virtual world may or may not be an imaginary world. in particular, christians equating the virtual world with the imaginary world may lead to inaccurate conclusions about faith and church in the virtual world. finally, the augmented world is a mix of real and virtual worlds developed through technology. the virtual world is different from the augmented world because it occurs only in the virtual world. on the other hand, the augmented world comes from the real world. as such, the virtual and augmented worlds belonging to the metaverse can be correctly understood when they deviate from the stereotype of disconnection from reality or from false worlds, such as fictional and imaginary worlds. we live in the real world and can access the metaverse through a digital interface. we can live in a composite space and interact with others in the real world. augmented reality allows more contact points with churches in the real world, but the virtual world as a synthetic space is not likely to be a form of the natural world. the metaverse and korean churches compared to the continued increase in people’s interest in the metaverse, the virtual church is now germinating among korean christians. although there are many examples of online worship due to the covid-19 pandemic, churches with analog sensibilities are still hesitant to access the online world. reactions and opinions of church members to the online church are various and divided. in the church, there are the analog, the digital retard and the digital generation. however, even it is still lacking in understanding this category. there is a negative and minimal recognition of the more technologically advanced metaverse. kim seung-hwan (2021) of the urban culture community research institute classifies churches into online church and church online. church online is where the existing analog church establishes an online presence. it is the type of online ministry that many churches are practising during covid-19. church online only uses digital platforms as tools while maintaining 22 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13666 the existing analog system and tends to recognize online ministry as a temporary measure for existing believers. church online receives hardly any attention from nonbelievers. the online church refers to a form of church that is not just a part of analog churches and independently begins within the metaverse world. this church has been entirely digital from the beginning. it is challenging because it does not mimic an analog church. it establishes new church theology, that is to say, a digital ecclesiology. for example, finding korean churches on various metaverse platforms is difficult. roblox has about 150 virtual churches, all founded overseas. roblox community church (2022) has 110,000 members, and faith church has 27,000 members. meanwhile, in korean churches, there is no awareness of the metaverse. instead, there is an understanding of the online church as the extensional device level of the real church. even if some churches promote online ministry earnestly for its members, it appears different from the missionary intention of online ministry for the unchurched. many churches transplant analog ecclesiology onto the digital world, failing to reach the unchurched digital generation. instead, only people who attend or have attended local churches visit the digital churches (hutchings 2017: 229). the inability to communicate between the younger generation in the metaverse and the korean online church is evident. it is also statistically proven that the decline of sunday school membership in korean churches has surpassed the decline in korean society’s youth and young adult population. in korean churches, sunday schools have decreased since the 1990s, with more than 50% of churches without sunday schools and only 3% of churches with pre-k classes (nam 2019). as such, the korean church is becoming super-aged and unable to prepare for the younger generation. yet the korean church, stuck in the analog perspective, regards life in the real world through the paradigm of exclusion resulting in a lack of communication with others in the digital world. since the metaverse is in its early stages, gaming is the first genre through which the next generation forms elements of the new society. but the analog generation is resistant to the changes and perceives the metaverse as merely a game or entertainment. as a result, these traditional churches put off the tensions between the virtual and real world as a matter of the distant future rather than a present reality. in addition to the fact that the korean church has an analog ecclesiology as opposed to the digital generation that utilizes the metaverse, there are various reasons why the korean church is still hesitant to understand and engage with the metaverse as a mission field. first, church activities in the metaverse are still very early, so theological discussions such as sacraments are lacking. second, the korean church member23 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13666 ship is aging. they are unwilling to familiarize themselves with the digital worldview and utilize the metaverse. furthermore, senior church leaders are more interested in ministering to the old than utilizing the metaverse for the younger generation. third, there is a lack of missional purpose and practice for young metaverse residents. fourth, there is mistrust and anxiety about the anonymity of metaverse activities. by perceiving the metaverse as a virtual space, the understanding that it is fake is too strong. it causes the korean church to reject the metaverse as a mission field. in addition, there is a reluctance to leak personal information through online activities. lastly, the church’s past experiences with online activities (homepage, online cafe) have not been positive. nnon-korean cases of metaverse church religious activities in the metaverse world have already been studied for a long time. the first virtual church was founded in 1985, before the advent of the world wide web. the members worshipped together through a text-only interface. since then, other pioneers have gradually founded more churches amid rapid changes in the virtual world. according to some estimates, there were about 30 virtual churches by 2000 (hutchings 2017: 245). then the virtual church underwent a significant change in 2004. the metaverse platform called second life was launched in 2003, and in the following year, the british methodist church started the church of fools to experiment with virtual churches in the metaverse. the church decided to experiment only for four months. the number of people attending its service reached 41,000 at one point. participants were able to attend in the form of 3d avatars. this church is designed to operate independently, not to expand the online service of the real church only for its members. another church, st pixel, officially started in 2006 and survived past the end date of the experiment due to continuous requests from participants. as a parish of the church of england, i-church started cultivating benedictine spirituality. anglicans of second life (aosl) was also founded in 2006, and sunshine cathedral in 2009. currently, there are about 15 virtual christian churches in second life, and about 70% of the category of spirituality & beliefs are christian churches. in these churches, participants can worship by typing their prayers and sharing their meditations on blogs and forums. in particular, the second life episcopal church has appealed to anglicans who are already familiar with their traditions by recreating cathedral architecture and using anglican etiquette. these anglican virtual churches have grown to worship seven times a week. 24 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13666 life church (virtualchurches.tv) differs from the previous churches in that it emphasizes conversation or communication rather than only broadcasting church activities to participants. life church is a virtual church based in edmund, oklahoma, in the united states. they purchased real estate on second life, hired developers, built church buildings, and created seats for avatars to attend church every week. one week in 2007, more than 1,400 people attended the online campus of life church. it measures attendance by the number of logged-on ip addresses. the virtual church did not limit itself to meetings within the metaverse but began its first mission trip to the real world in 2007. people who previously met only in the virtual world joined to establish the kingdom of god in the real world. recently, new metaverse platforms such as altspace (altvr.com) and roblox are evolving to host more sophisticated 3d virtual churches. estes describes the emergence of these virtual churches as follows: at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the church is beginning to be different not in style, venue, feel, or volume but in the world in which it exists. a new gathering of believers is emerging, a church not in the real world of bricks and mortar but in the virtual world of ip addresses and shared experiences. this type of church is unlike any church the world has ever seen. it has the power to break down social barriers, unite believers from all over the world, and build the kingdom of god with a widow’s mite of financing. it is a completely different type of church from any the world has ever seen (estes 2009: 17–18). the emergence of the metaverse as new media and church the traditional church’s analog standards will make its future uncertain and helpless, and its members’ practices will erode the metaverse world. leonard sweet’s epic theory, which presents a framework for analysing the characteristics of the postmodern generation, helps to grasp the features of the metaverse (sweet 2000). first, the experience in the metaverse is utterly different from the real world. suppose haptic technology, which may soon enable the sense of touch in addition to the visual and the auditory in the virtual world, the metaverse experience will further expand. the metaverse will allow experiences that are impossible in reality. second, the metaverse enables infinite creative participation by users producing user-generated content (ugc). users are not just consumers but may simultaneously be producers. since minecraft and roblox are sandbox-type platforms, metaverse users can create and use virtual worlds as much as they want, just as children make their shapes with sand on the beach. this autonomy stimulates participants to be more active and creative. third, the metaverse emphasizes virtual visualization. users create avatars as personas, giving users another identity in the virtual world. the metaverse, full http://virtualchurches.tv http://altvr.com 25 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13666 of images (image-driven), is especially effective for the younger generation, which is more familiar with images than letters. fourth, the world is connected simultaneously online. tesla uses neuralink to connect human brains and computers and installs small satellites in the earth’s orbit to enable starlink, aiming for a life that can always be connected through autonomous driving and artificial intelligence. big data collected through google maps connects everything in human life. this metaverse is not satisfied with a world separated from reality like the virtual world but is evolving into an augmented world connected to the real world. metaverse-related companies such as tesla, nvidia, epic games, facebook, apple, kakao, naver, and microsoft face numerous challenges to win this metaverse business competition. korean church seldom has leaders interested in or participating in technology conferences, annual events, or ces (consumer electronics show), which introduces new technologies and products. there is no mention of religion in kim sang-kyun’s book (2020), which discusses the metaverse as a digital district. in the secular world, the metaverse is very developed and has hundreds of millions of young users, yet the church is still only struggling with issues of churches in the physical world. throughout christian history, the church has used various means such as letters, print media, tv and radio to reach people and invite them to be jesus’ followers. with the advent of the world wide web in the 1990s, the internet became the foundational platform for relationships in many aspects of society. many churches also began to pay attention to cyberspace as a space to practice faith in prayer, worship, and sacrament. in contrast to radio and television ministry, virtual churches in the metaverse are the products of two infinite torrents leading to the development of humankind in the twenty-first century: the exponential pace of technological growth and postmodernism. the confluence of these two massive flows is creating a fertile delta for virtual churches to grow. these churches are entirely new, not the shadow of the real church recorded and podcast. radio and television in church ministry are non-mutual communicational means. in other words, they are simple unidirectional monologues. it is similar to the vertical relationships in traditional churches reproducing tremendous power for churches and pastors. nevertheless, modern people will never confuse the church with tv programmes or radio shows. modern-day people may hear their favorite pastor on tv or the radio more often than attending a brick-and-mortar church, but christians still consider attending a physical church as a sign of true faith. however, with the advent of postmodernism, the definition of the church is expanding, and its borders are fading. unlike monologues on radio and tv, virtual world experiences are interactive and immersive. residents of the virtual world are not just consumers but participants who worship with pastors in a genuinely collaborative experience. the analog generation, which is now the majority of 26 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13666 real-world church members, may be unfamiliar with the virtual world. still, virtual interactions can be much more authentic and less awkward for the mz generation than real-world relationships. as in-person education became impossible due to covid-19, soonchunhyang university held the 2021 freshman entrance ceremony on the metaverse platform zepeto operated by naver. using virtual reality experience tools supported by the university, the first-year students made an avatar of themselves and participated in the school event. as the virtual world becomes more and more of a reality in the coming decade, more and more people will turn to the virtual world for everyday interactions and meet their spiritual needs. it does not mean that the metaverse church will replace the real-world church. the virtual world is an independent operation method from reality, but the activities of the real church can further expand by connecting with the virtual world through augmented reality. the metaverse receives much attention from the younger generation because of its flexibility, transparency, diversity, and other innate strengths. the younger generation who had difficulty participating in the traditional church prefers to worship in the virtual world. the phenomenon will also influence and change churches in the real world. still, church members of the analog generation are unfamiliar with and adverse to virtual churches. when face-to-face worship has become impossible due to covid-19, most korean churches gathered through zoom, google chat and kakao live. ten years ago, no one expected the korean church to conduct religious activities in these forms. however, technological advances have changed them despite the resistance of the analog generation. people first exchanged messages on kakao talk. then they sent electronic gift coupons on the same messaging app. they now conduct financial activities through kakao bank. eventually, the metaverse will become more than just an online phenomenon limited to funds and games and into a technology that changes our lives. the metaverse as a digital mission field the korean church’s response and research on the metaverse are in an extremely early stage. for the next generation of korean society and the korean church to form a healthy relationship, it is necessary to understand the metaverse as a digital mission field and take a missional approach. using new media such as metaverse can initiate dialogue for the unchurched. the metaverse may be beneficial to church members, but it may also challenge the authority or control of the church. encouraging openness can boost church community networking and relationships but poses a threat if it appears to encourage excessive or prohibited behavior. there27 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13666 fore, a critical contextualization approach that enables cultural dialogue between the digital mission field and christian churches is essential (hiebert 1985: 171–92). technological changes have been of great help in the missiological history, while the resistance from the existing church’s traditions has also been. in the second century, scroll-type scriptures developed into codexes. in the sixteenth century, the development of printing supported the reformation. since then, oceanography has significantly contributed to changing the missionary paradigm for coastal missions, communication techniques for inland missions, and computers for the evangelism of unreached tribes. the virtual world is not where the analog generations must physically move. however, considering the future of the korean church’s mission and evangelism, the church must recognize that the metaverse is where the younger generation resides and communicate with its residents in this space. the metaverse as a missionary field has many advantages. in other words, it can overcome various obstacles a real church has faced. first, it breaks down religious and cultural barriers. the unchurched who are reluctant to visit a real church can have a place to encounter god in the metaverse. second, it removes the barrier of physical distance. it provides opportunities for those who need help to participate in faith community activities due to foreign missions or long-distance travel. it allows the church to provide various church education programmes and theological education without needing leaders to visit the mission field physically. third, it can bridge generational barriers. it can overcome the culture of traditional christian adults with limited play and fun in their religious activities and actualize christian education through interest and fun for the next generation. fourth, religious activities in the metaverse erase social barriers. it provides opportunities for the marginalized to participate in faith activities. for example, disabled or older people with limited mobility can participate in activities. people restricted from participating due to social rejection, such as ex-offenders and refugees, can become active. sixth, the metaverse eliminates spatial constraints. especially for small churches with limited financial resources, it is possible to provide a space for various small group activities at little cost. the four stages of critical contextualization applied to the metaverse are as follows. first, it is necessary to investigate the metaverse as a digital mission field. for the church to respond appropriately to the metaverse culture, unbiased information on the space is required. because the church’s online activities have been very church-centred, collecting objective data on the digital mission field is necessary. in particular, it needs social and scientific explorations in the metaverse characterized by anonymity and autonomy. second, the evangelist and the recipient exegete 28 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13666 scripture with the collected information in the first stage. third, based on the analysis of the metaverse context, possible church activities may be proposed. fourth, the church needs to re-discuss from the perspective of the digital native. it should not uncritically apply the newly proposed church activities to the metaverse. some discussion topics may be the relationship between online and offline activities, the validity of online communities, the form and effect of online ceremonies, the design of virtual architecture and sacred spaces, and the impact of digital media on religious authority. the nature, purpose, potential and limitations of virtual churches should be investigated, and discussions on the role of avatars, virtual spirituality, virtual ministry and the development of virtual church communities are necessary. finally, problems such as virtual identity, individual spirituality and the risks and limitations of niche ministry should not be neglected on a personal level. in this critical contextualization process, the anglican pastor mark brown’s response to the question of who is in charge of the anglican cathedral of second life is meaningful. he said, “church has only about 3 percent of it figured out; 97 percent is continual trial and error. ‘we don’t have the answers’” (estes 2009: 38). estes confesses that considering the long debate over the nature and practices of the church and the differences between traditional churches in north america, europe, and asia, it seems almost impossible to create the theology of the virtual church (estes 2009: 28). under the critical contextualization process, finding new practices for the korean church to understand the metaverse as a digital mission site will take time. through this, the evangelist and the recipient of the gospel may respect each other, and balanced and unbiased missionary communication may be possible. heidi campbell, who studied the relationship between media and religion, naturally rejects the stereotype that deeply religious people are necessarily anti-technical (campbell 2010). nevertheless, she argues, many devout people are “constrained by many social and faith-based factors that inform and guide their responses to the possibilities and challenges that new forms of media offer” (campbell 2010: 6). campbell’s concept of the ‘religious-social shaping approach to technology’ allows religious organizations to systematize the development of media use and prospects based on a four-step process. first, it is essential to understand how certain religious groups have historically dealt with technological innovation and precedents. the second step deals with the group’s core beliefs, religious values, and interpretation in light of the development of new media. third, the negotiation process on the nature of innovation and authority that determines its position within the religious framework of the group follows. the process decides the usefulness of specific new media devices and their ideological and symbolic components. finally, the ensuing joint discourse helps to examine how the use of new media will cooperate with the norms of the group, resulting in problem-solving. campbell supports a “construc29 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13666 tive” approach rather than a “deterministic” approach to studying how religious communities respond to the emergence of new communication technologies. her argument refutes the earlier perception of religious groups as passive respondents merely accepting or rejecting new technologies. heidi campbell’s constructivist approach has similarities with paul hiebert’s critical contextualization. therefore, the complementary dialogue between the two theories will require the christian church to naturally settle in the metaverse and seek ways to preach the gospel to its digital residents. conclusion the metaverse, a new missionary destination, should not be an object of fear but a new opportunity for the gospel. for example, in roblox, user access time during september 2020 was 22.1 billion hours. the christian church still meets far less than one per cent of the population residing in the virtual world. it means that the virtual world is the largest unreached group on earth. simon jenkins, one of the founders of the stupid church, said, “someone has created a new town, and it’s like no one is thinking of building a church there. it’s very shameful” (estes 2009: 39). real churches in korea tend to understand the online format forced by the covid-19 pandemic as a temporary measure. in this situation, missiological research on the metaverse residents is urgently needed to inspire the church to see new missional possibilities. the missional discussion of the metaverse should promote a holistic understanding in which the real and the virtual worlds are intimately connected rather than taking a dualistic approach where the generation is forced to choose between the two. the mz generation emerged with the development of new technologies, and their digital space does not conflict with the nature of the christian church. with the efforts to understand the metaverse as a place of mission and its digital residents, the korean church can coexist with them for the kingdom of god. ed stetzer, a church futurist, said, “many say they think the church will never be the same again. some wonder, for instance, if the day of the large church is over. i’m more concerned the church will be the same again” (stetzer 2020: 14). it shows concern for the church’s future. the korean it company naver has created the metaverse platform zepeto, named after the character who brought life to pinocchio, a lifeless wooden doll. people who do not know god think they have gained a new life in this virtual world. god made humans out of clay to steward the created world. so then, shouldn’t we be prepared so that the metaverse does not end up as a world of lies? this study raises more questions than answers. however, it goes beyond the assess30 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13666 ment of the present situation to begin a new conversation about a digital missional field called metaverse. about the author sung-hyuk nam has been teaching evangelism at presbyterian university and theological seminary since 2022. he currently serves as the chairman of the department for church growth, mission, and evangelism of the korean society for practical theology. he is also a staff member of culture & theology society. contact: bokdoen@gmail.com references campbell, heidi a. 2010. when religion meets new media. new york, ny: routledge. estes, douglas c. 2009. simchurch: being the church in the virtual world. grand rapids, mi: zondervan. hiebert, paul g. 1985. anthropological insights for missionaries. grand rapids, mi: baker book house. hutchings, tim. 2017. creating church online: ritual, community and new media. new york, ny: routledge. hwang byung-bae. 2020. “advent of the post-corona era and renewal of the korean church: from the perspective of missional ecclesiology.” korean society of mission studies 60: 430–58. joo, young-min. 2019. virtuality is reality. seoul: across. kim dohoon. 2013. “being the church in the virtual world: a study on the virtual ecclesiology (simchurch) of douglas estes.” korea presbyterian journal of theology 45 (4): 141–68. kim sang-kyun. 2020. the metaverse: digital earth, the world of things that emerging. hwa-sung: plan b design. kim seung-hwan. 2021. “digital faith, online church.” city and community’s 11th anniversary: 18. kye jae-kwang. 2022. “an analysis of digital mission fields’ ministry in ‘with covid-19’.” theology and praxis 79: 531–58. nam sung-hyuk. 2019. “in the age of population cliffs, the search for a transition to a missionary church: focusing on the church 3.0 model.” theology and practice 64: 286–87. netflix. 2019, january 17. “we compete with and lose to fortnite more than hbo.” netflix’s q4 2018 report.” https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/quarterly_ reports/2018/q4/final-q418-shareholder-letter.pdf (accessed 18 may 2023). nvidia. 2020. may 15. nvidia gtc may 2020 keynote pt1: ceo jensen huang introduces datacenter-scale accelerated computing[video]. https://youtu.be/bof2s7ozfeg (accessed 18 may 2023). roblox community church. 2022, march 10. https://www.roblox.com/groups/7109020/ roblox-community-church#!/about (accessed 18 may 2023). stetzer, ed. 2020. “time for a new normal.” outreach magazine july/august. sweet, leonard. 2000. post-modern pilgrims: first century passion for the 21st century world. nashville, tn: b&h books. mailto:bokdoen@gmail.com https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/quarterly_reports/2018/q4/final-q418-shareholder-letter.pdf https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/quarterly_reports/2018/q4/final-q418-shareholder-letter.pdf https://youtu.be/bof2s7ozfeg https://www.roblox.com/groups/7109020/roblox-community-church#!/about https://www.roblox.com/groups/7109020/roblox-community-church#!/about ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 1 35 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18685 a r t i c l e doi: 10.54195/ef18685 sharing in the indiscriminate generosity of god: exploring missional engagement of racial justice funded by the economy of god natalie magnusson abstract this article further probes three of the findings of the author’s dmin project thesis, which explored god’s call of racial justice in a predominantly white, affluent episcopal church. the research revealed theological and missional challenges that inhibit the church from joining in god’s mission of justice, namely participants viewing the church as the host of missional engagement, white privilege hindering the practice of listening and the reluctance of members to articulate the presence and activity of god as it relates to justice. in consideration of these obstacles, this article recommends the indiscriminate generosity of god for funding the imagination of the missional community for faithful innovation related to racial justice. keywords: racial justice, economy of god, missional engagement, luke 14, practice of listening, eucharist introduction during the summer of 2022, i implemented a doctor of ministry research project at st paul’s episcopal church in jackson, michigan seeking to discern god’s call of racial justice in our local community (magnusson 2023).1 being a socially progressive congregation, i anticipated little resistance from members and, instead, a readiness for joining in god’s work of justice in our local community. while few participants 1 i participated as an active layperson at st paul’s for seven years preceding the research project. the institutional review board of lipscomb university approved the project prior to its commencement. the rector of the church and all participants provided informed consent permitting the church to be named and forbidding all individual participants to be named or identified in the project. 36 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18685 opposed the central aim of the project, data reveals theological and missional challenges that inhibit the church from joining in god’s mission of justice, namely participants viewing the church as the host of missional engagement, white privilege hindering the practice of listening, and the reluctance of members to articulate the presence and activity of god as it relates to justice. this article briefly summarizes three of the eight findings of the project and posits the economy of god as an appropriate theological framework for deepening missional engagement. context and rationale for the research project st paul’s is a predominantly white, affluent church located in a predominantly black, low-income neighbourhood of downtown jackson, mi. in recent decades, the denomination of the episcopal church has made intentional efforts to confess and repent of long-standing complicity in systemic racism (general convention 1989: 329–30; spellers 2021). over the past several years, many members of st paul’s have learned from books and films about racial justice, and the topic has surfaced frequently in sermons, prayers, bible studies and fellowship groups. unlike some predominantly white churches in the us who deny the presence of ongoing systemic racism, st paul’s began the project with a degree of awareness and consensus related to the reality of racial injustice and the episcopal church’s historical participation. the project pursued the following research question: how might a congregation of the most historically powerful, prominent and affluent church in the us imagine its life in the jackson community in light of luke 14 and encounters with people who experience racial injustice (spellers 2021: 53)? i was motivated by the disconnect between discernible congregational interest in supporting racial justice and our insufficient practice of it. the black community of jackson is not experiencing equitable and just conditions as the result of the church’s proclaimed support of racial justice. i found jemar tisby’s invitation appropriate for st paul’s at the time: “[y]ou cannot read your way, listen your way, or watch your way into skillful advocacy. at some point you must act” (2019: 214). i suspected that a contributing factor to our paralysis is that we conceive of racism primarily in terms of racial identity and often overlook the exploitative realities of racial capitalism, a distinction jonathan tran makes in asian americans and the spirit of racial capitalism. to get at this, tran believes that asking the questions “what does racism accomplish?” “whom does it benefit?” and “how does it work?” can get us closer to the exploitative and commodifying roots of racial capitalism (2021: 294). as an affluent congregation, we appear to have more comfort in taking the “love our neighbours” or “welcome everyone” approach of antiracism, which falls more within the scope of tran’s identarianism, than we are willing to name our ongoing complicity in and benefit from racial capitalism. tran’s work pulls back the curtain on the power of mammon in our lives: “those americans worried that justice will take 37 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18685 away their advantages like nothing more than to talk about identity. they love diversity, inclusion, representation, multiculturalism, and the like because it leaves their stuff – what jesus in luke 12 called ‘barns and bigger barns’ – untouched” (2021: 295). therefore, i wondered if our attachment to material comforts is an untapped area of the conversation and desired to invite us to confront the greed of our white privilege. method of research as a way of stimulating these discoveries, the project revolved around two practices of listening: dwelling in the word in luke 14 for seven weeks interlaced with three occasions called listening opportunities as a way of attending to perspectives other than our own. i invited all members of the congregation to participate in both listening practices and complete surveys after each of the listening opportunities. additionally, i selected seven participants to attend a minimum of four dwelling in the word practices and two listening opportunities.2 at the end of the study, i divided the seven participants into two focus interview groups and asked the same set of questions to each group. in reflection on both practices of listening, i invited participants to share regarding their most dominant feelings, moments of surprise, experiences of discomfort and grief, awareness of god’s presence, reoccurring themes from luke 14, learnings from the practice of listening, god’s calling related to racial justice, and lingering questions. dwelling in the word is an extended communal practice of listening to god through both scripture and one another. the practice followed the same steps each week: listen to all or a portion of luke 14 while noticing the word or phrase that catches one’s attention; practise a minute of silence, “find a reasonably friendly looking stranger and listen them into free speech” (keifert 2006, 163); gather again in the large group to share what each person heard their partner say, communally observe the week’s themes, and conclude in gratitude for god’s word and the holy spirit that continues to speak through both scripture and the community. i gathered data from the dwelling practice by keeping field notes of the responses that participants made to the text. additionally, i asked questions during the focus group interviews drawing out the participants’ reflections on the dwelling practice. on weeks one, three and five of the study, i invited all members of the church to participate in listening opportunities hosted by three local black leaders referred to as conversation partners (cp) in the project. i selected the cps because they are each professionally involved in the work of racial justice in southeast michigan 2 i originally invited eight members of the congregation, four women and four men of various ages, to be focus group participants. i selected participants based on their ability to attend the practices consistently and reliably during the summer timeframe of the study. 38 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18685 and already had a trusted relationship with the rector of the church. cp 1 consults with various groups seeking diversity, equity and inclusion as well as advocating for racial justice in the local education system. cp 2 was incarcerated in michigan for several years and now works with a non-profit organization to create policy changes that yield more just and flourishing conditions for formerly incarcerated persons returning to society. cp 3 is ordained by the episcopal church and assists congregations in the work of racial healing in their local communities. i asked the cps to share about local racial justice efforts and appropriate ways that a predominantly white church might participate. each of the three cps shared a blend of autobiographical experiences, information about systemic racism, and opportunities for the audience to engage in racial justice. after the seven weeks, i performed inductive coding of the data gleaned from the three listening opportunity surveys, the two focus group interviews, and my field notes from both dwelling in the word and listening opportunities. i identified eight themes and will explore the implications below of three of the findings through the lens of the economy of god.3 the economy of god i suggest that the economy of god may serve as a theological foundation for missional engagement of racial justice. jonathan tran contrasts the political economy of racial capitalism with the “deep economy” of god by describing god’s created order as one of liberation and flourishment (2021: 21, 207). alternatively, racial capitalism marches to the synchronous beat of scarcity and insatiable consumption while rejecting the fundamental notion that the world and everything in it has been created by and belongs to god (2021: 210). tran offers hope that the pervasive forces of scarcity and exploitation are mutable, especially when communities seek to share with their neighbors in the economy of god. due to the prevalence of the prosperity gospel, it is essential to differentiate between prosperity and god’s abundant economy (mumford, 2011: 222). the prosperity gospel turns on the claim that god grants economic wealth and physical health to the righteous and faithful. the prosperity pursued in this approach often pertains more to the interests of the individual or the church than to the wider community. conversely, the abundance of the economy of god is not for self-gain or the aggrandizement of the church. andrea bieler and luise schottroff make this distinction by noting israel’s experience in the wilderness, “the manna economy displays an 3 the eight themes that emerged from the data are explored at length in the author’s project thesis (magnusson 2023). 39 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18685 abundance that does not serve the purpose of accumulation. it serves the purpose of nourishment for the day, of fulfilling the basic needs of the community” (2007: 99). eucharistically-informed missional imagination st paul’s as host one missional and theological challenge that surfaced for joining in god’s mission of justice is that some participants unwittingly made suggestions that arranged individuals and st paul’s as the hosts and saviours related to racial justice. in dwelling, the group frequently interpreted jesus’ table instructions to the pharisees to “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind,” as a model for the church to invite our neighbours into worship. “so, who are [we] called to invite to our banquet?” asked an interviewee in reflection on the text. st paul’s was typically seen as the location where god’s banquet occurs. conversations often went down the path of asking how st paul’s can become more inviting to our black neighbors and diverse: “i would like people of other races to feel they would be welcome to attend st paul’s and that they would be truly welcomed.” these sentiments led to palpable anxiety and concerns such as how st paul’s could get black people to attend and remain; whites and blacks not being able to relate with one another; and changing worship styles – “can episcopalians still revere / embed english culture while appreciating / celebrating / welcoming other cultures? must we change to do this?” (emphasis original). members rarely considered that god’s banquet can take place in other social locations and on terms other than our own. i also identified the impulse for some participants to serve as white saviours. for example, after cp 2 shared about their experiences of incarceration and current efforts of changing legislation, a member approached them offering to speak to other groups alongside them, “it might be nice to have a white [person] by your side.… i’d like to be your [person].” while the member had the intention of helping the cp, they overlooked how the cp was sufficiently compelling on their own as they spoke before a predominantly white group. willie james jennings explores how predominantly white churches like st paul’s have come to assume the role of host: [t]he christian theological imagination was woven into processes of colonial dominance. other peoples and their ways of life had to adapt, become fluid, even morph into the colonial order of things, and such a situation drew christianity and its theologians inside habits of mind and life that internalized and normalized that order of things…. indeed, it is as though christianity, wherever it went in the modern colonies, inverted its sense of hospitality. it claimed to be the host, the owner of the spaces it 40 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18685 entered, and demanded native peoples to enter its cultural logics, its ways of being in the world, and its conceptualities. (2010: 8, emphasis added) despite god being the host in the narratives of scripture, the colonial theological imagination of western christianity continues to have an insidious grip on communities of faith, even those who have emerging awareness of systemic racism and white privilege. disconnect between the eucharist and missional engagement in reviewing the data, i was surprised that the eucharist, the pinnacle of episcopal worship, did not give greater shape to members’ understanding of god as the host. the father, son and holy spirit are principal actors in the liturgy, communicating clearly that god is the host of the table (episcopal church 2007: 361–6). after receiving the bread and wine, the community affirms that this feast is gifted by god and sourced from the body of christ himself: “you have fed us with spiritual food in the sacrament of [christ’s] body and blood” (2007: 365). the weekly gathering at the table of the lord reveals the underlying belief in the unceasing abundance of nourishment that god provides. no one would return to a table known to be empty. furthermore, because god is the host of the table and extends welcome to all, st paul’s participates in god’s welcome and inclusion by sharing the eucharist with whomever comes forward to receive. while the church regularly engages this theologically rich sacrament, seldom do members explore together or reflect consciously on questions such as, “what understanding of the world is implicit in this practice? what vision of the kingdom is carried in this ritual?” (smith 2009: 199). the eucharist does not appear to inform public engagement and is an underutilized gift for shaping the church’s imagination of the relationship between god, church, and world and its impact on racial justice. god as host scripture offers many narratives that locate god as the host at the margins, particularly through the numerous table scenes in luke and acts. in these volumes, jesus and the spirit disrupt ancient social conventions of the table and transform it into a place of boundary transgression, intimate communion and belonging. jesus re arranges the table and establishes himself as the host while simultaneously being one who serves (lk. 22.7–30). specifically in the dwelling passage of luke 14 selected for the project, jesus unseats the religiously, socially and economically powerful pharisees from the host position and rearranges the table in alignment with the kingdom of god. in the parable of the great banquet in luke 14.15–24, the privileged invitees snub the master’s invitation with absurd excuses. one by one, they each tell the master’s 41 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18685 servant that they must attend to their possessions: a piece of land, five yoke of oxen and a new wife. the parable signals their preoccupation with possessions while also exposing the deeper truth of the pharisees’ preoccupation with themselves. the privileged invitees do not regard the master as honourable enough for their presence. in a culture of beneficence and reciprocal obligation, to associate with this master potentially brings shame upon the initial invitees, a risk they are unwilling to take (green 1995: 112–21). jesus demonstrates to the pharisees that the greco-roman code of honour and shame has shaped how they perceive god and god’s kingdom more than they realize. jesus presses on and dispels societal arrangements of patronage by establishing god as the indiscriminate host or “supreme benefactor” of the table (green 1995: 116). the pharisees, who are the original hosts in this narrative, suddenly discover they have been replaced by a host who has endless room for those who would be regarded as having no honour. laurence hull stookey concludes of this passage, “the heavenly banquet hall is vast, and god desires urgently that it be filled, for our maker has an expansive nature, and the sharing of good things is at the center of divine creative love” (1993: 136). god’s way of beneficence creates an economy of shared abundance, which jesus holds in clear contrast to greco-roman exploitative practices of patronage. eucharistically-informed missional imagination though the sacrament of the eucharist has its elevated place in the weekly service, st paul’s imagination for joining in racial justice may be additionally formed by the economy of “god’s life as a ‘perpetual eucharist’ for all of creation” (milbank 1995: 152). god is ahead of and beyond the church, feeding and nourishing the world long before and after the church gets involved. i anticipate that we will begin to be attuned to god’s abundance in our community as we learn to consistently show up as guests at god’s table wherever it may be found and regularly consider questions such as, “how might god be hosting us in our encounters and through our neighbors?” and “what gifts are we receiving from our community for which we may give thanks?” receiving through listening white privilege and listening unsurprisingly, white privilege was detectable despite the education about racism that the members of st paul’s had previously engaged. the first cp stood before a predominantly white, affluent crowd concluding that, “if we get down to the real root of it, in my opinion, fear and greed are the real issue.” when i heard the phrase “fear and greed” i anticipated comments or pushback in the surveys. surprisingly, out of 42 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18685 16 surveys for cp 1, only three mentioned the phrase and only one of seven interviewees briefly mentioned it. instead, there was a higher prevalence of two things. participants freely offered opinions on the demeanour and effectiveness of the cps. it is noteworthy that some of these comments were shared in response to the invitation for personal reflection: “as a way of describing your experience while listening, please share one to three words or brief phrases that express your most dominant feeling(s) or reaction(s)” (emphasis not on survey). instead of participants sharing about themselves, they reversed the attention of the question and critiqued the presenters. some said cp 1 was “confrontational”, “extreme” and “antagonistic”. others viewed cp 1 more favorably by expressing they were “helpful”, “engaging”, “inspiring” and “courageous”. comments about cp 2 were less polarized and assessed the presenter as “effective”, “persuasive” and “mesmerizing”, and “had us eating out of the palm of [their] hand”. participants described cp 3 as “uplifting and encouraging” and “having very deep roots in god’s presence, like an ancient tree”. while it could be argued that these words and phrases reflect dominant personal reactions of the participants, it seems significant how often responses were an assessment of the cp more than a self-reflection of the participants’ feelings. second, rather than focusing on the substance of the presentations of the cps, there was a higher prevalence of comments about minor things than anticipated. when i asked about a surprise during the listening opportunities, some noted specific details of the personal lives of the cps, such as their hobbies or the number of children they have. while personal anecdotes gave the audience a fuller and more autobiographical picture, i wondered why those were the chosen moments of surprise for participants. by focusing on the trivial, the white listeners might have been demonstrating that we have enough societal power to deflect difficult truths and be selective about our engagement. not only did the participants reveal white privilege, but i also discovered it in myself. when the first conversation partner declared that “fear and greed” are the root issue of racism, they quickly moved to a different segment of their presentation without expounding upon those words. this could have been a rhetorical strategy, some understandable nerves that overcame them, or something i cannot imagine from my limited perspective. whatever the cp’s rationale, i felt uneasy. it was not, however, because i disagreed with them. i designed the project with the undergirding belief that greed has something to do with racism. my challenge was cp 1’s method of delivery. an interview participant shared my reaction: “it wasn’t that you didn’t agree with what cp 1 was saying. it was the way [they] said it. it was a matter of delivery. [they were] adversarial.” for days, i found myself vacillating between two thoughts. in the practices of teaching and preaching, i believe it is wise to invite others to walk alongside me to 43 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18685 grapple with a difficult truth. i desire to avoid provoking hearers from shutting down too early and wondered if the cp spoke too confrontationally. i sincerely wanted cp 1’s words to be heard and was concerned that attendees would not have ears to hear because of the delivery. however, as i mentally gave cp 1 well-intended suggestions, i realized how white privilege and fragility were shaping my assessment and notions of effective rhetorical strategies. a person of privilege has the leisure to slowly and gently invite listeners alongside them. a person who experiences ongoing oppression needs immediate justice and should not be expected to remain quiet or peaceable. further, i was allowing the predominantly white audience to determine the “wisest” course for racial dialogue. i was mentally tone-policing cp 1 and hoping for them to conform their delivery in such a way that white people could hear it. i had performance standards shaped by white privilege and fragility and was unsettled when cp 1 did not fit that mould. while there is value in knowing one’s audience and speaking in a way that can be heard, this experience reveals that a predominantly white, upper-class audience would be wise to attend to the dialogical problems our privilege creates. signalling mastery perhaps one could say that the questions on a survey immediately following a speaker solicit evaluative responses. in our consumer-oriented society, people are frequently asked to rate their customer service representative or answer presidential approval polls. due to this kind of cultural conditioning, participants possibly assumed that the survey questions were of that nature. i wonder, however, if the trend of a white, upper-class group immediately evaluating the demeanour and effectiveness of the black presenters is more than customer service and more than a deflection tactic. this phenomenon might signal what willie james jennings calls “the performance of the self-sufficient white man” (2020) and miranda fricker’s “testimonial injustice” (2007: 9–29). jennings describes how the colonial legacy of western education has distorted our imaginations in such a way that we are enthralled by the performance of possession, control and mastery (2020: 6–7). we have learned to love a specific kind of intellectual form of whiteness and measure all performances in relation to it (2020: 29). a highly educated group that has been historically shaped by the performance of white, male priests seems to freely evaluate everyone by these standards. fricker uses different terms to explore the listening dynamics between two groups of people. she describes how speakers of colour experience “testimonial injustice” because white hearers’ hearing is shaped by implicit biases and scepticism of non-white cognition (2007: 2–3, 5–6). the white hearers’ ingrained habit of “judgment of credibility” supersedes the testimony of the speaker and blocks the flow of new learning (2007: 3). this dynamic increases what she calls “hermeneutical marginalization”, where some social groups are unable to contribute to the pool of shared 44 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18685 social meanings (2007: 152–61). while it is impossible to know the extent to which the participants’ judgment of credibility was at work, it is valuable to reflect upon these possible explanations for the evaluation of the cps. god’s economy of encounter in a “zero-sum” constructed world, white privilege maintains the myth that there is not enough space for multiple voices and perspectives to be shared, so the assertion of one voice means the negation of another voice (mcghee 2021: xix). the habits of criticizing, correcting and directing – andrew t. draper calls this “exercising the ethnographic gaze” — help white listeners to maintain control of the assets of the conversation, even if the thoughts go unspoken (2018: 204). an additional barrier for interracial conversations and encounters is that white, upper-class people tend to view white people as having and deserving all the goods and racialized others as having all the needs, which is ironic on the heels of contending that white people demonstrate a scarcity mindset! with seemingly endless access to education, employment and resources, white listeners have difficulty recognizing the deficiencies and needs of the white community and the abundant gifts existent in other racialized groups. complicating matters is the misconception that goods consumed with financial capital are more valuable than gifts that cannot be purchased. this perceived imbalance of surplus and needs between racialized groups predisposes white listeners to have an unreceptive posture. in god’s economy, however, the gifts of god are always at hand. encounters with the other are occasions for god’s abundance, not scarcity. though we believe that god’s spirit is poured out upon all flesh, we struggle to embody the truth of this statement (mather 2018: 14). asset-based community development expert michael mather insists that many of god’s gifts go unnoticed because we are asking the wrong questions and looking for the wrong answers (2018: 17). rather than focusing on needs, he suggests that communities learn to ask things such as “who are the healers, teachers and artists around here, and how may we invest in them so that their gifts may flourish?” (2018: 33). additionally, andrew t. draper suggests that white christians “practice hearing and speaking the glory of god in unfamiliar cadences” (2018: 203). whatever and however a person communicates their experience may be received as a gift. draper wonders, “what if we as white people saw correction and anger as gifts given to us by people of color, gifts that signal a desire to relate in a healthier manner?” (2018: 184). these gifts reveal passion and engagement, not apathy and resignation. as the members of st paul’s practise receiving what is unfamiliar or what might be perceived as undesirable, i anticipate we will discover the abundance of god’s gifts for the work of racial justice. 45 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18685 speaking of the living god where is god? for several years preceding the project, st paul’s utilized the phrase “celebrating christ’s presence in a changing world” as a way of communicating to our neighbours what st paul’s believes about christ, the church and the world. given the ubiquity of the phrase, i was surprised to discover that several participants were hesitant to name the presence of god during the project. as i was processing the listening opportunity surveys, i noticed that the question that was most frequently left blank was the question that asked, “if you were aware of god’s presence today, write 1–2 sentences to describe what you noticed.” out of 44 responses, this question was left unanswered 16 times, far more than other questions. possibly due to the overwhelming nature of systemic racism, one response said, “if anything, it feels like he’s decidedly absent.” hesitant speech there are several reasons why participants were less likely to name the presence of god in these instances. one is that christianity in the west has largely kept god out of public matters, especially when it comes to social justice (dupont 2013). god is experienced in the worship setting, and possibly during private devotions, but not often in other arenas of our lives. this has largely been shaped by the western theological and ecclesial imagination that locates god in the church and positions the church over and against the world. when christianity has been brought into public matters, it has often been for the sake of further subjugation of already marginalized groups, such as efforts of some conservative christians to limit the rights of the lgbtq+ community. this kind of public engagement has not fostered a sense of god’s presence and has typically done the opposite. one interviewee named the troublesome history of christians using the bible to condone slavery, which causes this participant to feel some hesitancy around involving the bible in discussions on racial justice. it seems less complicated to avoid god in the discussion and advocate for racial justice on humanitarian terms. this participant expressed that they want to avoid evangelicalism, and i suspect that their avoidance is shared among much of the congregation. in my observation, episcopalians often try to distinguish ourselves from american evangelicals. in the effort to keep from misrepresenting god’s presence, we find greater comfort in avoiding speaking about the activity of god altogether. additionally, charles taylor has identified that we find ourselves in an age of disenchantment and secularism where the assumption and belief that god is present and acting in miraculous ways has faded (2007). this posture has become so prevalent that many progressive christians rarely attribute anything to the presence and activity of god. if something miraculous occurs, it is more often deemed as a 46 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18685 fluke rather than the work of god. in dwelling, for example, the comments largely exhibit ed an intellectual criticism and curiosity about luke 14 and less often considered how the spirit might be calling us to respond. healing is possible inherent in the claim of the economy of god is a living and active god. the spirit of god, the giver of life, is the source of the ever-flowing stream of justice and righteousness (amos 5.24). when christian communities seek to participate in god’s work of justice, we confess that god is interested and involved in creating more just conditions for all of humanity and creation. it is not purely up to human efforts to address systemic racism. in mysterious ways, god brings unexpected harvest (1 cor. 3.5–9). it is easy for the daunting work of racial justice and the seemingly endless bad news of police brutality, unjust incarceration, housing discrimination, underfunded schools and banned literature to cloud our vision. further complicating efforts of justice is our own attachment to white privilege. the project demonstrates that st paul’s could benefit from attending to the ongoing work of god in the world, thereby increasing trust that god can bring liberation and justice. the dwelling text for the project offers good news in this regard. luke 14 opens with a healing that appears to be disconnected from the table instructions that follow. one sabbath day, jesus is eating in the home of a leader of the pharisees when a man with dropsy – excessive water retention – suddenly appears before him (hartstock 2013: 342). jesus heals him, and it seems as though the purpose of the healing story is to expose the tension between jesus and the pharisees’ sabbath customs. however, chad hartstock demonstrates that dropsy was a prevalent metaphor in the ancient greco-roman world for greed, such as diogenes referring to money-lovers as “dropsies” (2013: 349). hartstock insists that luke employs dropsy as an accusation of the insatiable greed of the pharisees (2013: 353).4 luke’s audience would have readily made the connection. those with never-ending desires for wealth and power are akin to those who suffer from dropsy and in need of a miraculous healing they cannot generate themselves. while jesus elevates mercy, healing, and liberation for those who have been marginalized, he also offers healing for those attached to privilege. in this simultaneous healing, jesus offers a new vision of human flourishing for all. 4 several instances in luke highlight the theme of the greed of the pharisees: 11.39; 12.15, 18, 45; 16.1–14, 19–31. contrast with zacchaeus’ generosity in 19.1–10. 47 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18685 taking a risk on the living god at st paul’s, there are not many spaces where members speak of god’s involvement in our lives other than the bold claims about the activity of god in the liturgy. i have heard a few people timidly share accounts of god’s stunning work in their lives while being quick to offer a caveat, “now, some of you might not believe this, but …” in large part, members take a curious and intellectual approach to the bible. on the one hand, unbridled engagement with the text is a gift. many of the questions and comments at st paul’s would never be spoken in a conservative christian setting. on the other hand, intellectual inquiries and bold critiques of scripture appear to hinder the community from hearing the calling of the spirit. as an effort to separate ourselves from that which might be regarded as undiscerning theological speech of conservative evangelicals, the st paul’s community has swung in the opposite direction of struggling to identify the presence and activity of god. therefore, i see an opportunity for st paul’s to grow in our belief in the living god and risk articulating what god appears to be up to in our community (hagley 2019: 124–6). as we make it a regular habit to share how we sense and believe god is present in our daily lives, we might realize that god can heal us from our attachments to privilege more than we imagined. contrary to what is often assumed in christian spaces, humans move from experience to theology rather than from theology to experience (love 2023: 132–3). mark love discusses the theological significance of the practice of reflection in the life of the congregation: “we seldom draw people into meaningful reflection on their experiences. because we do not think of experience as a source for theology, we do not ask our members to consider how their experiences are related to what god is doing in the world” (2023: 133). today, within any church context, there are endless daily experiences people may bring forward for theological consideration. as st. paul’s struggles to articulate the presence of god outside of worship, the regular practice of communal storytelling might be one avenue for surfacing the activity of god. practising theological reflection together as a community brings in necessary other perspectives and guards against the formation of self-serving theological conclusions. additionally, for those who are uncomfortable with making theological claims, we hold space for future corrections by using words of possibility, “god might be present or leading in this way…” risking theological speech trusts that the economy of god is generous with grace and mercy when we get it wrong. in bringing attention to the power of god for justice, in no way do i desire to promote a pollyannaish approach to racism. injustice is alive and well in the us, and it is beyond time for white christians to participate more radically in racial justice. in this endeavour, we discover that hope and celebration are bundled up with discouragement and lament. i am heartened by ruth a. meyers’ eschatological frame for this tension: “our thanksgiving does not deny the suffering and struggles of the 48 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18685 world, but rather locates them in the larger horizon of the arc of salvation history” (2014: 168). conclusion when i began my research project at st paul’s, i hoped it would yield clear and immediate paths for the church’s participation in racial justice in the city of jackson. instead, i discovered some deeply rooted theological challenges that inhibit our participation in the mission of god, specifically viewing ourselves as the host, white privilege hindering receptivity in the practice of listening, and hesitancy in naming the liberating activity of god. in this article, i have identified that these inclinations are each reflective of racial capitalism’s economy of scarcity and considered how locating ourselves within the indiscriminate generosity of god’s economy could reshape our engagement in matters of justice. regarding the first identified challenge of participants inadvertently viewing the church as the host, i suggest that the liturgy of the eucharist contains great potential for reorienting churches around god as the host. in this, churches may discover the abundance of god that is available beyond the walls of the building and around the tables of our neighbours. the second challenge reveals how white privilege continues to exert itself in progressive spaces, skewing perceptions of the gifts of god that are available in all people. by cultivating the practice of hospitable receptivity, churches may discover the abundance of god in the neighbourhood that is available for justice. finally, the research reveals that a church’s reluctance to identify and articulate the activity of god potentially weakens the church’s partnership with the living god in the work of racial justice. through the practice of risking theological speech in storytelling, churches may become more attuned to the power and presence of god in the social fabric of our communities and experience the necessary empowerment for justice. while socially progressive churches might be eager to take swift actions of justice, the work appears to be hindered without missional and theological impulses flowing from the generous and indiscriminate economy of god. about the author natalie magnusson serves as the assistant director and an assistant professor of the master of religious education in missional leadership at rochester christian university in rochester hills, mi. she received her doctor of ministry in missional and spiritual formation from lipscomb university in 2023. contact: nmagnusson@ r ochesteru.edu mailto:nmagnusson@rochesteru.edu mailto:nmagnusson@rochesteru.edu 49 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18685 references bieler, a., and l. schottroff. 2007. the eucharist: bodies, bread, and resurrection. minneapolis: fortress press. draper, a. t. 2018. “the end of ‘mission’: christian witness and the decentering of whiteness.” in l. l. sechrest, j. ramírez-johnson and a. yong (eds). can “white” people be saved? triangulating race, theology, and mission (pp. 177–205). downers grove: intervarsity press. dupont, c. r. 2013. mississippi praying: southern white evangelicals and the civil rights movement, 1945–1975. new york: nyu press. episcopal church. 2007. the book of common prayer and administration of the sacraments and other rites and ceremonies of the church. new york: church publishing. fricker, m. 2007. epistemic injustice: power and the ethics of knowing. new york, oxford university press general convention. 1989. journal of the general convention of the episcopal church 1988. new york: general convention. green, j. b. 1995. the theology of the gospel of luke. new testament theology. new york: cambridge university press. hagley, s. 2019. eat what is set before you: a missiology of the congregation in context. skyforest: urban loft publishers. hartstock, c. 2013. “the healing of the man with dropsy (luke 14:1–6) and the lukan landscape.” biblical interpretation 21(3): 341–54. jennings, w. j. 2020. after whiteness: an education in belonging. grand rapids: william b. eerdmans. ———. 2010. the christian imagination: theology and the origins of race. new haven: yale university press. keifert, p. 2006. we are here now: a new missional era. eagle: allelon publishing. love, m. 2023. it seemed good to the holy spirit and to us: acts, discernment, and the mission of god. eugene: wipf & stock. magnusson, n. 2023. “table of belonging: exploring social reversal at st. paul’s episcopal church.” dmin project thesis, lipscomb university. https://digitalcollections.lipscomb. edu/dmin_project/5 (accessed 9 may 2024). mather, m. 2018. having nothing, possessing everything: finding abundant communities in unexpected places. grand rapids: william b. eerdmans. mcghee, h. 2021. the sum of us: what racism costs everyone and how we can prosper together. new york: one world. meyers, r. a. 2014. missional worship, worshipful mission: gathering as god’s people, going out in god’s name. grand rapids: william b. eerdmans. milbank, j. 1995. “can a gift be given? prolegomena to a future trinitarian metaphysic.” modern theology 11(1): 119–61. mumford, d. j. 2011. “rich and equal in the eyes of the almighty god! creflo dollar and the gospel of racial reconciliation.” pneuma 33: 218–36. smith, j. k. a. 2009. desiring the kingdom: worship, worldview and cultural formation. grand rapids: baker academic. spellers, s. 2021. church cracked open: disruption, decline, and new hope for beloved community. new york: church publishing. stookey, l. h. 1993. eucharist: christ’s feast with the church. nashville: abingdon press. taylor, c. 2007. a secular age. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. https://digitalcollections.lipscomb.edu/dmin_project/5 https://digitalcollections.lipscomb.edu/dmin_project/5 50 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18685 tisby, j. 2019. the color of compromise: the truth about the american church’s complicity in racism. grand rapids: zondervan. tran, j. 2021. asian americans and the spirit of racial capitalism. new york: oxford university press. _hlk166505246 _heading=h.2sidl6po7huy _heading=h.30j0zll _heading=h.1fob9te _heading=h.3znysh7 _heading=h.2et92p0 _heading=h.tyjcwt _heading=h.3dy6vkm _heading=h.1t3h5sf _heading=h.ru9skqzhzar _heading=h.2s8eyo1 _heading=h.17dp8vu _heading=h.3rdcrjn _heading=h.26in1rg _heading=h.lnxbz9 _heading=h.1ksv4uv _heading=h.e6gnusvzksan _heading=h.44sinio _hlk165906568 _hlk165906654 _5euz2g4nfgg2 _do78mpnvid0y _t3ot216ka0u3 _qqdcc4dhvoc6 _pdbw25ahq077 _bwr920cr9ac _j56vkzi6owwv _aii57opgrdds _j21j04l0kl4z _p6n2y72wamql _mqw7elw3mb0p _wlol3krccs7x _crqzzlx1aujz _nflue63hwv32 _hlk161043063 _hlk161043099 _hlk161043120 _bookmark0 _hlk166488312 _hlk166489228 editorial editorial volume 5 issue 1 nigel rooms article the two crises of the church jonna van den berge-bakker and marten van der meulen orthodox perspectives on the church as an evangelizing, eucharistic community: a case study of the orthodox parish of st john of kronstadt, bath, uk alison ruth kolosova sharing in the indiscriminate generosity of god: exploring missional engagement of racial justice funded by the economy of god natalie magnusson a missional church strategy in an era of humanlike chatbots david hirome digital worship as fostering or inhibiting social inclusion and social cohesion geneva blackmer proclaiming and embodying peace in pacifist japan: a reformed church perspective stéphan van der watt reflections on faithful innovation in the city of saint francis: icef conference report scott j. hagley, dorte kappelgaard, dustin benac and scot sherman book review hartman, tim. 2020. theology after colonization: bediako, barth, and the future of theological reflection reviewed by pieter labuschagne müller, sabrina. 2023. religious experience and its transformational power: qualitative and hermeneutic approaches to a practical theological foundational concept reviewed by shaun joynt spijker, j. van ‘t. 2021. to participate: looking for an ecclesial structure to be a witnessing church today reviewed by rein den hertog ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 2 b o o k r e v i e w 134 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18342 doi: 10.54195/ef18342 leith, jenny. 2023. political formation: being formed by the spirit in church and world london: scm press. isbn: 9780334063032 reviewed by bernhard schröder where and how do we learn to live as disciples in a post-christendom era? jenny leith tackles this question in her book political formation. it is based on her doctoral thesis at durham university. what sets this book apart is the author’s unique background and experiences outside of academia. before pursuing her doctoral studies, she worked in politics as a parliamentary researcher and then in social policy. these engagements have undoubtedly influenced her approach to theological discourse, and this influence is evident throughout the pages of the book. she describes her work as a case study within the church of england which has specific challenges such as a multicultural society and a colonial history. however, she is convinced that her theory of formation has high relevance when applied in another context (3). the main thesis challenges the traditional view that christian formation primarily occurs within the church, with the expectation of then applying christian ethics in civil life. leith questions this view due to two significant factors. first, she highlights the church’s extensive guilt, she names issues such as sexual abuse and white supremacy. leith doubts whether the church can still provide a reliable ethical purpose after moral failings (1). second, she contends that being a disciple often involves navigating the complexities of everyday choices. it is rather a “struggle for integrity amid uncertainty and limited time” (2) than an opportunity for a dramatic act of clear witness to christ. therefore, leith’s thesis proposes that christians are formed by the spirit both within the church and in the world. she defines formation as the process of being shaped for virtuous action with the ultimate goal of flourishing (7). 135 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18342 the book follows a thoughtful structure as indicated by its subtitle being formed by the spirit in church and world. the initial focus lies on formation through one’s connection to and participation in the church, which is explored in the first two chapters. leith refers to the works of sam wells and graham ward, who see prayer and the eucharist (23) as the main places for formation. according to them, being formed in church often means a “counter-formation” (25). christians provide virtues and actions needed by the world, which is seen as a deficit place. leith criticizes this view. rather, she argues, being formed in the world brings innovation (31). the church can’t offer all resources needed for formation in itself. she asks: “can we properly form love for god and for those around us with the established practises?” (50) her answer is no, because “we require the perspective of others to know ourselves” (52) – and to be formed. as a result, she poses the question of what a church that enables formation by the spirit would look like, which she addresses in chapters 3–5. here she proposes three “twin callings”: the church is at the same time a) oikos (household) and polis (a political community), b) confident and humble, c) gathering and scattering. with the help of these dynamics, she proposes that “the church is called into being by god and the church remains unfinished and incomplete.” (73) these callings form the church to dwell in the current complexity (83). in chapter 4 she describes the failures of the church in executing power such as white supremacy and class-based hierarchy (89). she names the role of anglican theology in the context of colonialism and slavery (96–9) and the clericalism within the church (94). “the church’s tendency to under-recognise the presence of sin in its life is not, therefore an accidental feature of ecclesial polity: rather we will never be fully aware of how unaware we are of sin.” (101) she offers a “spirit-led ecclesiology” (87), which recognizes the own malformation and is clear about the fact that god is at work at the same time. leith is convinced that each member of the church is a unique gift to church and world. in chapter 5 she looks at the formation of the church through each member. she adopts jenny daggers’ term “troubling gifts” (117). according to leith, “being brought into recognition of sinfulness is itself a gift” of the holy spirit. through recognition of sin, lament and reconciliation the church can be shaped by the spirit (124). looking at the work of the spirit with the people at the margins of society means gathering the scattered experiences of its member as gifts (125) forming the church. “ecclesial inclusiveness is thus not pursued for its own sake, but out of the conviction that the life of the church depends on the participation of every member” (131). 136 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18342 in the third part of the book, chapters 6–7, she examines formation by the spirit in the context of the world, particularly through political engagement. in chapter 6 she offers insights and examples of how an engagement in political structures offers formation as a disciple of christ. in politics, one encounters the stranger, and politics is thus a field to learn how to love your enemy (161). in chapter 7 leith refers to bonhoeffer’s ethics and the teaching of mandates. she outlines the necessity of a christian disciple to “let go of certain forms of personal sovereignty” (176) because of the uncertainty of political action. however, exactly this place of personal loss is the place of the beginning of life as a person whose identity rests in god. by this, a christian is set free to political action with responsibility (177). in a concluding chapter, leith applies her view of the formation of individuals to the formation of society on a national level. she looks at the field of civic identity and national polity and how the church can play a role here (190). the book is well structured. questions and summaries guide the reader in the progress and foster their reflection. the book is very accessible, providing an extensive index of names and subjects, facilitating further exploration of the material. leith introduces a new paradigm for understanding the interaction between the church and the world. this is neither the “benedict option” (rod dreher), a withdrawal from the world into a parallel universe nor a simplistic public theology to regain political power once possessed. furthermore, it offers valuable insights and ideas for fostering a church that is open to the transformative work of the spirit. nevertheless, a weakness for me is the lack of substantial engagement with biblical topics, particularly in the chapters addressing sin and reconciliation. according to scripture and confession the spirit has promised to be found in the context of the bible, prayer and ecclesial community. in ecclesial futures vol. 3,2, mike harrison proposes a link with neuroscience to formation within the church, which seems to fill these gaps. in conclusion, political formation: being formed by the spirit in church and world is an important contribution to the discussion about christian formation in a post christendom era. the book challenges traditional notions of formation and offers a paradigm shift in understanding the interaction between the church and the world. 137 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18342 a  church open to the work of the spirit in unexpected ways is envisioned and it invites work on this vision. about the author bernhard schröder, practical theologian, institute for the research on mission and church, austria. bernhard.schroeder@i-m-k.org mailto:bernhard.schroeder@i-m-k.org ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 2 a r t i c l e 40 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17337 doi: 10.54195/ef17337 bending the light: a methodological structure for collaborative theological inquiry dustin d. benac, hannah coe, juli kalbaugh, tatum miller and erin moniz abstract the shifting structure of religious life requires new research methodologies that can attend to the dynamic nature of faith and resource ongoing scholarship and religious practice. rather than approaching research and resourcing as separate and iterative movements, a contextually-centred approach can engage and support religious scholarship and practice in dynamic religious climates. while existing methodologies have advanced research and practice in considerable ways, these developments now make possible an integrative approach that combines research, resourcing and collaborative inquiry into a dynamic movement. this paper advances an argument through theological fieldnotes from a year of collaborative research and resourcing completed by the program for the future church (pffc). established in 2021, the pffc is a research, resource and relational hub that pilots solutions for emerging and pressing challenges before the church. the methodology, “bending the light,” pursues collaborative action research by constituting three sites of inquiry: a celebration, a collaboratory and a contextual research hub. nine practices guide individual and collective investigation(s): 1) identifying present gifts; 2) creating connections; 3) identifying commonalities; 4) clarifying presenting crises; 5) developing shared language; 6) elevating individual and collective imagination; 7) complexifying anchoring concepts; 8) exploring shared practice; and 9) piloting research and resources. combining reflections from conveners and participants, this methodological structure enhances attention to the lived theologies that ground the life of faith and the forms of practice that can resource future research and christian practice. keywords: action research, collaborative inquiry, future church, methodology, organizational innovation, theological education 41 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17337 1 introduction: bending the light1 mid-morning light shaped the site of the first contextual research hub gathering convened by the program for the future church (pffc)2 as a means to collectively explore the crisis of social disconnection and the realities of what that looks like in each participant’s own ministry and personal context. as we crossed the threshold and entered a chapel in waco, texas, the space was illuminated from multiple points through lofted windows, stained glass, and the exterior light that followed us in through the door. the group of thirteen was met with silence upon entering, but the movement of light in the room transformed any reservation into resonance, welcoming us and beckoning us forward together. the space was at once familiar, a chapel with pews organized to orient an audience toward the stage. “i know how this space works,” reflected one participant. but amidst the recognizable elements, it also felt foreign. the pulpit, typically center stage, was relocated well off to the left. in its place were the participants, sitting on the stage rather than in the pews. some were reminded as they looked up at the white jesus gazing down from above, “this is not my space.” the chapel context and physical structure of the environment was already forming and bending our thoughts, feelings, and time together. this gathering and broader methodology engages in a practice described as “bending the light,” drawn from robinson’s reflections on the practice of leadership (2009: 59–78). robinson shares the story of a german professor who carried a found piece of glass in his pocket and began using it as a mirror to reflect light into dark spaces. “it became a game for [the professor] to get light into the most inaccessible places [he] could find.” what began as a game grew to become a rule of life: the professor realized other sources of light – truth, understanding and knowledge – will only shine in dark places “if i reflect it.” in a similar way, the work of the pffc as a research, resource, and relational hub that pilots solutions for emerging and pressing challenges before the church, seeks to reflect and refract possibility through the practice of gathering and collective engagement around shared crises. the structure and praxis within the “bending the light” (btl) methodology consider how the combination of the convening practices of the pffc and contextual engagement in a particular location with attention to participants’ specific ministry circumstances 1 the future church project grant from lilly endowment (grant no. 2021 1146) supported this research. co-authors are either personnel who oversee the project and activities or participants in the grantfunded programs. 2 the pffc’s co-founder, angela gorrell, played a significant role in establishing the initial organizational structure for this methodology. 42 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17337 impacts thoughts and actions. through these fieldnotes from a year of collaborative research and resourcing completed by the pffc, we aim to give an account of new ways of life that can emerge out of crisis and collaboratively bend the light of our individual and collective imagination toward hope. the methodology expressed and embedded in this scene of gathering combines research, resourcing, and relationships into a single movement of collaborative inquiry. following this introduction that purposefully starts media res (“from the middle”), we introduce this process of individual and collective inquiry as a methodological structure. part ii proceeds to describe the btl methodology, identifying nine practices of discovery that guide individual and collective investigation across three sites of collaborative and contextual inquiry. part iii includes reflections from participants and co-authors in their own voice, grounding the theoretical framework within the lived experience of individuals who engaged in this collective inquiry over the course of one year. finally, we conclude by exploring the theological significance of this particular mode of collaborative research, noting the importance of belonging, place and worship. 2 a methodological structure the complexities of communities of faith require integrating theories, methods, and disciplines in order to give an account of the realities and possibilities of life together. while theology and theological education emerge from reflection on and in service of people of faith, it is often criticized for being disconnected from real world application. when theology and theological education remain abstract and theoretical, the lack of application can leave individuals and communities with limited guidance on how to address contemporary social, ethical, and moral challenges. there is a need, as smith (2023) argues, for new forms to guide theological education and theological inquiry. methodology alone, however, cannot yield the encounter and formation that many of these communities, and theological education more broadly, desire. structure is also required. amid calls for new forms, the turn to structure provides a way to identify the properties, practices, and processes that can orient the methods and integrate the methodology in and for particular communities. centering structure, or the particular physical, social, emotional, and spiritual conditions that surround gatherings, provides a way to combine insights from local communities and empirical research with theological reflection. this fieldnote demonstrates how social environments support the conditions for new ideas to form, and how these environments are, in turn, nourished by the ideas and values that infuse them with meaning. like light 43 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17337 and a prism, theory and practice are inseparable from the structures they embody and make possible. reframing the importance of structure acknowledges the transformative capacity of the relationship between theory and action by inviting attention to the conditions that enable individual and collective transformation, including the conditions for thriving as well as those that diminish life. it describes how organizations – and especially those endowed with sacred stewardship – are “living realities,” as jennings (2020) observes, built on individuals’ affections, joys and desires for belonging. in its simplest form, thinking in terms of structure is like picking up the pieces of our lives and communities and creating space where enlivened imagination, birthed out of a sense of belonging, can form new structures where communities and individuals can flourish. the btl methodology builds upon and incorporates various insights and contextually-centered sensibilities that emerge from previous attempts to provide a theological account of the crises and responses that confront individuals and communities (e.g., browning 1991; osmer 2008; bass et al. 2016; scharen, 2015; swinton and mowat 2016; cameron et al. 2010). even as it incorporates some of the rhythm and style of existing methods, it also has a distinct manner that cannot be reduced to the logic of inquiry that the current modes of theological inquiry provide. further, through the sustained practice of convening, it reconstitutes the forms of connection and belonging that are required for ministerial and ecclesial imagination to form and flourish. hence, “bending the light” offers a methodological structure, an integrated theological research method, that can support the forms of discernment and collective action that cross silos within an ecclesial ecology (benac 2022). the methodology purposefully includes and engages participants who inhabit different types of ecclesial institutions (e.g., congregations, theological schools, nonprofits), and the outcomes return to the local level, rather than remaining sequestered in academic institutions or the research community. as a result, as individuals and communities across this ecology discern how best to respond to a shifting organization landscape, the process and practices that ground this methodological structure can enrich the living theological imagination that animates theological education, local congregations, church-related ministries and ecclesial entrepreneurship. 3 outline of the methodology practical theology as a discipline explores the relationship between the conceptual learning of theology and doctrine and the actual lived experience of christians on the ground. it offers an opportunity for individuals and communities to “see in depth” (dykstra 2008: 48), drawn forth by the reality and possibilities of god. nevertheless, the contextually-rooted and collaborative nature of this process resists linear 44 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17337 progression. practical theology “is not linear but iterative,” cahalan and nieman note. “in its very methodology, practical theology must remain open to god’s future (cahalan and nieman 2008: 84). similarly, through an iterative and imaginative process, btl invites individuals and communities to see and name reality, as well as envision new possibilities for the future, again and again. in this way, the methodology is one that not only connects the three aspects of the theological enterprise – action research, theological investigation and collaborative inquiry – but it also creates a collective imagination that is able to embrace new possibilities that shape the future of the church. it not only attends to method but seeks to draw out the necessary structural conditions that form an alternative social structure where research, resourcing, and relationships can combine within an integrated and contextually-rooted theological research hub. this methodology proceeds much like a light wave and a prism, rather than a singular, straight path. the research process moves like a wave, and the reconstituted sites of collaborative inquiry function like prisms. when light travels in the form of a wave and encounters a different medium, the spectral properties are affected; each wavelength is bent by a slightly different amount as they pass through the prism. this bending effect separates the incoming white light into its individual colors, creating a spectrum. in the same way, the “bending the light” methodological structure passes the “light” of collaborative inquiry through several different “prisms” to understand the substance and properties of the crises we encounter. btl works to create a new structure that illuminates and transforms communities through three grounding properties: belonging, place, and worship. the combination of these properties animates every aspect of the theological structure and the sites of collaborative inquiry are purposefully structured to include these three elements. when removed, the practices and processes described below lose coherence. figure 1 properties of bending the light (commissioned by the program for the future church) 45 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17337 three sites organize the methodological structure: a celebration, a collaboratory and a contextual research hub. these gatherings reflect an understanding of convening as a performative, practical theological inquiry (benac, forthcoming a). as visualized below, the research process moves like an oscillating wave, elevating and anchoring the properties, practices, and people along the wavelength. purposefully constituting new “situations” (fulkerson 2007), these three sites of convening, grounded in the btl properties, act as a prism and become spaces that refract and redirect ideas, theory building, shared practices, and actions that follow. just as the prism slows light waves and causes a refraction that illuminates the broad spectrum of colors, the prismatic gathering sites of the methodology are places where people slow down and consider their own contextually rooted gifts, challenges, and opportunities. this time of clarification and complexifying allows the different aspects, or colors, of the presenting issue to be reflected in a way that reveals new forms; theological imagination bends to open up new possibilities where hope emerges. the methodological structure, grounded in the btl properties, is ordered by btl practices that guide the collective community. across the three prismatic gathering points, nine practices guide the investigation: 1) naming present gifts; 2) creating connections; 3) identifying commonalities; 4) clarifying presenting crises; 5) developing shared language; 6) elevating individual and collective imagination; 7) complexifying anchoring concepts; 8) exploring shared practice; and 9) piloting research and resources. together, this leads to a holistic exploration of theology and lived experiences. figure 2 practices for bending the light (commissioned by the program for the future church) 46 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17337 from one prismatic gathering point, the process of inquiry continues along the wave, elevating or anchoring, until it meets another prismatic gathering site where it experiences another illumination, and so on. these new situations, which are at once theological and social, combine to create a method, a mode of convening, and a process for discovery that motivates and guides the work of transformation. 3.1 celebration the btl methodology starts with celebration which orients individuals toward joy and toward god from the start. the anchoring practices of this prismatic point are naming present gifts, creating connections, and identifying commonalities to deepen the btl properties (belonging, place and worship). celebration draws attention to the present and to the ways in which god has been and is at work by naming the gifts we have already received. at the same time, celebration is relational. celebrations serve as vital moments of creating connection that affirm and build a sense of community. just as the practice of marking seasons through the liturgical calendar orders movement through time, celebration marks these times in a way that illumines the holy-and-ordinary grounding for this work. for example, this methodological work began with a ministry partner gathering.3 the purpose was to bring people together to make connections and share and celebrate the ways in which god was at work in our surrounding community. this intentional time together involved creative exercises, conversation prompts and time for reflection and sharing. here, people were introduced to other organizations and existing resources that began to provide a framework for future collaborative work. even as joys and hopes that anchored our time together, individuals also found commonality in current challenges being faced. by engaging with the concrete experiences of those gathered, the collective community was able to listen to stories, empathize with struggles, and share in the joys and the pains. as a prismatic point of celebration, this gathering space immersed the community in the lived realities of the people and surfaced the collaborative connections present in the available networks as well bring to light shared hopes and challenges. figures 3 and 4 represent participants’ responses. 3 see “program for the future church: gathered,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fizbfv1krfk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fizbfv1krfk 47 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17337 figure 3 ministry partner gathering “hopes” (created by the program for the future church) figure 4 ministry partner gathering “challenges” (created by the program for the future church) along with expanding networks, methodologically, this intentional gathering space invites opportunities to explore who resonates with your work. starting with a collaborative convening of celebration creates a shared story and allows people to connect not only with each other but also with the broader ethos of the community. by making connections and offering a vision for collective work, organizers aimed to create a hub of people who would be available to continue exploring together. this new collective energy, collaborative connections, and the information collected about current experiences is carried forward along the wave and directly informs the next gathering site: the collaboratory. 3.2 collaboratory after identifying specific places of strength and encouragement, collaborative partners and communal challenges in our celebration gathering, we brought these insights forward into the next convening point. the collaboratory serves as a space for collective reflection, interdisciplinary and community connection, and the exchange of ideas around a particular challenge brought forth to investigate and illuminate. a collaboratory can be thought of as a collaborative laboratory; a curated environment where church, community, and thought leaders are brought 48 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17337 together to work jointly on a particular presenting crisis or pressing challenge. much as osmer describes the work practical theology as starting, “where you are brought up short,” (osmer 2008: 21), this work centers the crisis/es that bring individuals and communities up short and demand an account. for example, the first collaboratory centered the crisis of social isolation and need for belonging, and our second collaboratory will center the crisis of leading alone. in a collaboratory, participants share resources, knowledge, and expertise to address complex problems and find innovative solutions. it is a catalytic gathering meant to help clarify presenting crises, develop shared language, and elevate individual and collective imagination.4 participatory and inclusive, a collaboratory embraces active engagement with all participants from various disciplines, sectors, denominations and organizations. the diversity of voices and perspectives enriches the collaborative process. nevertheless, the second practice, developing shared language, is essential for collaborative inquiry. in a collaboratory, participants are not a spectator; each person is a meaningful participant and contributor. the work being done is happening in and through the people in the room. participants’ presence, ideas and experience have direct impact on the outcome. as collaboration unfolds, the participants develop shared language and concepts that facilitate clear communication and mutual understanding. further, with the necessary research ethics approvals, the collaboratory also doubles as a research site, providing a series of focus groups with participants. and third, the collaboratory elevates individual and collective imagination to envision innovative solutions and approaches that address the presenting crises. accordingly, our work up to this point has purposefully curated environments where participants know at least two other people in the room, which allows them to have the relational support to imagine alternative futures. by facilitating collaborative partnerships and nurturing an environment of innovation and creativity, collaboratories empower participants to drive meaningful and transformative change in their respective domains. the collaboratory is an activator and generator, meant for dreaming and implementation, creation, and cultivation, designed to activate catalytic agents of change. 4 the language of “collaboratory” was inspired by kenda dean’s work at princeton theological seminary.  49 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17337 3.3 contextual research hub btl proceeds to the contextual research hub, which takes a deeper dive into the presenting issue and seeks to develop a more comprehensive and sustainable response. at this point, the three practices of discovery are complexifying anchoring concepts, exploring shared practices, and piloting research and resources. in the contextual research hub, participants delve into the anchoring concepts that underlie the presenting crisis. this involves exploring the root causes, underlying beliefs, and historical context that contribute to the challenges at hand. second, the participants examine shared practices, traditions and community norms to better understand how they relate to the presenting crises. this exploration helps uncover potential leverage points for positive change. third, the contextual research hub pilots research initiatives, experiments, and interventions aimed at addressing the live issue. this includes testing potential solutions, evaluating their effectiveness, and refining strategies based on feedback. guided by the insight of theological action research, this point of the methodology intends to stage and invite meaningful interventions in the communities the pffc serves and the contexts participants inhabit. our contextual research hub included faculty, students, local pastors, nonprofit leaders, and baylor administrators, each of whom brought a unique perspective on the topic at hand. being purposeful to think about the space, place, imagination and culture of belonging (dykstra, 2008; fulkerson, 2007; benac, 2022), each week we met in a space that held meaning to one or more of the participants. the contextual research hub gathered in four different places, each rooted in waco, texas: a community worshipping space, a 125-year-old chapel, a congregation turned nonprofit space, and a local startup accelerator. participant feedback identified the formative function of these places. “we were able to move to different locations that allowed for us to refresh and concentrate on things we had not previously considered,” one participant shared. another reflected: “i enjoyed being in different spaces and thinking through how that impacts our conversations.” the interplay between shared texts and a shared context grounded our collective reflection. three books guided our conversation during this contextual research hub: bonhoeffer’s life together (1995), cohen’s belonging (2022), and birmingham and simard’s creating cultures of belonging (2022) provided prompts for our conversation. centered in places and gathering around shared texts, we began each meeting by asking: what does belonging look like and feel like in this space? our work together over this period aimed to develop shared resources (e.g. open access reading guides, edited volumes, new language for preaching, published articles, and toolkits) and pilot ideas that address the challenge of belonging in our own contexts. 50 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17337 3.4 back to celebration the progression from a celebration to collaboratory to contextual research hub and then back through celebration reflects an integrated and participatory approach. within this methodological structure, celebration is both a condition and an outcome. as figure 5 represents, this methodological structure provides a pathway for interactive and ongoing individual and collective discovery. figure 5 bending the light as process (commissioned by program for the future church) when pursued over time, btl yields a dynamic and iterative feedback loop where each convening point symbiotically forms and transforms the individual and their organizations moving forward. intentionally grounded in gatherings, this form of inquiry centers relationship and is rooted in the idea that gathering is a space of encounter, an act of resistance, and a place of creative possibility. when we come together, we encounter each other, and we encounter god. btl reminds us that, after the ascension, the “locus of god’s presence” is found in the people of god (coloe, 2021: 518). god is to be found in each of us; the more we come together, the fuller picture of god we see. gathering is also an act of resistance; in a time when our lives and communities are being set by algorithms and divided by polarization, it involves inviting others from the outside to come in, and to be in spaces with people we would not normally gather with. proceeding from each site of gathering, participants carry what they have experienced and continue to move along the wave. each arc builds on the previous movement, and the cycle builds from one year to the next. 51 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17337 4 collective discovery: participant reflections following this introduction and description of the “bending the light” methodological structure, three individuals who have participated in portions of the methodology share their experience in their own voice. their personal narration relationally grounds the movement of theory and praxis and elevates the embodied and contextually rooted reflection that grounds this collaborative work. the inclusion of participants as co-authors who are invited to write in their own voice reflects the methodological commitments of action research and the performative outcomes this approach to collaborative theological inquiry pursues. 4.1 hannah coe, pastor one of the more striking points of reflection for me as a participant in the pffc collaboratory and contextual research hub is how much of my daily life as a pastor is oriented around the crisis of isolation and the pffc’s chosen theme of belonging. belonging is the common thread woven through most of my pastoral interactions. what started as a conversation that surfaced deeper questions and a desire to explore the realities of belonging progressed as the year continued. the concept of belonging, rather than becoming more clear, became increasingly complex in ways that felt deeply sacred and meaningful. i came to more deeply cherish celebrations of belonging. but, as the year progressed, i became attentive to the frequency of conversations in which people described painful experiences of broken belonging, and i became more attentive to my own experiences of broken belonging and how profoundly those experiences shaped me. recently, a member of my congregation and i worked together on an advocacy opportunity. she has experienced significant rejection and betrayal by the denomination of her youth because she is an advocate. as she reflected on the pain of rejection for doing what she felt was the right thing, i said, “i’m realizing that belonging is maybe more powerful than being right.” we sat in silence, the weight of this truth landing in a deep place. even decades after the hurt, even when we know we’ve done the just and faithful thing, the longing to belong is a persistent ache; the absence of belonging, a painful void. the experience of broken belonging has a way of making people feel as if the fabric of their lives is unraveling. the last few years of pandemic and crisis have felt like the great unraveling. over the course of our contextual research hub, when i stepped into the pulpit to preach and looked at the faces looking back at me, i began to think, “i wish you all could see that your experiences of broken belonging are perhaps the most powerful common thread you share.” i lamented my faith tradition’s emphasis on measures of belonging, too thin and shallow for the living of these 52 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17337 days. i wondered how gathering together our common threads of brokenness might mend our belonging. inspired by the contextual research hub reading and conversation, i arranged for a small group bible study of the apostle paul’s letter to the galatians through the lens of belonging. we realized most of us were taught to read the epistles as systematic theology, not with the question, “how did early believers navigate questions of belonging?” we wondered how reading the scriptures and interpreting our lives through the lens of belonging might be a source of healing and spiritual renewal. through my experience with the pffc i had the opportunity to hear and learn about others’ experiences of belonging and not belonging. this experience sprouted seeds of hopeful curiosity for me that common threads of belonging, especially the frayed and broken ones, are a source of healing and spiritual renewal for us all. 4.2 tatum miller, graduate student the contextual research hub centered on belonging allowed me to experience the nuances of different backgrounds and stories. to understand needs, i’ve learned that we must first understand people. how do we do that? live life with one another. carry each other’s burdens. then, we will learn what our communities truly need. our methodology must start with people and not answers. our communities are speaking but not many people are keeping their ear to the ground. when done right, relationships inform research, allowing for proper resourcing to occur. research and resourcing must go hand in hand when working within the context of marginalized communities. at the same time, it caused me to reflect on my own story of belonging. even though our contextual research hub was grounded in waco, my belonging is largely wrapped up in my hometown. louisville, kentucky is one of the most segregated cities in america. the eastside is populated mainly by white residents. consequently, the west and southside is made up of majority black residents. one in five black residents live in a place that is more than 75% black. nearly half of the white residents live in a place that is at least 75% white. drive through the west end and you will see soul food restaurants, entire families sitting on a neighbor’s porch, and people smiling. you will hear the sound of 80s hip hop coming from the old timer’s car and the occasional ambulance on its route. you will witness struggles, but also joys. drive through the east end and you will find freshly cut grass, an abundance of electric vehicles, and whole foods. louisville is also that place that i call home. these two communities are often at odds with each other due to distribution of resources. the east end has better policing, food access, infrastructure, and school systems. 53 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17337 the west end has failing schools, police brutality cases that make international news, and food deserts. a developed sense of home is required from belonging in the space between placement and displacement. in the contextual research hub, we explored different ways belonging can create spaces for opportunity. as a seminary student, my work in the research hub, organizing, writing and creating, directly impacted the way my education deepens my sense of belonging. instead of looking inward, i turned outward to see that belonging can happen everywhere. when people feel like they can belong, communities begin to thrive. resources and research are important but meaningless without the feeling of belonging. to those who feel rejected by the world around them, there will always be a gap that healthy grocery stores cannot fill. we need to start at the beginning, creating a space for everyone to find their place in this world of ours. the contextual research hub helped me recognize that belonging starts in the grass roots. it’s not the big moves, but the small moments that foster a feeling of belonging within our communities. from waco to louisville, displacement exists in an abundance. fostering a sense of home can be the people we love and those who love us. relationships are key to fostering belonging and must be made an ultimate priority. celebration, collaboration, and contextual research have combined to provide an environment of flourishing and creative hunger. for me, educational belonging seeks to push me to new heights and take new risks. the program for the future church has challenged many to dream big, while keeping our minds focused on the communities we serve. 4.3 erin moniz, college chaplain my entryway to this methodology was a ministry partner gathering celebration at a local community arts establishment. i had no expectations for the gathering and was curious about the existence of this venue that i was unaware of even though it was basically in my backyard. but i came to realize that bringing people together in intentional spaces that are connected to the local community was all part of the design for this project. the ministry partner gathering situated me with friends and strangers. but through some accessible, collaborative, reflective activities, the gathering created a beautiful mosaic of ideas, hopes and challenges. this purposeful piece of art prompted open discussion and sharing, and was a glimpse of things to come, and the space, voices, diversity, creativity and candor were hallmarks of the entire experience. there is a tendency in research methodology to rush towards outcomes and objectives. being a part of the pffc’s btl was a wholly different experience from other projects and research teams i have been a part of. while there were parameters 54 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17337 and expectations, this approach would prioritize embodiment and an invitation to an organic process. there was an integration of space and story. the objectives of celebration, collaboration and contextual engagement rang as more than a moniker slapped on conventional methods as it wove setting, stories, people, and posture into a tapestry of research on the topic of belonging. for the sake of productivity, it is easy to take for granted the synergy created in convening. this intentional hub of people was able to gradually complexify the anchoring concepts of belonging by embracing the simplicity of abiding and engaging. for me, the concepts of belonging moved from the abstract to the concrete as they were materializing in the very moments we shared as a research hub. this resulted, for me, in a series of reflections on my own ministry context. as a college chaplain and director for chapel, much of my work is to curate chapel experiences that orient and enrich the students’ faith journey. belonging is a metric that my team was already entrenched in as we created the new chapel model we were tasked to create for the university. we know that if, early on in their undergraduate experience, a student gains a sense of belonging, it greatly increases their chances of academic success and overall wellbeing at the university. but belonging is a difficult metric to create and track, and there are challenges in implementation. belonging can be reduced to homogeny. we do not wish for chapels to become echo chambers. the question i brought to each contextual research hub gathering was, “how can i create an environment for student belonging without silo-ing demographics?” one significant way this methodology has informed my own ministry is by demonstrating an embodied framework for group discovery. our hub allowed for diverse people and opinions to sharpen each other because the model, the invitation, and the very spaces we occupied, invited us to bring ourselves to the discussion while also welcoming how difference enhances our goals. as a result, i brought back an ecological framework for my team to consider with chapels. belonging, spiritual formation and maturation are all difficult objectives to ensure. instead of creating learning outcomes in an effort to synthesize these goals, we now approach our chapel model and the student experience as though we were gardeners instead of mechanics. we work to create environments that promote the best possibility for spiritual flourishing. 55 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17337 5 theological reflection: bending imagination toward hope we purposefully describe the broader frame as a methodological structure for theological inquiry. indeed, as described and embodied above, it is a process that guides individual and collective discovery, leading to research and resources that intend to support the current and next generation of faith leaders. the structure and process, however, offer more than rote production: it cultivates collective imagination that moves into the future with hope. hope cannot always be quantified, and the enduring hope that nourishes a theological imagination extends beyond a single year of engagement together. nonetheless, in this final section we want to expand on the three properties of this methodological structure, and theological formation more broadly, that allow imagination to bend toward hope: belonging, place and worship. belonging is an essential condition for the formation of hope and imagination this methodological structure provides. while the english word “belonging” is not widely found in scripture, the concept is. our work over the course of this inaugural methodological cycle purposefully centered belonging because without it the relational connections that are required to nourish creativity, a common life, and imagination cannot form and flourish (cohen 2022). moreover, recent theological reflection about belonging (e.g., jennings 2020; barreto 2021) demonstrates the timeliness and relevance of translating the science of belonging into constructive social and theological proposal about the (re)ordering of a common life. the ongoing work of this methodological structure to bend imagination toward hope requires beginning with, building from, and working together in light of a structure of belonging. representing a central property, subject of contextual reflection, and a theological condition, belonging is essential for and emanates from the btl methodological structure. the participant reflections and the broader community that gathered around this collective inquiry are animated both by a sense of and search for belonging. while individuals certainly experienced a sense of belonging through this work together, many of us also came to this conversation precisely because who did not always know who, where, or how to belong. “the longing to belong is a persistent ache,” coe notes above. to put it differently, we each brought a people, but we were also in search of a people. we began our work together by noting how collaborative theological inquiry requires taking the risk of belonging, and over time we came to realize how theological imagination can neither form nor flourish without the risk of belonging. theological imagination emerges from a sense of feeling safe, seen, and carried in the hands of others, but it also requires the ability to “see in depth” (dykstra 2008: 48) in a way 56 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17337 that draws our common work together. and even as we seek to build structures of belonging, that longing for belonging may never fully abate. place is a second essential condition to bend imagination toward hope in and through this methodological structure. much as with belonging, “place” is a category that provides an opportunity for contextual and interdisciplinary engagement. for example, jennings (2010) notes how theological imagination forms in and through a relationship to place and land, and fulkerson (2007) details how our contemporary constructions often render place as a commodity, rather than as a site of encounter. the work of this methodological structure similarly seeks to ground – quite literally – theological reflection within the particularities and complexities of place. it seeks to make familiar places feel slightly less familiar, and it aims to make unfamiliar places feel a little more like home. moreover, the practice of convening performs an alternative social imaginary about what is possible through gathering and being gathered by god. as such, the three sites of convening, collaboration and collective discovery are reconstituted places that bend the light of imagination toward hope. our turn to place allowed our work to be grounded in the particularity of our local geography, while also drawing wisdom from our broader embodied experience. as miller noted above, one of the outcomes of this contextually-centered collaborative inquiry was it brought to mind how people and communities in other places shape our theological imagination. similarly, bending imagination toward hope requires seeing and acknowledging the realities of place and displacement. place is more than a pragmatic consideration in the work of collaborative theological inquiry; it is an acknowledgement of our creatureliness as well as the reality that every place and community has structures that cultivate and inhibit belonging. finally, worship describes how the individual and collective work of this methodological structure are a doxological expression of lives lived in light of the reality and possibilities of god. god’s presence in time is the prime condition of possibility for theological inquiry and imagination about the future of theological education, the future of the church, and church-related ministries. as such, this individual and collective work begins and ends in celebration, or worship, seeking to discern and support the way of life that invites us to live as people of god and in the company of those god calls us to. the methodological structure that grounds and guides this work draws others into space of encounter through the alternative social reality of worship. insofar as this process participates in god’s gathering, it seeks to draw individuals and communities into a doxological life of worship and service. 57 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17337 worship is also a practice of celebration and anticipation. accordingly, our work together was ordered by simple and ordinary practices: eating, naming gifts, and sending people out into the world. these times together also purposefully include rest. we gathered in traditional spaces of worship, such as chapels and congregations, but we also met in non-religious spaces, gathering in nonprofits, startup accelerators, classrooms, art galleries and public event spaces. and in a manner that was entirely unscripted, individuals who gathered began to incorporate belonging into the patterns of worship that order their lives and communities. “we do not wish for chapels to become echo chambers,” moniz reflects above. this movement from celebration to anticipation emerges from a fabric of belonging and draws us forward, with hope, into the ways in which belonging may emerge more fully. 6 conclusion several months after this initial gathering, one of the thirteen participants in this inaugural “bending the light” methodological structure shared a poem from jan richardson entitled “what the night is for.” the poem begins by describing sorrow as “shattered glass.” it then wonders what account we give of these fragmented pieces of our lives and communities. as our work together noted, the longing for belonging is not something that can ever be entirely remade. and yet, richardson suggests there is another way: scattering these fragmented pieces “into the soil, into the sky.” rather than trying to pick them back up, we take the fractures and fragments – the very longings for belonging that make life together difficult to bear – and allow them to form a luminous witness in the dark. this is what the night is for, the poem notes: “it takes the broken things and sets them shining to light our way from here.” the proposed methodological structure for theological inquiry, “bending the light,” bears similar witness. just as the three participants described how they picked up and incorporated aspects of this methodology into their work, the combined methodological structures bends the light into individual lives and into local communities. it begins in the space of crisis, which often looks and feels like broken glass or shattered mirror, and follows a pathway to bend the light in order to give an account (benac, forthcoming b). this structure consists of three properties: belonging, place and worship that constitute three sites of inquiry: a celebration, a collaboratory, and a contextual research hub with nine practices of individual and collective inquiry: 1) naming present gifts; 2) creating connections; 3) identifying commonalities; 4) clarifying presenting crises; 5) developing shared language; 6) elevating individual and collective imagination; 7) complexifying anchoring concepts; 8) exploring shared practice; and 9) piloting research and resources. when pursued over time and in 58 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17337 the company of others, it creates space for people and communities to imagine and pursue a hopeful future for the church. about the authors dustin d. benac (thd, duke university) is an educator, practical theologian and organizational strategist. he teaches at baylor university’s george w. truett theological seminary, where he serves as director and co-founder for the program for the future church. he is the author of adaptive church: collaboration and community in a changing world. contact: dustin_benac@baylor.edu hannah coe is the senior pastor of calvary baptist church. before serving with calvary, hannah served on church staff in jefferson city, missouri (2015–21) and athens, georgia (2008–15). hannah earned an ms in integrative creative therapy at berry college and an mdiv at mcafee school of theology, mercer university. juli kalbaugh is the project manager for the program for the future church at baylor university’s george w. truett theological seminary. she is a breast cancer survivor, community cultivator and creative strategist. she lives in bloomington, indiana with her husband, corey, and two daughters, novella and evia. tatum miller is a third-year student at george w. truett theological seminary and completed his undergraduate work at georgetown college. upon graduation, he aims passionately to pursue community development, racial education and the intersection of faith. rev. dr. moniz is an associate chaplain and the director for chapel at baylor university. dr. moniz is ordained as a deacon in the anglican church of north america. she received her academic and ministerial training at berry college (bs), liberty baptist theological seminary (mdiv) and trinity school for ministry (dmin). references barreto. e. 2021. “reimagining belonging in the book of acts.” in d. d. benac and e. w. johnson (eds). crisis and care: meditations on faith and philanthropy. eugene: cascade. bass, d.c., k.a. cahalan, b.j. miller-mclemore, j.r. nieman and c.b. scharen. 2016. christian practical wisdom: what it is, why it matters. grand rapids: eerdmans. benac, d.d. 2022. adaptive church: collaboration and community in a changing world. waco: baylor university press. ———. forthcoming a. “a pilgrim’s performance: convening as practical theological inquiry.” international journal of practical theology. mailto:dustin_benac@baylor.edu 59 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17337 ———. forthcoming b. “theology for crisis: practical theology and the practice of giving an account.” practical theology. birmingham, b., and e.s. simard. 2022. creating cultures of belonging: cultivating organizations where women and men thrive. grand rapids: intervarsity press. bonhoeffer, d. 1995. life together. in life together, and, prayerbook of the bible. dietrich bonhoeffer works, vol. 5. minneapolis: fortress press. browning, d.s. 1991. a fundamental practical theology: descriptive and strategic proposals. minneapolis: fortress press. cahalan, k.a., and j.r. nieman. 2008. “mapping the field of practical theology.” in for life abundant: practical theology, theological education, and christian ministry (pp. 62–85). grand rapids: eerdmans. cameron, h., deborah bhatti and catherine duce. 2010. talking about god in practice: theological action research and practical theology. london: scm press. cohen, g. 2022. belonging: the science of creating connection and bridging divides. new york: norton. coloe, m.l. 2021. wisdom commentary: john 1–10, vol. 44. collegeville: liturgical press. dykstra, c. 2008. “pastoral and ecclesial imagination.” in for life abundant: practical theology, theological education, and christian ministry (pp. 41–61). grand rapids: eerdmans. fulkerson, m.m. 2007. places of redemption: theology for a worldly church. oxford: oxford university press. jennings, w.j. 2010. the christian imagination: theology and the origin of race. new haven: yale university press. ———. 2020. after whiteness: an education in belonging. grand rapids: eerdmans. osmer, r.r. 2008. practical theology: an introduction. grand rapids: eerdmans, 2008. robinson, b. 2009. incarnate leadership: five leadership lessons from the life of jesus. grand rapids: zondervan. scharen, christian. 2015. fieldwork in theology (the church and postmodern culture): exploring the social context of god’s work in the world. grand rapids: academic. smith, t. 2023. the end of theological education. grand rapids: eerdmans. swinton, j., and h. mowat. 2016. practical theology and qualitative research. 2nd edition. london: scm press. ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 1 20 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17726 a r t i c l e doi: 10.54195/ef17726 orthodox perspectives on the church as an evangelizing, eucharistic community: a case study of the orthodox parish of st john of kronstadt, bath, uk alison ruth kolosova abstract this article presents a case study of the orthodox parish of st john of kronstadt in bath, uk, an orthodox christian lay community founded in 1980 in response to the inspiration of st john of kronstadt and fr alexander schmemann. based on interviews with parishioners and the author’s own experience of the community, the article delineates the main features of the parish’s communal life of liturgical prayer, hospitality and witness in the wider community. the second part of the article explores the broader contribution of st john and fr alexander to the development of orthodox ecclesial and missional understandings and practices in the contemporary world. it delineates the historical, ecclesial and theological contexts in which their teachings and practices originated and argues that amidst these contexts we can trace the origins of the eucharistic ecclesiology and understandings of human personhood and community which have pervaded orthodox theology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. these have laid the groundwork for the perspective that christian mission and witness are a continuation of the eucharistic community’s experience of the kingdom of god, the ‘liturgy after the liturgy’. the article concludes with a plea for greater dialogue based on the common ground between western missiological discourse on the nature of post christendom evangelism and the ecclesial experience of orthodox diaspora communities. keywords: orthodox witness, john of kronstadt, alexander schmemann, eucharistic ecclesiology, liturgy after the liturgy in recent decades, a recurrent theme of ecumenical missiological writings has been what christian mission and evangelism could and should look like ‘after christen dom’, in societies where the constantinian alliance of church and state has shattered and national identity is no longer so bound up with the christian faith (stone 21 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17726 2007: 10–1; paas 2019: 28–54, xvi-xix). such reflections focus almost exclusively on western christendom and so fail to appreciate how keenly this crisis of living in a post-constantinian era was already felt in the 1920s and 1930s by theologians forced to emigrate from their homelands after the 1917 russian revolution. for example, fr sergius bulgakov, a founder and later dean of the st sergius orthodox theological institute in paris, wrote in the early 1930s of the crisis historic orthodoxy was facing owing to the fall of the russian empire. he wrote intuitively: “we have perhaps witnessed the end of the constantinian period in church history.” yet despite the challenges of exile and marginalization facing the émigré community in paris, he continued on a positive, prophetic note: “the orthodox church is now faced with new problems, new perspectives, it contains not only the end but the creative way which leads to [the future]…. this creative inspiration … will bring in a new era of creative christian life” (bulgakov 1988: 193–4) this article aims to illustrate one form that this “new era of creative christian life” has taken by presenting in the first part a case study of the missional experience of the orthodox parish of st john of kronstadt1 in bath, uk where the author lived in 1985–86, 1989–90 and 1994–96. since then she has visited the parish once or twice a year, as well as being in regular correspondence and online communication with both parishioners and clergy. in early 2023, several members of the parish’s clergy and laity responded to specific questions about the forms that community and evangelism take in the community. the aim of the case study is thus to assess how one orthodox community has sought to flesh out their understanding of mission and community in a context outside of traditional orthodox homelands. the aim of the second part of the article is to trace the roots of the bath community’s understanding of mission and community by providing an overview of the historical, ecclesial and theological influences on two figures who have contributed greatly to shaping the bath parish. the community is named after fr john (sergiev) of kronstadt (1829–1908), while fr alexander schmemann (1921–83) was dean of st  vladimir’s seminary in new york when fr yves dubois, one of the parish’s founders, was studying there. each of these highly significant figures, in different ways, has also contributed to the wider development of orthodox ecclesial and missional understandings and practices in the contemporary world. father (now saint) john provided one particular ecclesial response to the challenges of urbanization, secularization and poverty in the docklands of late nineteenth-century st petersburg, capital of the russian empire throughout which he became a legend in his lifetime. by contrast, alexander schmemann’s teaching, writings and pastoral ministry emerged out of the experience of rediscovering orthodox ecclesial identity in the post-revolutionary 1 hereafter referred to as “the bath orthodox parish” or “the parish”. 22 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17726 russian émigré communities of western europe and the usa where he is therefore better known. methodologically, this section sets in historical and ecclesial context their lives and personal writings as well as drawing on recent scholarship about them and the broader context of the russian orthodox church in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. by providing this context, the article aims to explain the origins of broader orthodox perspectives on christian mission predominant in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and influential both in traditionally orthodox contexts and in the diaspora. it highlights the understanding of the local eucharistic community as both goal and springboard of the christian church’s witness, which is expressed both through the liturgy and what has frequently been referred to as the “liturgy after the liturgy” (bria 1986: 12, 38–42; yannoulatos 2010: 94–6). the initial case study of the parish of st john of kronstadt will focus on both these aspects of the orthodox understanding of mission: the parish’s communal life of liturgical prayer and the way it lives out the “liturgy after the liturgy” through hospitality and other forms of witness in the surrounding community. case study of the orthodox parish of st john of kronstadt, bath, uk despite bearing the name of a russian saint, the orthodox parish of st john of kronstadt belongs to the archdiocese of thyateira and great britain which is under the jurisdiction of the ecumenical patriarchate. the parish was founded in 1980 and since then, hundreds of people, some of them passing through, others putting down roots, have been impacted by the ways it lives as a community which seeks to witness to and draw people to the love of god. while on a typical sunday you might find 50 to 70 people at the morning communion service, and on a major feast day you might find a hundred or more, it is not numerical growth which has been the main goal of the community. the focus has been rather on deepening relationships with christ and with each other and out of this the community’s evangelizing role has naturally emerged. the priest yves dubois, one of the parish’s founders, points to fr john of kronstadt and fr alexander schmemann as those who particularly inspired the model of christian community which has developed. the ministry of fr john set a pattern for christian engagement with the local community while his concern for a relationship with christ through constant prayer and frequent communion has provided the model for pastoral ministry and spiritual growth. fr alexander schmemann taught that the future of orthodoxy was in english-language parish communities led by a priest with a secular job, with a chapel in the house of the priest’s family, and community meals after sunday liturgies. 23 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17726 this latter model has led to three great practical challenges which in the long run have proved to have positive consequences. the first such challenge is that the parish has never had a church building of its own. community worship started in fr yves’ family home, together with the family of ann and trevor johnson, today fr  seraphim, and an orthodox nun, mother sarah overton. one large room was turned into an orthodox chapel with an iconostasis and icons, oil lamps, censers and relics of the saints, with worship and prayer always being followed by a communal meal in the kitchen downstairs. this “house church” model eventually became impractical once the congregation grew, and in recent years two local anglican parishes have provided a venue for liturgical worship, with community meals in the church hall. this has helped to develop good relations with other christian confessions and stopped the parish from being too insular. for example, st john’s, bathwick anglican parish and the orthodox parish which they currently host are at present working on a joint fundraising project for ukraine. ecumenical relations have been an ongoing concern with one priest, fr richard penwell, and mother sarah currently representing the parish in churches together in somerset. the parish’s not having its own building has also resulted in the community having a strong element of mobility and a capacity to take orthodox worship (liturgical prayer, icons, choral singing, candle stands) into many situations: to a local prison, to greenbelt, on annual pilgrimage to the saxon church at bradford-on avon and other holy places, to different homes and venues. the second, related challenge resulting from schmemann’s vision is that none of the pastoral team has ever been employed full time by the parish or the wider orthodox church. they have all had ordinary secular employment alongside their ministry in the parish, which has had the advantage that all of them have been working alongside local people and this has led to them and the parish becoming much more engaged with the local community than it could have been otherwise. the third immense challenge has been the consequence of aiming to be an english-language orthodox christian community open to people of all and every nationality, rather than a parish formed to provide pastoral care largely for those from one particular country and national tradition which has often been the case with orthodox diaspora communities. while there have always been a significant number of native english members, the community has drawn people from many countries: greece, romania, ukraine, russia, serbia, the middle east. on the one hand this has been a great source of enrichment to the community and has given the opportunity to many people of orthodox background to often “rediscover” their faith in a new and meaningful way in a foreign land. worship services 24 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17726 have always been in english, but phrases of other languages and their musical traditions are drawn into the worship. this change has been very demanding on choir leaders and members getting to grips with the complexities of orthodox liturgy, all in four-part harmony without the accompaniment of organ or other musical instruments. despite the challenges this presents to an amateur, even if highly musically literate, choir, many newcomers are drawn to orthodox worship by the beauty of the music and the prayerful atmosphere it creates. on the other hand, the multi-ethnic and multilingual aspect of parish life has meant that the wider political and ecclesial conflicts that have plagued the orthodox churches in recent decades have been potential and actual sources of tension. the current war in ukraine has put an obvious strain on relations within the community, although at the same time it has also brought out the community’s strengths in looking after anyone who turns up on their doorstep. several members are ukrainian or have ukrainian relatives whom they have taken into their homes. at the heart of the community is communal worship with all the ways that orthodox liturgical worship appeals to the whole person, body and soul: the visuality of icons, four-part choral singing, dousing with holy water, anointing with consecrated oil, as well as preaching by both clergy and laity. there are six people on the preaching rota and sermons are also distributed by email so that they reach far more people. one parishioner emphasized to me that she felt that the community witnessed to christ particularly through its liturgical worship, the focal point of which is the eucharist in which all participate, adults as well as children, who take communion weekly from the time they are baptized. frequent weekly communion is practised, with each communicant participating in the sacrament of confession every month or so. everyone i have spoken to agrees that communal meals have been a key element of both building strong relationships within the community and of welcoming newcomers. meals have taken different forms as the community has grown. for many years the whole community, sometimes 50 or 60 people, would visit different family homes each week and that family would make the meal. nowadays, there is always a sit-down meal in the st john’s church hall after the sunday morning communion service, with each person bringing some part of the meal. while such meals often take place inside, towards the end of the pandemic, when restrictions had been lifted, this meal often took place outside in the street and at times had the atmosphere of a street party, leading passers-by to stop and ask what was happening. last year’s parish report mentions in particular the “agape vespers and meal” on the sunday evening of easter when traditional paschal foods from all around the world are eaten together. of other special celebrations, the report says “we were blessed with the weather on many of the occasions and were able to spill out into the sunshine, and enjoy music and dancing after our meal” (parish report 2022). 25 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17726 a special role in the community is played by the convent which is the home of the parish’s nun, mother sarah, as well as her frequent lodgers and visitors. there is a regular cycle of morning and evening prayer at the convent which means the community’s life and outreach are rooted in communal prayer, as well as the personal prayers of each community member. mother sarah’s home also offers hospitality to those who would like to experience orthodox prayer and community life. i have been there on occasions when a specialist in islamic sufi mysticism came for such an experience, or when a group of catholic nuns came to discuss the monastic life. mother sarah is a rare phenomenon in the orthodox church as a woman who is involved in full-time pastoral work both within and outside the parish. for many years she has been a chaplain at bath university and while her experience as a pastoral counsellor has been available to all the students of the university, it has led in particular to many links with students of orthodox backgrounds who have found a spiritual home for a few years in the parish and consequently grown in their faith at an important stage of their lives. there is a constant trickle of newcomers to the parish, not only students. a recent influx of newcomers with no particular previous church background is attributed to the online presence of such figures as environmentalist and writer paul kingsnorth, and artist and podcaster jonathan pageau. each newcomer, if they so wish, can be involved in a catechetical process of instruction in the fundamentals of the christian faith as well as discussing issues which arise from the experience of worship and community. this nurturing is also a continuing process which takes place in both bible studies and a reading group which anyone in the parish can be involved with. while much of the parish’s witness arises out of its community life, there is one section of last year’s annual report called “hospitality and evangelism” which details some more specific forms of outreach into the local and not-so-local communities. among these are the arts festivals which have emerged out of the very identity of the community which has many people with some kind of artistic background: artists, icon painters, people who are skilled in pottery, embroidery, photography, stone masonry, musicians and singers. there is an art exhibition as well as interviews with artists and painters, a café with soup, tea and coffee, concerts with the mosaic choir, a group of semi-professional young orthodox singers of different national backgrounds, and a ceilidh to conclude the weekend. listed under the heading “evangelism” in the annual report are environmental activism and community action concerning climate change, for example petitioning the government about burning of peatlands, and reducing its environmental footprint by aiming for zero waste. further evidence of environmental concern was the theme of the annual parish weekend away in 2023, “god’s creation”. other forms 26 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17726 of outreach in the local community over the years have been involvement in the ecumenical genesis trust which works among the homeless in bath, or teams of six or seven people who have gone to lead worship at a local prison. currently the parish is working with local charities and agencies supporting ukrainian refugees. youth and children’s work has always been a strong aspect of parish life. this is the way that the community evangelizes its own children and young people so that they develop into believing, witnessing adults, rather than just dropping out. there is a sunday school, children’s sermons once a month and an annual summer camp organized by the archdiocese known as “the greek camp” which many in the community credit with enabling their young people to develop their own faith as it gives them a wider peer group and sense of the church. many of the parish’s young people have not only attended the camp but gone on to be its leaders and in many cases it has led to long-term friendships outside of the camp. the camp has been a factor in the formation of the mosaic choir. in the same area of youth work, although further afield, the parish has developed an ongoing relationship with an orthodox school and orphanage in kenya to which it sends part of its annual income. this case study has shown how the writings and vision of st john of kronstadt and fr alexander schmemann played a significant role in the founding of the bath orthodox parish and its central tenets of eucharistic spirituality, hospitable community and pastoral care, core values which continue to undergird the parish. yet as it has become rooted in both the local and wider ecumenical ecclesial communities, both in the uk and worldwide, with a younger generation of parishioners of diverse national backgrounds arising, the parish has acquired its own distinct ways of being a missional community. these currently embrace liturgical prayer and hospitality, social concern and service, environmental activism, international partnership, artistic expression, and ecumenical and inter-faith relationships. in the second part of this article we shall explore in greater depth the broader influence of fr john and fr alexander on orthodox ecclesial and missional understandings in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. we shall focus in particular on their understanding of the local ecclesial community and its missional role. fr john of kronstadt and fr alexander schmemann: historical, ecclesial and theological context although fr john and fr alexander were born almost a century apart, they both need to be understood against the backdrop of the great reforms of the 1860s and the 1917 russian revolution. the emancipation of the serfs (1861) was arguably the most significant reform, bringing with it rapid social change and a mass influx of rural workers into the russian empire’s cities where homelessness, unemployment and 27 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17726 poverty became problems on an unprecedented scale. other aspects of modernity – industrialization, more opportunities for education and literacy, the greater circulation and influence of printed texts, the rise of politically radical movements to combat social injustice – all presented new challenges to the closely allied tsarist government and russian orthodox church (hedda 2008). fr john’s charismatic ministry was one particular ecclesial response to these challenges that had an immense impact at all levels of russian society. fr john of kronstadt: eucharistic fervour and mutual responsibility fr john sergiev was born in 1829 into the family of a poor church sacristan in the far north of russia. he was ordained priest at st andrew’s cathedral in kronstadt (the docklands where many of the capital’s working population eked out a living) in 1855, the year that the great reforms began. his diaries during the first five years of his ministry are largely meditations on the words of scripture which he copied out with the aim of internalizing them. he frequently applied them literally, as he did with the gospel commands about sharing one’s wealth with one’s neighbour. consequently he often came home without his boots as he had given them away to a barefooted pauper. commenting on the seawater which flowed in pipes into kronstadt homes, he wrote, “as the sea-water belongs to everyone, does not my money belong to everyone who is poor? what kind of blindness is it that i persist in regarding it as exclusively my property?” (kizenko 2000: 13, 68). he frequently irritated the st petersburg aristocracy and shopkeepers with his criticism of the disparity between rich and poor, seeking to arouse a sense of mutual responsibility which would persuade them to part with their wealth. he did not restrict the biblical notions of the church as a “body” and “community” to the church, but applied them to all human society, ants build anthills in which they are warm and sated even in winter; … bees build beehives…. similarly, because people are made to live in communities and because according to god’s intent people must make up one body of whom individually they are its members, the strong must bear the burdens of the weak … i appeal to you in the name of christianity, in the name of loving mankind … let us help these shelterless poor, … let us not deny our solidarity with them as human beings … will we allow ants and bees to have the advantage over us? (kizenko 2000: 74). the house of industry he eventually set up became a model for many such workhouses throughout the empire. medical care, food, clothing and shelter were provided to the homeless, while the unemployed could learn various trades (morariu 2018: 2). as his fame grew in the 1880s and 90s, charitable causes throughout the empire appealed to him as a patron, and with the creation of the duma, he called on it to address poverty and the causes of alcohol abuse (kizenko 2000: 76–7, 84). 28 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17726 these expressions of his evangelical social consciousness arose out of an intense liturgical, especially eucharistic spirituality. until the mid-nineteenth century, it had been common practice in russia to take communion once a year as a civic duty. fr  john, however, encouraged not only frequent communion but a fervent awareness of christ’s presence in the bread and wine. he wrote, when you receive the holy life-giving mysteries [i.e. take communion], steadfastly represent to yourself christ himself under the form of the bread and wine … send in thought into the depths of your heart and there lay and mentally preserve the lifegiving guest … the body and blood show themselves to be life-giving, burning embers in the believer’s heart, according to the measure of the heart’s preparedness. (sergieff 1984: 483). his diaries also reflect the intensity which fr john considered fitting for a priest serving the liturgy: the celebration of the divine liturgy requires a man … whose heart is wholly embraced by the flame of the holy ghost, by ardent love for god and mankind, for every human soul, and above all, for the christian soul, so that with a sincere heart he may ever rise to god in prayer. (sergieff 1984: 341) he himself served the liturgy in an ecstatic manner, weeping, shouting and crying out the words in order to engage his parishioners. he sometimes changed the words of the usually strictly unchanging liturgical text to remind them of christ’s genuine presence among them. by the 1890s, in order to make frequent communion more possible, the church hierarchy had allowed him to turn the sacrament of confession, usually held one-to-one with the priest, into a mass event with thousands of people crowded together, calling out their sins (kizenko 2000: 53, 60). fr john’s intercessory prayer eventually became legendary, with peasants walking to kronstadt and shiploads of devotees arriving with prayer requests concerning healing, employment, finances, family and marital troubles. kronstadt became a major pilgrimage destination with fr john revered for his holiness as the “spiritual father” of the entire russian people. in 1894, when fr john was asked to minister to the dying emperor alexander iii, he became an international celebrity and the first publication of extracts from his diaries in english translation dates to 1897 (sergieff 1984; morariu 2018: 2). there was a more controversial side to fr john. the assassination of tsar alexander i in 1881 and the rise of the revolutionary movement led to him espousing the politics of the far right, while his support for monarchist right-wing organizations such as the union of the russian people led to the radical press targeting him as a symbol 29 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17726 of reaction. in his final years, groups of more radical adherents to his teachings, the ioannites, were drawn to fr john’s apocalyptic warnings that russia must recover its orthodox faith before it was too late. while fr john disavowed them, they gathered in communes, defending autocracy, while condemning both mainline orthodoxy and liberal politics (kizenko 2000: 13, 197–8, 283–4; morariu 2018: 3–4). fr alexander schmemann: the roots of his liturgical and missional understanding despite these controversial sides to fr john’s politics, kizenko points to the long-term consequences of fr john’s ministry when she writes “a more regular and thoughtful observance of communion was perhaps his most significant contribution to russian piety … the revival of eucharistic theology in russian orthodoxy which has lasted to this day, may be traced to this quiet revolution” (kizenko 2000: 59). the footnote to kizenko’s sentence refers to fr alexander schmemann’s the eucharist: sacrament of the kingdom (schmemann 1988a), although schmemann’s book does not overtly acknowledge the inspiration of fr john. however, schmemann’s aristocratic parents and grandparents had lived in st petersburg at the height of fr john’s ministry, and fr john certainly influenced the russian émigré circles of schmemann’s youth. fr  sergius bulgakov, who had a profound influence on the young schmemann in émigré paris, attributed to fr john a “prophetic” ministry which was a “manifestation of the spirit and its power” (bulgakov 1988: 51; plekon 2016: 2, 4). schmemann’s eucharistic ecclesiology and the liturgical missional vision which flowed out of it also had their roots in other strands of ecclesial response to the challenges of the preand post-revolutionary decades. in the late nineteenth century, a movement for church reform criticized the synodal system of church government introduced by peter the great in the early eighteenth century which had subordinated the church to secular state control. the movement was accompanied by heated discourse revolving around the concept of sobornost’ and how to restore conciliar practices to the life of the russian church. the term sobornost’ has multifaceted meanings and has been translated variously as conciliarity, catholicity or synodality, while it has been used with a wider range of meanings embracing the relationality of the human person, and the communal perception of knowledge and truth (bulgakov 1988: 60–1). the term emerged out of the writings of the mid nineteenth-century slavophile philosophers who stressed that divine truth can only be collectively or communally perceived, while the ultimate source of truth is the holy spirit who dwells precisely in the entire ecclesial community, the laity as well as the hierarchy of bishops (khomiakov 2018: 71, 98, 151). as the twentieth century dawned, critics of the synodal system made proposals to restore independence and conciliarity to the church by replacing the synod with 30 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17726 a council of bishops and restoring a patriarch as primate of the russian church. they also urged conciliarity at the diocesan and parish levels by holding assemblies composed of, and elected by, both clergy and laity to deliberate on local matters and restoring greater freedom and a missional role to the local parish community. the reform movement culminated in the all-russian (moscow) church council of 1917–18, the impact of which has been compared with the vatican ii council (kallistos 2019; destivelle 2015: xv). it voted to restore the patriarchate and formulated wideranging decrees concerning many aspects of church life, including liturgical reform, the parish community and mission (cunningham 1981; destivelle 2015; paert 2025). the persecutions of the soviet period prevented a large-scale application of the council’s decisions within the russian church itself. yet its deliberations, which gave unprecedented voice to the laity, have in varying degrees influenced the orthodox churches of eastern europe and the diaspora over the last century. (stavrou 2018; paert et al. (eds) 2025) the legacy of the council was brought to western europe by many emigres including participants in the council such as sergius bulgakov who became a leading theologian in paris (destivelle 2015: xv, 63, 413 n.129). it was into the ecclesial and theological world of the paris emigration that schmemann was plunged as a seven-year-old boy in 1928. while he attended the russian cathedral in rue daru, during his childhood and youth he was profoundly involved in the russian student christian movement (rscm) which sought to strengthen russian émigré youth in their faith. the rscm, which celebrates its centenary in 2023, had been strongly influenced by the small lay-led groups for bible study and prayer of the world student christian federation (wscf) and the young men’s christian association (ymca). these organizations became active in russia after john mott’s visit to finland in 1899, and so initially attracted finnish lutherans, yet their small groups or “circles” soon drew orthodox young people as well (understanding sobornost 2023). it was in the emigration, however, that the “circles” of laity took on a more distinctively orthodox confessional orientation. among the founders and leaders of rscm was the above-mentioned sergius bulgakov who stressed that the entire ecclesial body was responsible for the renewal and mission of the church (understanding sobornost 2023). the rscm was inspired by the notion of sobornost ’ with its implications for the relational nature of human beings who become more truly “persons” through the experience of ecclesial community. life in christ … is never given in isolation or separated from other men, but in a union, living and immediate, in the unity of many in one whole (the image of the holy trinity, consubstantial and indivisible)…. he who lives in union with others, who frees himself of the “i” … he it is alone who can receive the truth (bulgakov 1988: 63–4). 31 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17726 this understanding of personhood and the ecclesial community as both mirroring and participating in the community and unity of the three persons of the holy trinity was to become a major theme of many orthodox theologians of the twentieth century (louth 2015: 54–5, 218–22; zizioulas 1985; kallistos 1990: 33–4). rscm also had a strong emphasis on liturgical worship and frequent communion (understanding sobornost 2023), and schmemann’s journals testify to how his sense of the central place of the liturgy grew out of his experience in émigré paris and rscm (schmemann 2021: 51; see also louth 2015: 51–2; plekon 2016: 8). schmemann studied and later taught at the st sergius institute which was founded after the second rscm conference which voiced the need to educate the laity. among his teachers, and later colleagues, were both bulgakov and nikolai afanasiev, whose influence is evident from the themes of his writings that recur in schmemann’s later works. in afanasiev’s the church of the holy spirit, the opening chapters are devoted to the “royal priesthood” of all believers and the spirit-filled ministries of all the laity. “the gift of the spirit which every believer receives during the sacrament of reception into the church [i.e. baptism and chrismation] is the charism of royal priesthood…. the priestly ministry of all members of the church has found expression in the eucharistic assembly” (afanasiev 1994: 3–4). afanasiev’s teaching about the fullness of the church being present as the local christian community gathers for the eucharist has led to afanasiev being considered the father of “eucharistic ecclesiology” which dominates orthodox ecclesiology to this day (kallistos 2019 provides a classic example; plekon 2022: 247). all of these themes are woven together in schmemann’s vision of the eucharistic, evangelizing community which he presents in for the life of the world, originally a study guide for a conference on mission in december 1963. schmemann emphasizes the missional purpose of the “priesthood of all believers” who are called to transform the life of the world by taking on christ’s intercessory role, offering the world to god and calling the world into communion with him (schmemann 1988b: 15). to be in christ means to be like him…. and as he “ever lives to make intercession” for all “that come unto god by him” (heb. 7:25) so we cannot help accepting this intercession as our own…. intercession begins here, in the glory of the messianic banquet, and this is the only true beginning for the church’s mission (schmemann 1988b: 44–5). dwelling on the meaning of the word leitourgia (gk: the work of the people) schmemann wrote that it “meant an action by which a group of people become something corpo32 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17726 rately which they had not been as a mere collection of individuals…. thus the church itself is a leitourgia, a ministry, a calling to act in the world after the fashion of christ, to bear testimony to him and his kingdom” (schmemann 1988b: 25). this ongoing “leitourgia of mission” is the church’s witness to all that it has experienced of union in and with christ, and of the kingdom of god at the eucharistic table (schmemann 1988b: 45–6; plekon 2016: 5, 8). this understanding of the liturgy of mission flowing irrevocably out of the eucharistic liturgy became the main orthodox understanding of the church as a missional community in the late twentieth century, in large part due to schmemann’s colossal influence. it also owed much to greek and romanian theologians of mission, especially metropolitan anastasios yannoulatos and fr ion bria, who popularized this notion of mission as “the liturgy after the liturgy”. there has been some debate as to who initiated the term (yannoulatos 2010: 94–6; marcu 2016: 191–200; sonea 2020) although as all three theologians were moving in the same ecumenical circles from the 1950s to the 1970s, it is safest to say that there was undoubtedly a great deal of multi-directional influence. schmemann’s influence can most clearly be seen if we compare schmemann’s vision with the statement on orthodox mission drawn up under the leadership of bria, go forth in peace: orthodox perspectives on mission. the goal and aim of the proclamation of the gospel, and thus of mission, is the establishment of eucharistic communities in every locality [which], centred around worship and the celebration of the holy eucharist, will initiate the kingdom of god and become the focal point for active and concrete witness … the eucharistic community will witness most effectively through its own example of openness and unity, as well as through the spirituality and holiness of its individual members. (bria 1986: 12) bria’s language is more accessible than schmemann’s and yet it is the core features of schmemann’s vision which shine through. conclusion the bath orthodox parish, as the above case study has shown, can be viewed as one expression of what sergius bulgakov referred to as that ‘new era of creative christian life’ which has arisen out of the post-constantinian crisis faced by the russian and other orthodox churches after the first world war and 1917 revolution. orthodox theologians such as alexander schmemann have provided vision for the way forward out of the crisis, drawing on the spiritual, theological and ecclesiological heritage of the russian church before and after the 1917 revolution, including the eucharistic 33 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17726 spirituality of fr john of kronstadt, the discourse and practice of sobornost’ associat ed with the 1917–18 moscow council and the russian student christian movement. this article points to the common ground shared by christian communities seeking a renewed vision and practice of evangelism “after christendom” and eastern christian communities who have migrated owing to war, revolution and political and economic crisis throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. such common ground suggests that dialogue between eastern and western missiological traditions should be strengthened and more attention paid by both scholars and practitioners to the missional experience of orthodox christian communities, both eastern and oriental, who have found a home in the western world. about the author dr alison ruth kolosova is a research fellow in church history at the school of theology and religious studies, university of tartu, estonia. her research is supported by estonian research council grant put 1599. contact: alison.ruth.kolosova@ut.ee references afanasiev, n. 1994. tserkov’ dukha sviatogo. riga: balto-slavianskoe obshchestvo kul’turnogo razvitiia i sotrudnichestva. bria, i. 1986. go forth in peace: orthodox perspectives on mission. geneva: wcc. bulgakov, s. 1988. the orthodox church. new york: st vladimir’s seminary press. cunningham, j. w. 1981. a vanquished hope: the movement for church renewal in russia, 1905– 1906. new york: st vladimir’s seminary press. destivelle h. 2015. the moscow council (1917–1918): the creation of the conciliar institutions of the russian orthodox church. indiana: university of notre dame press. hedda, j. 2008. his kingdom come: orthodox pastorship and social activism in revolutionary russia. dekalb: northern illinois university press. kallistos (ware) (bishop). 1990. the orthodox way. new york: st vladimir’s seminary press . kallistos (ware) (metropolitan), 2019. keynote address at international orthodox theological association 2019 conference. https://youtu.be/wexupqstg9q?si=5weedqp-fdnhwsin khomiakov, a. s. 2018. tserkov’ odna opyt katekhizicheskogo izlozheniia ucheniia o tserkvi. moskva: izdatel’stvo pstgu. kizenko, n. 2000. a prodigal saint: father john of kronstadt and the russian people. pennsylvania state university press. louth, a. 2015. modern orthodox thinkers: from the philokalia to the present. london: spck. marcu, d. 2016. “the concept liturgy after the liturgy. history and theology”, craiova: editura mitropolia oteniei, 9–12, pp. 184–207. morariu, i-m. “aspects of political theology in the spiritual autobiography of saint john of kronstadt (1829–1908)”, hts teologiese studies/theological studies 74 (4), 2018, 4993. orthodox parish of st john of kronstadt, bath parish report november 2021 to november 2022. paas, s. 2019. pilgrims and priests: christian mission in a post-christian society. london: scm press, 2019. mailto:alison.ruth.kolosova@ut.ee https://youtu.be/wexupqstg9q?si=5weedqp-fdnhwsin 34 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17726 paert, i., a. shishkov and a. kolosova (eds). forthcoming 2025. the wiley-blackwell companion to conciliarity in modern orthodox christianity. wiley-blackwell. plekon, m. 2016. “the liturgy of life: alexander schmemann”, religions, 7 (127), pp. 1–12. plekon, m. 2022. “reflections from the field: ‘community as church, church as community’” religious studies and theology, 41 (2), pp. 243–57. schmemann, a. 1988a. the eucharist: sacrament of the kingdom. new york: st vladimir’s seminary press. schmemann, a. 1988b. for the life of the world: sacraments and orthodoxy. new york: st vladimir’s seminary press. schmemann, a. dnevniki 1973–1983. moskva: russkii put. sergieff, john i. 1984. my life in christ: extracts from the diary of st. john of kronstadt. jordanville: holy trinity monastery. sonea, c. 2020. “the ‘liturgy after the liturgy’ and deep solidarity. the orthodox understanding of christian witness and its implications for human society.” mission studies 37 (3), pp. 452–77. stavrou m. et al. (eds). 2018. “comment vivre et partager la conciliarité ecclésiale? la reception du concile de moscou (1917–1918). “ contacts: revue française de l’orthodoxie, 263. stone, b. evangelism after christendom: the theology and practice of christian witness. michigan: brazos press, 2007. understanding sobornost: the russian student christian movement (rscm): a case for ‘conciliarity from below’. 2023 https://youtu.be/f88qlnkqxlq?si=_ldi9unghg4ea5j3 (accessed 28 mar. 2024). yannoulatos, anastasios (archbishop). 2010. mission in christ’s way: an orthodox understanding of mission. geneva: wcc publications. zizioulas, john (metropolitan). 1985. being as communion: studies in personhood and the church. london: darton, longman and todd. https://youtu.be/f88qlnkqxlq?si=_ldi9unghg4ea5j3 ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 1 31 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ ef13656 a r t i c l e s doi: 10.54195/ ef13656 churches’ missional engagement during the pandemic and afterwards in korea1 bokyoung park abstract the paper describes new ways of missional engagement during the covid-19 pandemic and afterwards in korea. while covid-19 is inflicting serious damage on the entire korean society, the damage to the protestant churches is serious. the local government’s prohibition of ‘in-person gathering’ for worship resulted in the decrease of membership and endangered the unique paradigm of ‘in-gathering’-centred ecclesiology in korean protestant churches. the study tried to understand how local congregations coped with the changed situation in their missional engagement. three congregations were used as case studies of how the local congregations responded to their missional tasks during the pandemic. with some preliminary assessments from these case studies, the paper suggests three ways of missional engagement of local congregation in korea during the pandemic and even after the pandemic: 1) engaging personal fellowship using narratives, 2) performing a habitual ethical lifestyle, and 3) embracing the practice of hospitality. keywords: missional engagement; covid-19; south korea; local congregation; storytelling; ethical living; hospitality introduction as the covid-19 pandemic continues and new variants are being discovered constantly, humanity has entered a prolonged pandemic. there is no question that covid-19 is inflicting serious damage on the entire society. not only is it posing serious risks to 1 this paper was originally published in korean in theology of mission 65 (2022): 157–88. however, it has been revised to suit a global audience. 32 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ ef13656 people’s health, but due to continued social distancing working-class people are on the brink of bankruptcy, and a sense of despair is settling throughout the society. damage to ordinary christians in korea is also serious. the credibility of the korean protestant church has fallen significantly during the pandemic. according to a survey, the credibility of the korean protestant church dropped from 32% in the year 2020 to 21% in 2021 (ministry data institute 2021: 3). such a steep decline offers a glimpse into the korean protestant church’s fall in the perception of society. according to the survey, only 9% of non-christians consider the korean protestant church credible (ministry data institute 2021: 3), and this phenomenon can be expected to have a negative impact on communicating the gospel in society. besides, there is already widespread aversion to the church throughout korean society. due to media reports of church gatherings becoming covid-19 super-spreading events, protestant churches have been labelled as anti-social institutions. as society increasingly regards christianity in a negative light, internally, churches are seeing an accelerated loss of membership. how can the church carry out its task of communicating the gospel of jesus christ in a new way in this new context? how can we engage missionally in this time? to find the new way, this paper attempts to find the answer from local churches. based on their actual response, the paper proposes a new way for missional engagement especially during the pandemic era, and even applicable to the time afterwards. korean society and churches during the pandemic the gospel of jesus christ is the unchanging truth but the form containing that truth must be renewed for each generation. in this changed situation, we are called to discover new and more appropriate approaches to missional engagement for this generation. so what are the new factors that have descended on korean society recently? lee mann-shik identified five general changes to korean society (lee 2021:  18–29). first is the generational imbalance due to low birthrate and rapid aging. as lifespans lengthen and the senior population increases to accelerate population aging, various factors are worsening the problem of low birthrate to result in generational imbalance. second, with the improvement of women’s status, new family structures – especially the single-person household – are appearing. third, the transition to postmodern society is evident in relativistic views on truth and challenges to authority. fourth, lee identified the loss of joie de vivre as a characteristic of korean society today. severe competition and chronic fatigue are causing society-wide depression. fifth, korea is becoming multicultural due to the constant increase of immigration from various asian countries. these characteristics existed 33 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ ef13656 in korean society before the pandemic, but the pandemic accelerated the changes already begun. among these factors, the rise of single-person households warrants special attention. this is forming a culture of aloneness and hastening the transition into the age of digital media ( ji 2020: 318–21). among many causes behind the dawning age of digital media is the coming of age of the digital generation. they hold fundamentally different values from previous generations. the characteristics of the digital generation are identified as follows. first, as the internet is easily accessible, there is the equalization of knowledge, naturally resulting in anti-hierarchical relationships. the digital generation is anti-authoritarian and prefers to work in start-up companies that tend to be less authoritarian and encourage creative approaches. second, the digital generation is emotionally sensitive, values self-expression and individual experience, and prioritizes the individual rather than the collective. third, they value individual rights, while at the same time being interested in social issues that they encounter online. in a nutshell, they actively participate in various social issues and monitor society’s moral standing (nam 2020: 96–97). in addition, the prolonged pandemic became another factor in the rapid emergence of the digital age. as the pandemic continued people spent more time alone. with social distancing, meetings were limited, and people quickly entered the digital space. as social distancing was prolonged in the pandemic, these phenomena intensified. the age of digital media has inescapably dawned on us. the trend of finding information from algorithm-focused media is intensifying polarization by class and age. bias according to individuals’ ideological preconceptions is further isolating the people from other people who hold different ideas and is intensifying the information bubble with others who hold similar views, which results in deepening social polarization. furthermore, months of the covid-19 pandemic is also causing depression throughout society. due to the pandemic, opportunities for in-person encounters are minimized and everyone is forced into an “un-tact” lifestyle. this lifestyle is naturally intensifying anxiety and depression in the phenomenon of “covid blues” ( jung 2021: 69). loneliness had already been a feature of modern society, but prolonged social distancing has intensified the loneliness (choi 2020; jung 2021: 71). these are the situations the churches are facing in their surrounding world. then, what is the situation with the korean protestant church in this age of pandemic? in the pandemic, loss of church membership is evident. even before the pandemic, 34 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ ef13656 protestant churches suffered from a negative image due to media reporting on some problematic churches with their obsession with growth and extravagant building construction. the scandalous news of hereditary succession of mega-church leadership also brings them into social contempt with the public. the public news that reports about heretical groups of fanatic believers also brings negative images of churches. this negative image of the church became a major stumbling block in sharing the gospel with the public. in the meantime, smaller churches also suffered financially. new members were few and far between while existing members were leaving the church. during the pandemic, protestant church membership decreased even more. jeong jae-young predicts that in the pandemic the most visibly accelerating phenomena will be the increase of “unchurched believers” and the loss of church membership ( jung 2021: 72–73). before the pandemic, there were more than 1.5 million “unchurched believers”, many of them deciding to leave after being disappointed by churches. considering the unique characteristics of korean protestants, that is, confessing the christian faith is identified with being a member of a local congregation, increasing the “unchurched believers” who adhere to christian faith but refuse to be members of a local congregation, a new phenomenon in korean protestant churches. in the korean protestant church, the ecclesiology of the “in-gathering paradigm” emerged from its unique history. during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, christians faced persecution and resistance in society. conversion to christianity meant detachment from traditional paganism. this separation from society coincided with a new sense of belonging to the local congregation. the local church provided space for communal fellowship and solidarity to provide emotional support. in addition, church programmes such as bible study groups and spiritual training programmes for church members also heightened the “in-gathering” paradigm. as a result, loyalty to local congregations is very evident, and their identity as christians is often associated with their regular attendance at sunday worship services. the “in-gathering paradigm” was inevitable in such a social context (han 2016: 17–18). therefore, when the pandemic hit, the government prohibition against in-person gatherings for church services posed a crisis, even a threat, and was met with severe resistance by some conservative christians. among them, some had expressed their strongest protest, publicly criticizing the current administration’s social distancing policy. they called the policy a persecution that threatened their freedom of assembly. unlike a few extreme conservative groups, many local churches proactively accepted the prohibition regulation of in-person gatherings. these groups considered the new situation to be an opportunity to overcome serious polarization 35 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ ef13656 between church and society which had been a major side-effect of the “in-gathering” paradigm. in sum, during the pandemic, the korean protestant church had experienced serious decline and many committed christians turned into “unchurched believers”. public perception of the korean protestant church is worsening due to negative images shown in media reporting of some extremist conservative churches that put up strong resistance to the social distancing policy. due to regulations against and limitations to in-person gatherings for worship services, churches lost membership during the pandemic. missional engagement of local congregations during the pandemic the pandemic has abruptly caused major changes in the korean protestant churches – changes nobody could have prepared for it in advance. the previous section gave an overview of changes to the korean protestant churches. this section more specifically explores how local churches have responded in their missional efforts. this is a field study of three specific local churches and their attempts to communicate the gospel during the pandemic. for this, i conducted these interviews from march to june 2021 at dongil presbyterian church, baegut joeun church and onnuri vision church. these churches had a membership of 1000 to 2000, and all belong to the presbyterian church of korea. all three churches are considered middle-sized churches with sufficient ministers to support the changed situation caused by the pandemic. dongil presbyterian church2 dongil presbyterian church is typical in its indirect approach to missional engagement. the church successfully adjusted to local government’s prohibitions against gatherings thanks to their new programme of family worship that started three years ago. the church distributes a 365-day bible verse memorization, meditation, and home worship guide to all members both as booklets and through social media. each family logs on through a link online to have family worship sessions. along with this emphasis on worship in the family unit, bible verse memorization was also encouraged for the congregants’ spiritual training. 2 the interview with rev. kim hui-hyun, the senior pastor of dongil presbyterian church, was carried out on 11 march 2021. 36 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ ef13656 moreover, since church members were not allowed to gather, the church started a new ministry of distribution of church newsletters. newsletters are sent out three times each week. scenes in dongil community is about various events that happened in church in the past week. on thursdays, dongil mission bulletin and dongil church school bulletin were sent out. the purpose of these newsletters is to continue delivering church-related information and to strengthen the members’ sense of belonging even when they cannot attend in-person worship. a new ministry that started in the pandemic was the online prayer room ministry. the link to the prayer room is sent out to congregants every monday through kakao talk (a korean social media platform). individuals can go online to join the online prayer session. each person may participate whenever they can, whether at home or in the office, by clicking onto the link and following through the prayers according to a preset sequence. the last part of the online prayer session encourages participants to contribute their own prayer requests, which also functions as a satisfaction survey for this ministry. dongil presbyterian church also conducted several neighbourhood ministries. when covid-19 cases were identified among church members, they proactively encouraged pcr testing for the whole congregation and followed hygiene requirements suggested by the local government. while some conservative churches’ resistant and uncooperative attitude became scandalous to the public, this church tried to show a more positive image of the church to its neighbours by responding proactively on disease prevention. when there was a period of mask shortage, they distributed masks to the poor and to marginalized groups in the neighbourhood free of charge. the church especially prioritized mask distribution to foreign labour migrants who could not buy the masks without citizenship identification numbers. when local small businesses struggled with social distancing measures, the church began a campaign among congregants to buy things from these local businesses. they also explored other volunteer opportunities to deliver gifts to the marginalized in the local area. moreover, special offerings were regularly sent to other churches that were suffering financially. baegot joeun church3 baegot joeun church, located near the city of incheon, is an extraordinary case of a local congregation that actively conducted an evangelistic campaign during the 3 see their homepage http://thegoodchurch.co.kr/main/main.html. the interview with rev. park joseph was conducted on 13 may 2021 at his church. see also shin dong-ha 2020. http://thegoodchurch.co.kr/main/main.html 37 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ ef13656 covid-19 pandemic and even saw notable results. this church’s outreach ministry is centred around open cell group gatherings. open cell group gatherings are an outreach strategy uniquely developed by this church. in these groups, non-christians are invited to hear the gospel and commit to the faith. unlike many churches in korea, outreach ministry is not only the task of individual church members, but also of the cell group. this is how open cell groups operate. first, the groups are organized and started entirely by voluntary initiative of group leaders. new groups then emerge out of these existing groups, headed by leaders who have been trained and appointed by the original group. in this way, cell groups continue to divide and expand. when three or more cell groups form in this way, the original cell group leader is promoted to regional leadership, and he or she may take more responsibilities in ministering to cell groups. in this way, the lay leader’s ministry influence also expands. outreach campaigns by cell groups are also the focal point of this church’s outreach ministry. each year the church organizes a ten-week outreach festival to invite non-christians. during this period, new members are invited to the church. but the focus is not on bringing new members but encouraging existing church members to become passionate about sharing the gospel. the first five weeks are critical, when cell group members go through preparatory training on outreach ministry. then each cell group considers and identifies potential converts, sets a numerical target for the group, and writes down the names of potential converts. simply writing down the names of potential converts is enough to remind cell group members of the importance of outreach ministry. sermons and bible study lessons delivered in this period also encourage the church to be passionate about evangelistic outreach. during the pandemic, however, in-person gatherings in cell groups became difficult. as the public image of the church got worse, a ten-week evangelistic outreach festival was almost an impossibility. after some consideration, the church decided to hold the festival in an alternate form while respecting social distancing regulations. open cell group gathering used to mean inviting non-christians to the cell group leader’s house, but with the regulation against private gatherings of five or more people, open cell groups that used to involve ten to twenty people were further divided into more frequent sessions involving four or less people gathering in locations convenient to the invited non-christian. the evangelistic outreach festival of open cell groups was organized and resulted in the commitment of a higher number of new converts than in previous years. when non-christians who had been isolated by social distancing measures were invited to small groups, they were even more 38 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ ef13656 willing to join the church than before. this proved that open cells for evangelistic outreach were an even more effective approach during the pandemic. onnuri vision church4 the city of suwon, where onnuri vision church is located, is a region where a comparatively younger population resides and works in various companies in the area. this means that the church had to respond to the pandemic faster than in other regions. the news of certain uncooperative churches spread rapidly through the media and among company employees. the perception of the church in this region turned so negative that some new christians were afraid of even stepping foot in the church lest they get infected. the image of the church was negatively impacting christians at their workplaces. recognizing this, the church conducted two rounds of surveys among church members in april and august of 2020. in the first round of surveys in april 2020 more than half of the church members absolutely preferred to hold services online. in the second survey at the end of august, almost all the members responded that the church should continue online services. onnuri vision church could not ignore these results. the church members preferred online services mainly because of unspoken pressures at their workplace. they did not want to risk becoming covid patients, forcing hundreds of co-workers to get tested and quarantined. they also wanted to protect their young children. especially in the august survey, the church members expressed pride in their church’s online services compared to some conservative churches widely criticized around that time for resisting government regulations. the younger church members were even more supportive of the church’s decision to continue with online services. meanwhile the church shifted its ministry focus to prepare a greater variety of online services. first, they began bold remodeling of the sanctuary to make it more conducive to online services. to raise the level of satisfaction of the congregants, sunday worship sessions that used to be held in four different time slots were divided among the head pastor and the assistant pastors to be uploaded online. this provided an opportunity for church members to experience different worship styles. the four different sunday services are each produced in video format to be uploaded. there is a total of seven services each week, and each sermon is also uploaded, which means there are a lot more video clips uploaded online than in other churches that hold the same number of services. this is designed to provide a variety of options to church 4 see their homepage http://www.onnurivision.org/. the interview with rev. kim dong-guk, the senior pastor was conducted on 19 may 2021 in his office. http://www.onnurivision.org/ 39 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ ef13656 members who participate in worship services at home. as a result, onnuri vision church has more subscribers to its video platform than other churches of similar size. onnuri vision church is interested in reaching “unchurched believers”. the prolonged period of online worship services naturally produced non-committal christians who skipped worship and eventually ended up as “unchurched believers”. but by the end of the pandemic at least some of them will return to the church community. onnuri vision church is predicting a large-scale horizontal move of christians from one church to another at this point. unchurched believers will decide to settle at a church depending on whether the church has acted ethically during the pandemic. this means that constructing a positive perception of the church during the pandemic is critical, so onnuri vision is trying to be even more proactive in following social distancing regulations to be a model church in the local community and make for a positive perception. this is ultimately to attract “unchurched believers” to the church once in-person services resume. * based on these interviews, i come to the conclusion that even though their attitudes toward the changed situation were different, there are a few common characteristics of how these local congregations responded to the changed situation in their missional engagement. they are as follows. first, during the pandemic, many korean protestant churches generally focused on membership strengthening such as implementing the programmes for the spiritual growth of current members rather than reaching out to non-believers. churches focused on devoting themselves to survival. the most proactive missional engagement that churches could offer was preventing church members from turning into “unchurched believers”. it is true that this is not direct engagement with nonbelievers, yet strengthening the faith of existing church members was also important missional engagement. nominalization of the christian faith has been one of the noticeable phenomena during and even before the pandemic. in light of this, it is meaningful enough to strengthen the existing church members. in the case of dong-il presbyterian church, the weekly church newsletter has been an important source for the sharing of church members’ stories. second, the pandemic created a new perspective on their ecclesiology, and made these congregations accept the new ecclesial paradigm of dispersion. as mentioned earlier, the korean protestant church historically developed a gathering-centred paradigm, but this became difficult churches were forced to shift to the new ecclesio40 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ ef13656 logical paradigm of dispersion. in my observation and interviews, all these churches recognized the necessity of the ecclesial paradigm of dispersion. the sudden pandemic forced these churches to rethink the purpose of the church, and led to the transition that prepared these churches to become missional churches. third, most of the missional engagement by local congregations was by indirect approach. they served neighbours in need, distributed goods and helped small churches financially. in such ways, the local congregations attempted to show a positive image of christians to the public. in dong-il presbyterian church, they switched from direct evangelism to more indirect evangelism by showing good works for the suffering neighbourhood, and such good works for suffering neighbours is only possible through this new ecclesial paradigm of dispersion. fourth, during the pandemic, missional engagement in local congregation to non-christians was not entirely dismissed. as large-scale meetings were prohibited, small group gatherings were still possible. the case of bae-gok joeun church is a unique case of this. this church was able to develop in new ways. instead of inviting non-christians directly to mass worship services, they were invited to small group sessions. in this case, they modified the existing campaign event to fit the new situation. the case shows that even when in-person gathering was restricted, churches found other ways to engage missionally in new ways. fifth, there was a clear increase in attention to “unchurched believers” for missional engagement. many congregations are considering specific and unique ways to attract these people into church community during the pandemic and once the crisis is over. in the case of onnuri vision church, their bold investment in online ministry is aimed to reach out to “unchurched believers” and non-believers. their online programmes are designed not just for the existing church members, but also for “unchurched believers” who may decide to join. sixth, there was a clear increase in online services in many congregations. due to the pandemic, many local congregations launched new online ministries and streamed their worship services. churches began to offer various online bible studies and produced various church-related contents. but in many cases, these are produced to support existing membership. in other cases, online worship services became new opportunities to participate in the worship services of other churches. as a result, it weakened the commitment of existing members to their home congregations. 41 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ ef13656 proposals for missional engagement during and after the pandemic in the previous section, i described how local congregations handled the pandemic situation as they engaged in missional endeavour. many congregations were not able to actively engage in any evangelistic endeavour during the pandemic, but that does not mean that they totally abandoned their missional outreach. some are more direct in how they engage in evangelism, but some are more indirect as they seek to be meaningful neighbours as the local church. in finding an appropriate way to encounter suffering neighbours, i propose three ways of missional engagement during and even after the pandemic. these approaches are suggested by the lessons derived from previous sections. missional engagement using narrative in this time of deep pain and despair, we must pay attention to the power of narratives in communicating the gospel. alister mcgrath emphasizes the importance of narratives in apologetics (mcgrath 2019: 7–8). he states that “god has shaped the human mind and imagination to be receptive to stories.” for mcgrath, narrative approaches are not displacing but rather supplementing reasoned argumentation in apologetics. he states that mystery, in the proper sense of the term, refers not to something that is irrational, but to something that cannot be fully comprehended by reason (mcgrath 2019: 8). the mystery of the gospel can be better communicated by narratives. john drane similarly states that “telling a story requires honesty to accept both our strength and weakness. when we show our weakness and vulnerability others are more willing to identify with us and hear our invitation to join us in following christ” (drane 1997: 67). earlier on, david bosch in his classic transforming mission wrote that the postmodern paradigm proved that rationality is not enough to tell the entire story of life, and therefore, it needs to be expanded. one way of expanding it is to recognize that language cannot be absolutely accurate, and that it is impossible to define neither scientific laws nor theological truths once and for all (bosch 1991: 353). so, in articulating the nature of god, we can employ stories both oral and written. therefore, the upsurge of interest especially in third-world churches in narrative theology has become prominent. today “theology as narrative” and other non-conceptual forms of theologizing have become more important. i also experienced how narratives can persuasively communicate the gospel especially during a time of suffering (park 2021). when people are in deep suffering, the emotional dimension often stays front and centre. an intellectual approach to the gospel does not fully 42 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ ef13656 engage the listener’s imagination for empathy, but stories that share similar pains and interests can make people more open to the gospel. narratives are even more important for digital natives. digital storytelling is a new form of narrative approach through digital medium (y. w. lee 2010: 13) and is receiving more attention due to heightened interest in virtual reality. in this virtual world, people experience new stories of self through their avatars. some are concerned that the virtual world would create more isolation in people’s lives. but in storytelling animal, jonathan gottschall argues that, if the migration of humanity to the virtual world is inevitable, we should rather utilize the virtual world for narrative (gottschall 2013: 197). the virtual world is not a cause of isolation in modern life but rather a response to it. gottschall further states that the virtual world is more authentically human than the real world in important ways. it provides us the sense of community, a feeling of competence, and a sense of being an important person whom people depend on (gottschall 2013: 195–96). narratives are also useful to answer the existential questions and communicate the mystery of life more powerfully during a time of pain and suffering. during the pandemic, words such as “god”, “prayer”, and “death” rose as most searched terms globally, which shows people are asking existential questions especially during times of suffering (w. j. kim 2021: 129). in the case studies, i also found that narratives are powerful ways of sharing the gospel and appropriate tools for the missional engagement reaching non-believers and “unchurched believers”. in these case studies, i highlighted that during the pandemic, many korean protestant churches had implemented various programmes for the spiritual growth of existing members. in the case of dong-il presbyterian church, when the regular worship services were restricted or banned, the weekly newsletter prepared by the church has been the important source for the sharing of the stories of members. here, the stories of the members are used in strengthening the friendship that had been distanced among church members. in beagot joeun church the small group meetings use narratives to make a warm atmosphere for the newcomers. once rapport was established, the religious and existential conversation can be expressed more comfortably. in this sense, the narratives can be used for encouraging a more welcoming and hospitable space. after all, narratives on existential topics such as the meaning of life based on a christian worldview can open people to christ more easily than ever before. 43 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ ef13656 forming a habitual ethical lifestyle in the age of the pandemic and afterwards, missional engagement must be expressed through forming the habitus of an ethical lifestyle. as already proposed by many scholars, the ethical lifestyle of christians is the key factor in spreading christianity. according to rodney stark, the explosive growth of christianity in the first century was the result of their ministry toward neighbours infected by disease and facing death. these early christians demonstrated charity and love to their non-christian friends (ko, hudson & jao 2020). similarly. alan kreider argues that the distinctively holy lifestyle of the pre-christendom christians was key to evangelism and church growth. prior to christendom there was no intention to make worship attractive to outsiders. yet worship was all-important in the spread of the church. its rites and practices were designed to reform the pagans who joined the church into distinctive people who lived in a way that individually and corporately looked like jesus christ. and these reformed people were attractive. their freedom, their new practice of corporate life, and their behaviour toward non-christians in this period was intriguing, inviting and question-posing (kreider 1994: 10). ethical lifestyle continues to be a significant factor in missional engagement, and it became even meaningful in the time of pandemic and afterwards. however, i want to express the importance of their habitual dimension in practice. according to suh jung-woon, the respected korean missiologist and president emeritus of presbyterian university and theological seminary, a person’s ethical lifestyle is the result of how one subconsciously behaves in everyday life (suh 2021). such ethical living is not something that can be practised through rationality, will-power or self-control. rather it is something that subconsciously flows out of oneself. the gospel embedded in the subconscious is manifest outwardly and naturally in everyday situations, and such manifestation of the gospel through one’s life in fact communicates the gospel. what suh emphasizes here is the importance of deeply embedding christian values in one’s subconscious if one is to communicate the christian gospel. in other words, it needs to be the habitual and natural. similarly, michael frost emphasizes the importance of habits in missional practice. according to frost, missional habits are not strategic, but they are consequential (frost 2016: 21). in other words, the gospel becomes attractive when the audience is surprised or intrigued by the exceptionally ethical life of christians. as christians live an extraordinary holy life to the point of making others curious, christians may then point to the gospel as the answer. in other words, the simple way to show the gospel to the world is none other than to surprise them through the life of the christian. when christians’ good deeds flow out of the unconscious and become habitual, only then is gospel communication possible. therefore, missional engagement happens 44 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ ef13656 through christians’ lifetime of self-discipline and acts of love. here frost’s argument resonates with suh’s view. while such an approach cannot be expected to show the visible results of evangelistic endeavours immediately, in the long term they are decisive for missional engagement. embracing the practice of hospitality hospitality is essential in communicating the gospel in the pandemic. whether in-person or online, in small groups or one-on-one settings, the essential aspect of fellowship is whether one has experienced hospitality. donald mcgavran’s famous homogeneous unit principle also emphasizes the importance of a sense of belongingness in the process of the conversion: “people like to become christians without crossing racial, linguistic, or class barriers” (mcgavran 1990: 163). although mcgavran’s arguments apply mainly to ethnic and racial groups, his basic idea is that social detachment is often the real reason that unbelievers do not respond to the gospel. for the gospel recipients, friendship and a sense of acceptance is more important than the message itself. in this way, the sense of belonging and of being accepted is truly essential part of relationship. the affective dimensions, such as intimacy, belonging and solidarity, are prerequisite for gospel communication. recently the affective dimension is increasingly highlighted in gospel communication. michael frost and alan hirsch introduce the idea of “whispering” to show the importance of emotional intimacy when meeting with people one wants to evangelize. evangelism is to be seen as whispering to the soul of the other (frost and hirsch 2013: 126). the evangelism associated with militant and invasive ways needs to be revisited. we must rather approach others to whisper to their souls, listen to their inner desires and respect their humanity. similarly, ha do-gyun also emphasizes the importance of small groups in evangelistic sharing. he values small groups as the halfway point for non-christians to finally come to christ. small groups are “nurture groups” and safe spaces where non-christians are contacted and nurtured in christian faith (ha 2020: 69–71). it is my understanding that if these small groups are truly to function as halfway points and communicate the gospel, they must be where enough hospitality is experienced for one to safely share one’s vulnerability. in section 2, i showed how the pandemic had intensified the sense of loneliness and isolation in the korean society. when the isolation becomes so severe and prevalent, the experience of hospitality and a sense of intimacy can be even more crucial and valued in our missional engagement when isolation is common. as frost and hirsch remind us that most people are whispered into the kingdom slowly and gracefully (frost and hirsch 2013: 128), the experience of intimacy and safety in small groups is often key to non-christians meeting christ and even joining a faith community. 45 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ ef13656 non-christians who first experience hospitality and feel entirely accepted into these small groups gradually become more open to the message that christians want to share. to summarize, i developed the interrelationship of three approaches in missional engagement as figure 1 below. personal fellowship using narratives habitual ethical lifestyle practice of hospitality figure 1 three ways of missional engagement the missional engagement usually starts with the storytelling of the messengers. the messengers’ storytelling leads the recipients to encounter the gospel in a new and deeper way. then the messengers’ exemplary and ethical living witnesses to how the gospel can transform a person. the hospitality that is experienced by recipients integrates all these processes and opens their hearts to christ. sincere hospitality of the messenger enables the communication of christ’s love to the recipient. the three approaches do not progress mechanically one after the other, but they often overlap and echo each other. conclusion as covid-19 has swept the whole of korean society for the last three years, we experienced fundamental changes and entered a totally new situation. the pandemic changed the way we connect not only in the society but with the whole creation. the despair and the feeling of powerlessness caused by disease opened a new space for longing for god. yet the church in korean could not respond to the invisible cry of the people. this paper tries to locate where we are in this situation in our missional engagement, while at the same time attempting to provide better approaches to such a situation from the three cases studies. then, the article proposes a new framework to the korean protestant churches for missional engagement during and after the covid-19 46 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ ef13656 pandemic. the paper suggests three different approaches. first, we can present the gospel through personal fellowship using the narratives of the messenger. second, a habitual ethical lifestyle as subconscious self-expression is credible evidence of the power of the gospel. finally, embracing the practice of hospitality is to be initiated through hospitality. it is true that these three types of missional engagement are applicable generally throughout history, yet it is even more applicable in this time of crisis. as the prolonged pandemic resulted in the isolation of individuals and the sense of belongingness is even more desired by many people, these approaches recquire more attention in our missional engagement. especially where the church has lost its ethical and positive influence in the society, these approaches are even more meaningful. finally, although i have not yet provided concrete and applicable suggestions for churches to utilize for their ministry, this topic will be discussed in a future paper. covid-19 brought a crisis in the church’s missional engagement, but the gospel of jesus christ needs to be shared without stopping. if old tributaries are blocked, new waterways form. the message of the gospel will continue to shine through new people in new places and through new methods. about the author rev. bokyoung park is professor of missiology at presbyterian university and theological seminary, seoul, korea. she has been serving vice-president of iams from 2016 and, since 2022, she serves as the president of international association for mission studies. she also founded thekorea iams fellowship in 2020, for mentoring young scholars from the majority world to enhance their visibility in global theological scholarship. contact: parkbokyoung718@gmail.com references bosch, david. 1991. transforming mission: paradigm shifts in theology of mission. maryknoll: orbis books. choi in-su et al. 2020. “2020 트렌드 모니터” [2020 trend monitor]. seoul: secret house. drane, john. 1997. faith in a changing culture. london: marshall pickering. frost, michael. 2016. surprise the world: the five habits of highly missional people. colorado springs: navpress. ——— and alan hirsch. 2013. the shaping of things to come: innovation and mission for the 21st century church, revised and updated. grand rapids: baker books. gottschall, jonathan. 2013. the storytelling animal: how stories make us human. boston: houghton mifflin harcourt. 47 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ ef13656 ha do-gyun. 2020. “코로나 19 이후, 뉴노멀시대의 복음전도” [evangelism in the age of new normal after covid-19]. sŏng-kyŏl-kyo-hoe-wa sin-hak [korean evangelical holiness church and theology] 44. han kook-il. 2016. “선교적 교회의 이론과 실제” [a theory and practice of missional church]. seoul, presbyterian university and theological seminary press. ji yong-geun. 2020. “통계로 보는 한국교회 상황” [statistics on korean church]; presbyterian church of korea general assembly, 재난시대를 극복하는 한국교회 [korean church that overcomes the age of disaster]. seoul: kingdom books. jung jae-young. 2021. “코로나19사태가 전도에 미친 영향과 대안 모색” [impact of covid-19 on evangelism and exploring solutions], 코로나-19와 포스트 코로나 시대의 전도 [covid-19 and evangelism in the age of post covid-19]. seoul: handl. kim woo-jun. “전도전략의 재구성” [reconstructing evangelism strategy], edited by lee sanghoon, 뉴노멀시대, 교회의 위대한 모험 [new normal age, the church’s great adventure]. seoul: kyo-hoe-sŏng-chang-yŏn-ku-so. ko, stephen, paul hudson & jennifer jao. 2020. “kingdom opportunities for bridging covid-19 disparities: a multi-dimensional approach.” lausanne global analysis 9 (6), https:// lausanne.org/lga-01/kingdom-opportunities-for-bridging-covid-19-disparities (accessed 15 dec. 2021). kreider, alan. 1994. “worship and evangelism in pre-christendom” (the laing lecture 1994), https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/vox/vol24/worship_kreider.pdf, accessed 9 dec. 2021. lee mann-shik. 2012. “뉴노멀 (new normal) 시대에 맞는새로운 전도 방향교회의 사회봉사를 중심으 로” [new direction for evangelism in the age of new normal: focusing on social services of the church], “코로나-19와 포스트 코로나 시대의 전도” [covid-19 and evangelism in post-covid age]. seoul: handl. lee yong-wook. 2010. “온라인 게임 스토리텔링의 서사 시학” [epic-ology of online game storytelling]. seoul: kŭl-nu-lim. mcgavran, donald. 1990. understanding church growth, 3rd edition revised and edited by c. peter wagner. grand rapids: eerdmans. mcgrath, alister e. 2019. narrative apologetics: sharing the relevance, joy and wonder of the christian faith. grand rapids: baker books. ministry data institute. 2021. “weekly report, numbers” 82, http://www.mhdata.or.kr/bbs/ board.php?bo_table=koreadata&wr_id=133&page=3 (accessed 19 may 2022). nam sung-hyuk. 2020. “가상세계와 증강현실세계에 상주하는 디지털세대에 대한 전도가능성” [evangelical potential for the digital generation that resides in virtual world and artificial reality]. gospel and mission 51: 89–120. park bokyoung. 2021. “missional hospitality towards healing: a narrative approach in missiology.” ecclesial future 2 (2): 11–30. shin dong-ha, “소그룹 전도로 열방구원, 부천노회 좋은 교회” [salvation for all nations through small group evangelism. bucheon’s joeun church]. pck world, 18  february 2020, in http://m. pckworld.com/article.php?aid=8406520407 (accessed 26 aug. 2021). suh jung-woon. 2021. “선교와 봉사” [mission and service]. from special lecture at spring retreat of presbyterian university and theological seminary, 18 march 2021. https://lausanne.org/lga-01/kingdom-opportunities-for-bridging-covid-19-disparities https://lausanne.org/lga-01/kingdom-opportunities-for-bridging-covid-19-disparities https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/vox/vol24/worship_kreider.pdf http://www.mhdata.or.kr/bbs/board.php?bo_table=koreadata&wr_id=133&page=3 http://www.mhdata.or.kr/bbs/board.php?bo_table=koreadata&wr_id=133&page=3 http://m.pckworld.com/article.php?aid=8406520407 http://m.pckworld.com/article.php?aid=8406520407 ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 1 111 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19199 b o o k r e v i e w doi: 10.54195/ef19199 müller, sabrina. 2023. religious experience and its transformational power: qualitative and hermeneutic approaches to a practical theological foundational concept berlin/boston: walter de gruyter isbn: 978-3-11-100005-3 reviewed by shaun joynt this monograph is based on the habilitation thesis of sabrina müller who is managing director of the university research priority program “digital religion(s)” and researcher and lecturer in practical theology at the university of zurich (see https://communication.dsi.uzh.ch/member/sabrina-muller/). within the research study müller sets out to “search for traces of how young urban adults understand and interpret their religious experiences and relate them to their everyday lives” in order to “provide impulses for current practical theological theory formation on the horizon of social change” (3). müller offers the reason for this approach as “personal experiences have become the individual point of reference and orientation for interpreting the world and understanding oneself and god” and “human existence cannot be understood … without experience [as it] is one of the most central concepts of practical theological research, social science, and humanities theory formation” (4). her detailed exposition concerning religious experience as a practical theological challenge, sensitizing concepts, methodological choices and implementation, and her discussion and findings, all contribute to the value of the monograph as both a contribution to the current debate on religious experiences from a practical theological perspective as well as an example of a well-executed research study. müller describes her research as an interdisciplinary study that is inductive, empirical and contextually western (european and north american), which offers a foundational exploratory contribution to practical theological research by investigating “how and why urban people perceive their experiences as religious and how they categorize them and put them into language” (6). she conducts this in the paradigm of grounded theory by offering two sensitizing concepts, namely, religious experience (chapter 2) and human existence in late modernity (chapter 3) which includes a https://communication.dsi.uzh.ch/member/sabrina-muller/ 112 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19199 focus on social changes with particular consideration of urbanity’s influence therein. this is followed by a detailed presentation of the results of the qualitative data analysis (chapters 5–7). finally, the inductively elaborated theories are discussed theologically (chapters 8–9). müller’s interest in religious experiences stems from numerous discussions concerning the topic during her ten years as a youth worker and six years as a pastor and she spends considerable time indicating the interaction between faith, research and reflexivity advocating that the “awareness of the interrelatedness of personal religious existence and academic theological work, especially concerning theological preference and difference, does not hinder the necessary self-reflexivity but promotes it” (8). next, müller goes into great detail concerning religious experience as a conceptual approach by considering an etymological definition of the word experience, contrasting experience (erfahrung) and lived experience (erlebnis), providing a brief historical overview of religious experience (aristotle, monasticism, luther and pietism), focussing on 1) sociological (durkheim, weber and taves), 2) religious phenomenological (schleiermacher, james, otto and briefly kant), and 3) theological concepts (barth and tillich) of religious experience. next she covers human existence in late modernity by considering urbanity (bauman etc.) and digital spaces (harari, schulz and foucault) and how these two aspects contribute to an “individualized and pluralized space of experience” (40). thereafter urbanity research is discussed and a case is made for its importance which includes the conditions and characteristics of being human in urbanity, for example, freedom and foreignness, individuality and sociality, as well as a section on the theological perspectives on life in the city. müller’s methodological interlude (chapter 4) includes her selection of grounded theory (leaning towards classic glasserian), participatory action research (includes 20 co-researchers), case studies (six groups in three locations) and focus group interviews (between two and four participants at a time). she offers particulars of a survey consisting of five phases that is completed in a 90-minute period. these include a welcome and introduction (phase 1), a standardized questionnaire (phase 2), a creative approach to the topic, namely, making a drawing (phase 3), a biographicalnarrative explanation of the drawing (phase 4), and a group discussion (phase 5). next she goes into great detail concerning the data collected from her 20 co-researchers in each of these phases (chapters 5–7) considering religious experiences (chapter 5) “as a snapshot in which a process is triggered” (116), associated with transcendence, “uncontrollability, (god) cognition, new insights, and high emotionality” (117) and that “the changes that come from it are the work of god or experiences of faith” (118). chapter 6 considers the “inner aspects and basic observations on the religious experiences of the cross-case and cross-group evaluation” (119) which includes the importance of these religious experiences in the lives of the 113 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19199 co-researchers, the role of religious imprinting, and the subjectiveness of the experience. chapter 7 considers “religious experience and the change of the personal frame of reference [through a] cross-case and cross-group evaluation” (127) which includes changing the frame of reference processually through religious experiences – these religious experiences occur in everyday settings, and transformation “leads to a reinterpretation of one’s identity and position in the world and thus to a changed view of oneself, others, and the world” (169). müller’s interpretation of the results (chapter 8) includes practical theological anthropological considerations (knoblauch, luhmann, luckmann, buber and ricoeur), the epistemological character of religious experience (tillich, schottroff, fischer, ward and gadamer), and “the transformative aspects of such experiences for personal life” (204) (luckmann, dalferth, gräb and tillich). within this chapter a comprehensive definition is offered based on the research, namely, “religious experience is a widerfahrnis with a god experienced as relational (relational event), which can transform the personal frame of reference into the horizon of a christian perspective of hope, whereby the interpretive and understanding handling of this experience is an integral part of the experience” (196). chapter 9 provides a practical theological outlook, namely, christian perspectives of hope. here müller shows the link between religious experience and lived theology (tillich, astley, salazar, luther and numerous others) and concludes that “prioritizing contextual religious experiences brings practical theology into the midst of life … and leads to the existential, meaning-giving, and liberating perspectives of hope of human life” (223). an analysis of müller’s monograph includes the theoretical framework used, methodology selected argument presented, evidence provided, contribution to the current debate and relevance to its intended audience. the theoretical framework and methodology selected by müller is grounded theory and this is suitable considering that her intent is to “discover” how and why her 20 co-researchers have religious experiences. classic grounded theory methodology (gtm) usually begins without a literature review; however, this is found problematic by some from a more traditional research background and thus her use of sensitizing concepts ensures that there is an adequate literature background for the study without compromising gtm’s core values, that is, discovery. one of the outcomes in gtm would be a basic social process which in this case is not too clearly indicated as was done with the phases of the survey. another outcome would be a substantive theory or even grand theory, with the former being present in the monograph. in gtm, open, axial and selective coding is pursued until theoretical saturation is achieved and no new categories or themes emerge. various themes are evident in the research study, for example, contingency, transcendence, subjectivity and lived religion. 114 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19199 the argument presented is contained in the comprehensive definition previously mentioned, that is, religious experiences are transcendental in nature and contextually related to god (notably this study is from a christian perspective) and are experienced relationally (with self and other humans) and often result in a transformation of the personal frame of reference that is associated with hope and “the interpretive and understanding handling of this experience is an integral part of the experience” (196). there is evidence of more than adequate engagement with numerous scholars and schools of thought concerning religious experiences that augment the argument throughout the monograph. this evidence includes engagement with sociological scholars (durkheim, weber etc.), theological scholars (luther, schleiermacher, barth, tillich, gräb etc.), and philosophers (aristotle, foucault, gadamer, ricœur). the contribution of this research to the current debate lies in its processual perspective of religious experiences as lived religion. these religious experiences are to be understood as “discursive phenomen[a] related to everyday life” (204), that they are liquid (not bound to the classical dualisms), that the person is both the subject and object of knowledge (see her exposition of the hebrew word עדי meaning to recognize), and that widerfahrnis captures the experience and resulting transformation and is to be viewed as “a relational gift of god” (194). one aspect that seems to be lacking is a legend indicating the convention used to identify the co-researcher’s words. for example, a footnote indicates “1 ez l.a. 1 abby, 12.16” (89) and it is not clear what each of these identifiers mean. this reviewer was able to ascertain that 1 = group 1, ez = (unclear), l.a. = los angeles (one of the three group’s locations), 1 = (unclear), abby (the co-researcher’s name), 12.16 = (unclear). the monograph’s relevance to its intended audience cannot be over-emphasized. first, it serves as an example of a well-researched and written phd thesis. secondly, it is freely available in electronic format via an open access publishing arrangement with de gruyter which means students and lecturers as well as scholars interested in the topic of religious experience are able to retrieve it without cost (the hardcover is available for purchase). for these reasons it is highly recommended. in conclusion, the research study succeeds in its aim to “contribute to a better understanding of every day, individual and social religious reality construction, religious imprints, and the emergence of religious identity” (6). at the end of the monograph müller cautions her readers that “practical theological teaching and learning that does not take the (religious) experiences of students seriously and does not integrate them misses its mission because the goal of theological education cannot be a dissociated contact between personal experience, lived everyday theology, and practical theology” (220). an apt ending indeed. 115 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19199 about the author shaun joynt, senior academic, south african theological seminary, south africa. shaun@sats.ac.za mailto:shaun@sats.ac.za ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 2 127 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18340 b o o k r e v i e w doi: 10.54195/ef18340 farrell, b. hunter, and s. balajiedlang khyllep. 2022. freeing congregational mission: a practical vision for companionship, cultural humility, and co-development downers grove, il: ivp academic. isbn: 9781514000687 reviewed by say young lee freeing congregational mission serves as a comprehensive guidebook for the church’s mission, anchored in the theology of missio dei. it particularly delves into the vision and practice of short-term mission (stm) within the context of mainline churches in the united states. from a historical standpoint, stm have emerged as a potent missionary strategy, characterized by explosive growth and expansion, fueled by a sense of urgent eschatology. this growth is intertwined with church growth theology and missions for unreached people groups. the emergence of missio dei paradigm in the twentieth century broadened the scope of missions to encompass various social justice activities, extending beyond mere evangelism and church planting. nevertheless, the locus of control and agency for missions often resided with the church and mission organizations, rather than attributing the primary agency to god. this inclination also led to a colonial perspective, aiming to transform mission fields from the vantage point of the sending church. consequently, the practice of stm still continues to retain a colonial undertone, seeking to extend the church’s influence and assert cultural and spiritual superiority over the host communities. this enduring dynamic illustrates that while missiological theology has evolved, missions have remained largely within the domain of the church’s mission in the modern era. in this book, leveraging their rich experience in the mission field, denominational leadership, and theological education, hunter and bala adeptly reveal the realities of the church’s mission practice as described above. they introduce a vision and theological foundation for renewing the church’s mission in the first section of the book. 128 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18340 in the second section, they provide church mission leaders with a practical methodology for practising companionship-based missions and enacting tangible transformations that align with god’s mission. this book offers a roadmap for nurturing a missional spirituality, addressing challenges such as colonialism, cultural superiority, and consumerism in mission work. it accentuates the significance of companionship-based missions grounded in jesus’ life and a community centred on the gospel, and offers concrete examples for transforming readers’ behaviours and habits. what sets this book apart is its recognition of issues not only within the context of church-centred missions and colonialism but also within the self-centric and self-satisfying mission practices rooted in consumerism prevalent in the us (7). the authors critique self-satisfying missions for diminishing god’s role in the mission and reducing it to a mere “to-do list” for human accomplishment (9). they highlight how consumerist missions within american churches, especially mainstream ones, prioritize the individual over god. the authors particularly critique stm participants from american churches for pursuing self-satisfaction by indulging their personal goodwill. in essence, they acknowledge the potential of stm as a form of spiritual training, contributing to the expansion of god’s kingdom through human effort. however, they also acknowledge the irony that such endeavours can inadvertently strengthen a human-centred approach to missions, ultimately replacing god’s sovereignty with human agency in missionary endeavours. consequently, they advocate for a renewal in the church’s mission practices, emphasizing the need for a shift towards missions driven by god and motivated by a quest for his kingdom, rather than centred around human objectives. building upon this awareness of stm challenges, the authors seek solutions rooted in jesus’ life and the gospel-centred community, providing alternatives to the issues of colonialism, cultural superiority and consumeristic missions. they introduce three elements for fostering a community’s spiritual reclamation. first, they present a theology rooted in jesus’ companionship, contrasting with self-centric missions. secondly, they propose a cultural humility grounded in the incarnation, as an alternative to colonial attitudes. thirdly, they advocate for a methodology centred around mutual cooperation rather than a unilateral approach where the giver transforms the receiver. according to the authors, the keyword for gospel-based missions is “companionship”, a concept rooted in shared experiences such as meals and journeys (47). unlike a partnership focused on projects, companionship is a relationship that stems from vulnerability, where weaknesses are shared rather than power dynamics (50). as such, companionship is not about the achievement (52). the authors argue that for readers to engage in companionship-based missions, they need to shift their 129 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18340 focus from self-centred endeavours to god-centred missions, emphasizing the need to display a shared direction centred on jesus (60). consequently, the authors posit that the companionship-based missions they advocate aren’t about individually-driven or church-centred missions, aimed at conversions and discipleship. instead, they promote a journey of humble companionship rooted in jesus’ life and demonstrated through a community united by the gospel (62). such missions aren’t about powerful individuals transforming the weak, but about emulating jesus’ mission, a collaborative effort that transcends distinctions (67). this approach prioritizes a gradual, shared missionary journey (229) rather than swift transformations. in this context, the authors call upon church mission leaders to alter their attitudes and methodologies in order to align their mission practice with the concept of companionship-based missions, providing practical strategies for implementing these changes. the book also stands out for its role as a guide in cultivating missional spirituality. the authors’ focus lies in altering misguided behaviors and habits deeply ingrained in the readers’ lives. their language is pragmatic and grounded in everyday life, avoiding doctrinal or metaphysical complexities. through practical, real-life examples, they offer a roadmap for adopting more desirable patterns of thinking and behaviour, particularly in the context of mission mobilization. a notable example includes the three stones the authors present as alternatives for revitalizing missions, symbolizing a “home” represented by the cooking fire in congo, where hunter served (14). through this metaphor, they underscore the centrality of companionship-based missions (15). moreover, the authors share a specific case involving differing opinions between missionary and local inhabitants, regarding the installation of wells or sports fields in congo (21). this case makes the concept relatable and practical, illustrating the mistakes and challenges that churches in the us might have experienced. furthermore, at the conclusion of each narrative about the theoretical foundation of the three stones, the authors offer practical methodologies for implementation. in section 2, they provide detailed practical manuals for short-term missions, children and family ministry, and training mission leaders. these manuals guide the application of missio dei theology beyond theoretical discourse and into the realm of practical church mission, emphasizing both spiritual development and practical action. however, while the authors emphasize that cross-cultural training isn’t a manual approach, system, method or technique, but rather a spirituality emerging from deep meditation on the gospel and obedience to jesus (100), it’s somewhat disappointing that the book doesn’t offer more guidance on cultivating an everyday missional spirituality, something that should be an ongoing and regular practice. moreover, 130 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18340 while the authors’ provision of comprehensive manuals for renewing church mission practice can be viewed as a contribution toward god’s mission, from the perspective of understanding a community as an organic entity, the practical methodology in the book seems to lean toward modern, western approaches that aim to change individuals and organizations through planned manuals and deliberate education (234). nonetheless, the authors’ responses to pertinent and well-articulated questions regarding the mission practice that aligns with the missio dei paradigm and the relevance of short-term missions are astute and aptly presented throughout the book. the authors’ emphasis on theology of companionship, cultural humility, and the practical aspects of co-development as the foundation of short-term missions, alongside their presentation of specific ministry models, resonates well with the contemporary role and responsibilities of the church. i firmly agree that these topics are essential and timely discussions and responses. furthermore, by highlighting that stm have served as opportunities for participants’ spiritual training and growth, the book addresses the question of opportunity cost for stm, that is, whether the resources invested in stm are merely consumed for self-satisfaction. the book firmly answers this question with a “no”, stating that stm of the church can be valuable and meaningful dedications for the sake of missional spiritual training rooted in god’s mission. about the author say young lee, president of mission incubators, sc, usa. sayyounglee@fuller.edu mailto:sayyounglee@fuller.edu ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 2 b o o k r e v i e w 142 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18344 doi: 10.54195/ef18344 osmer, richard r. 2021. the invitation: a theology of evangelism grand rapids, mi: wm. b. eerdmans. isbn: 9780802876225 reviewed by david reissmann evangelism and evangelization have been largely neglected in western academic theology. this has left a research gap that spans the discussions and curricula of many theological faculties and seminaries in the so-called “western” world. this gap extends to current publications in areas such as practical theology and systematic theology. meanwhile, there is a dynamic global discourse on this topic, which is reflected primarily in ecclesial and ecumenical documents. richard osmer’s book bridges these and several other gaps in a way that is probably unique to date. it is unique in that it is less an exploration of this global discourse or a historical discussion of these ecclesial and ecumenical documents. rather, the book offers what one might call a “triadic conversation” between scripture, dogmatic theology (almost exclusively karl barth’s) and case studies. this serves the main purpose of the book, which is to support new thinking about evangelism that goes beyond the previously dominant particular way of thinking about evangelism, which osmer calls evangelism as conversionism (8). “the new evangelization” then, as osmer calls it, is a reimagining of evangelism in terms of reformation theology and implies the transformation of evangelistic practice, especially in that it represents a fundamental shift in soteriology – from being saved by conversion on the basis of human choice to affirmation that we are saved in toto by jesus christ who takes our place in justifying and sanctifying us before god (193). in terms of terminology, this shift is demonstrated by osmer using “evangelization” instead of “evangelism”. but he sees this shift as more than just a shift in terminology. rather, it is part of a broader transformation of the church from an established part of western culture to a missional community. 143 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18344 the various parts of the book roughly follow what i have called the “triadic conversation”: the introduction outlines the idea of evangelism as an invitation. it is followed by the first part of the book and develops the basic principles of evangelism in dialogue with scripture. by reflecting on case studies, some basic questions are first extracted, such as “what is the gospel?” or “how do we invite people to respond to the gospel?” answers to these questions are sought using theological guidelines from the apostle paul. the gospel according to mark and the gospel according to john then serve to lay important biblical foundations on the topic of evangelization based on the different thematic focuses of these authors. the second part of the book locates evangelism in dialogue with karl barth. osmer offers in this part much more than a recapitulation of some important passages in barth’s church dogmatics. he develops an independent interpretation of barth that demonstrates detailed knowledge of the most current barth research and knows how to deal with the blindspots of other current theological traditions. this detailed dialogue with karl barth also provides well-founded impulses for the debates in missiology, in which barth has already been widely discussed. here – and thus also to answer the question of what is actually new about the “new evangelization” – osmer gains his own point of view. instead of thinking within the old framework of conversionism, osmer wants to look with barth through a “lens of witness”. instead of trying to save people, the church’s role is to serve as a witness and to point beyond itself to christ. this is the mission of the church. osmer gains this understanding of the church as a witness through an intensive theological discussion of salvation and sanctification. both election and reconciliation as the fulfilment of election are, with barth, located entirely in the forensic atonement “in christ”. de iure sanctification, and thus also conversion, takes place de facto through the holy spirit. this is precisely where the implications for the “new evangelization” lie: by taking (1) the chalcedonian pattern of the unity and yet distinction of christ and his church, (2) the church as witness and (3) the justifying, sanctifying and electing work of christ in our place seriously, human agency is (4) decentred from the central role it often occupies in the ministry of evangelism of the church. instead, it places our reliance on the spirit through prayer more at the centre, so that the guidance of the spirit plays a much larger role as the mediator of communion than it often does in the “old” model of evangelism. this rich dogmatic discussion leads into the third part of the book and back to a practical-theological discussion of evangelistic practice. the discussion of this is based on the already mentioned understanding of soteriological objectivism and the broader transformation of the church from an established part of western 144 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18344 culture to a missional community. in this final part of the book, osmer takes up the initial definition that he presented in the introduction – that evangelism is the invitation to respond to the gospel, the good news of god’s salvation of the world in jesus christ, which is offered to others as part of the witness of the church under the guidance and persuasive power of the holy spirit – and completes it through numerous “guidelines” that emerged in tandem with the insights of the apostle paul, the gospels according to mark and john, as well as through the dogmatics of karl barth. for example, osmer emphasizes in his guidelines that it is important for the new evangelization to recognize not only significant moments of change but also longer processes of coming to trust in jesus’ call. it is also less the individual than the congregation that is the first witness to the gospel. evangelization then develops not only a variety of ways of sharing the gospel, it also involves entering into the pain and suffering of other people as well as celebrating the glory of god and god’s beauty. more could be said about these guidelines – about church planting, focusing on children’s experience, beginning with god’s yes, helping christians hear the gospel again and again, good leadership – but it all serves the vision of a broader transformation of congregations becoming missional communities. ultimately, this reflects the book’s normative commitment to practical theology and concrete congregations, which grows from the roots of osmer’s theology in the church dogmatics of karl barth. the last chapter of the book outlines in more detail what looking at evangelization through the lens of practical theology means, especially to teach evangelization. here osmer makes his case for case studies as his methodological tool of choice, and he provides specific insights and materials from his own teaching experience. the materials are prepared in such a way that they can be easily adapted for one’s own teaching or even adopted directly. case studies, osmer argues, give students the opportunity to think about problems they may face when they begin work in the future. they also help students learn the importance of attending to the particularities of each case, which is the prerequisite of learning to contextualize. and they also learn a lot about themselves, their personality, gifts, history and how to develop their own point of view out of this. after all, practical theology ought to bring practice into the classroom and put knowing in relation to doing, thus turning theology into a lived theology. whether the book will develop enough argumentative power to advance the case of evangelization in western academic theology and cement the issue in their debates remains uncertain. to achieve this, it must reveal the blindspots of the powerful alternatives in the discourse and illuminate their contingencies on the basis of the new evangelization. but osmer does so and reveals some contingencies of the old 145 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18344 paradigm of evangelism as conversionism in this book. the rich biblical and theological material is a milestone on the church’s path towards missional communities. the fact that osmer, as a practical theologian, gives this topic a place in practical theology is a process that is, not entirely but almost, unique, in terms of the field of practical theology. the final pages of the book are devoted to an exploration of the relationship between practical theology and karl barth. this is where the discussion moves beyond the core topic of the book to a general discussion of the foundations of practical theology. while this part is somewhat disconnected from the rest of the book, this move from the concrete to the general not only concretizes osmer’s point of view and methodological commitments, which, as is good scientific practice, he does not hide behind cloudy formulations. it also takes the topic deeper than an awareness and analysis of context and to the word of god in its threefold form (god revealed through jesus christ, scripture, and the proclamation of the church) as prerequisite of ultimately resisting all forms of systematization, including the formulation of a practical programme. in any case, the combination of biblical anchoring and profound dogmatic discussion with practical theological reflection and embedding in concrete case studies is a ray of hope from the field of practical theology. it fits into the framework of a small but fine renaissance of exactly this kind of working method, which is also becoming evident in other places of theological work where the theologically mostly dry wells of mere correlational approaches to theology fail to nourish and convince. the subject matter of theology must, as karl barth argued, determine the methods appropriate to its investigation. for anyone who can agree, the book offers some of the best theological material on evangelization that i know of. for those who disagree, the book still contains a number of fine arguments to engage with. in any case, it will help to rethink the currently prevailing ideas and concepts about evangelism and evangelization. about the author david reissmann, research center for christian empowerment in secularity (ces), research unit for missional church development (mkg), martinluther-universität halle-wittenberg. david.reissmann@theologie.uni-halle.de mailto:david.reissmann@theologie.uni-halle.de 41 discipleship, mentorship and training which empowers african women for ministry in the diaspora naar m’fundisi-holloway dr naar m’fundisi-holloway is an action researcher at the territorial headquarters of the salvation army in london. before that, she worked as a qualified secondary school teacher of religious education, philosophy and health and social care in birmingham uk. she completed her phd at the university of birmingham (uk) in theology looking at pentecostal and charismatic christianity in zambia focusing on its interface with politics and hiv/aids. she is the author of pentecostal and charismatic christianity and civic engagement in zambia (palgrave macmillan, 2018). naar is a married mother of one and a native zambian who lives in the united kingdom. email: naarmfundisi@gmail.com abstract various factors contribute to people migrating from the global south to the west. in addition to factors like war, economics and education, some migrate because they feel called to engage in ministry in the west. at the heart of mission in the diaspora are women who either start ministries on their own or with their spouses. this paper is informed by narratives provided by these e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 42 women collected through interviews to outline the challenges of engaging in ministry in the diaspora and the type of discipleship, mentorship and training they would require to enable their ministries to flourish. it also shows how in addition to reliance on the holy spirit to guide their ministries, these women adopt an entrepreneurial approach in accessing mentorship from local diaspora networks. this paper contributes to the broader discussion around discipleship and mentorship which prepares missionaries for mission in diaspora contexts, also referred to as reverse mission. keywords: discipleship, mentorship, diaspora, mission, reverse mission introduction various factors contribute to people migrating from the global south to the west. according to wan and sadiri (2010: 46), “urbanisation, international migration, and displacement by war and famine are some of the contributing factors that have increased the diaspora population around the world”. the global migration pattern follows people moving from “south to north, and from east to west” (marsella and ring, 2003: 16). with migration comes mission. the uk church is diverse and churches in africa, asia and latin america continue to send missionaries to the west to preach the word of god (cueva, 2015). roswith gerloff ’s extensive work on black pentecostalism in britain provided great insight into how this branch of christianity has contributed to the christian faith, mission and socio-cultural issues in the uk (gerlof, 2010). at the heart of mission in the diaspora are women who either start ministries on their own or with their spouses. in addition to running these ministries, they encounter challenges trying to navigate the socio-economic, socio-political and socio-cultural nuances of life in the diaspora. the term diaspora in this paper will refer to “people living outside their place of origin” (lausanne movement, 2009), especially focusing on the global north. in this paper, i use the term “discipleship” synonymously with christian mentorship and training. “discipleship” is a theological and biblical term and “mentorship” and “training” are sociological ones, drawn from leadership and educational literature. i also recognize that the term has a broader meaning and includes elements of catechesis, formation and pedagogy in the literature. in light of this, this paper contributes to the broader discussion around discipleship, mentorship and training which prepares people for mission in diaspora contexts, also referred to as reverse mission, and how this contributes to the naar m’fundisi-holloway—discipleship, mentorship and training 43 development of christianity in the west. it also aims to paint a picture of what ministry looks like for african women in the diaspora. “reverse mission” is a term that has been used to describe the trend where missionaries from the global south engage in missions in the west. matthews a. ojo defines reverse mission as “the sending of missionaries to europe and north america by churches and christians from the non-western world, particularly africa, asia, latin america, which were at the receiving end of catholic and protestant missions as mission fields from the sixteenth century to the late twentieth century” (2007: 380). reverse mission demonstrates how the centre of christianity has shifted from the global north to the south (wambua, 2009: 45). this is a “remapping of religious landscapes” (adogame, 2013: viii) whereby it is now the global south sending missionaries to the north. it is important to note “the extent to which religious, social, cultural and economic realities of host contexts impact and shape their world views” and the way in which they operate their ministries in the diaspora (2013: x). without a doubt, these churches from the global south have not only helped to reconfigure christianity in the west, but they have also played a part in the diversification of the religious landscape of western societies. harvey kwiyani (2013) on the other hand finds the term problematic. while he acknowledges that migration trends have reversed, “mission continues to move forward”. he argues that the non-western christian presence in the west will have some missionary impact on western culture, but “this is not reversal of mission. it is mission just being itself, no matter where it originates.” despite the different terminology used to describe this missional trend, a common theme running through these definitions is that migration is key in mission. this paper is a reflection on the experiences of eight african female pastors who are engaged in ministry in the uk. it intends to outline the challenges of engaging in ministry in the diaspora and the type of discipleship, mentorship and training they require to enable their ministries to flourish. it also incorporates voices of those who started independent ministries (with no links to churches in africa) whilst living in the uk and describes what type of discipleship and mentorship those who started their ministries whilst living in the uk received. this paper will answer questions surrounding: what type of discipleship they received in preparation for ministry in the uk, how adequate this was, how long they were discipled for and what challenges they faced and continue to experience while engaging in ministry in the uk. the responses will allow for generalizations to be made in order to begin understanding the role of discipleship, mentorship and training for mission in the diaspora. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 44 research methodology the main methodological tradition used for this paper was qualitative research. it adopts an inductive approach, starting with the voices of those whose stories the author sought to listen to in order to draw conclusions. creswell states that it is from inductive observations that a researcher can convey “emerging themes and patterns and formulate tentative hypotheses which can be explored to provide for general conclusions or theories” (creswell, 1994: 58). according to van der laan, this approach “takes ordinary people’s views and oral forms of history more seriously” (2010: 203). the author’s approach to finding participants was mainly snowball sampling, a process that ‘yields a study sample through referrals made among people who share or know of others who share the same characteristics that are of research interest,’(biernacki and waldorf, 1981: 141) or simply “contacting one participant via another”(browne, 2007: 48). creswell argues that the researcher’s task revolves around “looking at the larger structure to explain the interviewee’s meanings of social interactions, cultural issues, ideologies, historical contexts and interpretation of life experiences” (creswell, 1994: 50). therefore, categories were created from the findings which were then compared to themes within the qualitative literature written on reverse mission and diaspora mission to find correlations. the primary source of data was collected through semi-structured phone interviews held with eight women from the southern african region who are currently in ministry in the uk. participants were recruited into the research by invitation from me via “informed consent”.1 the interviews were conducted in may 2021. none of the participants was a vulnerable person and they received no monetary compensation for participating in the research. the names of their ministries have been anonymized and pseudonyms have been used to disguise their names.2 the original sample was narrowed down to eight as some cancelled the scheduled interviews due to other commitments they had. the countries of origin represented were zambia, zimbabwe and malawi. the women were all born and raised in their home countries and came to the uk in their adult years. six of the women are ordained ministers and two are not but are actively engaged in ministry and are referred to as pastors. six are in ministry 1. a copy of the survey form with both the questions and the informed consent statement is available on request from the author. 2. names of the institutions where these women received training in the uk have not been anonymized. naar m’fundisi-holloway—discipleship, mentorship and training 45 with their spouses and two are single women in ministry. one is a minister in a mainline church while the rest are ministers in pentecostal churches. two were in full-time ministry with their spouses before they moved to the uk and the rest served in various lay ministry roles in their home countries as well as in churches they attended while in the uk before starting their own ministries. these women have been in ministry in the uk for between 3 and 19 years. while there were a few claims of engaging with white british christians, these ministries are monoethnic, serving especially black african and caribbean immigrants. in response to this, olofinjana argues that “despite the limitations that the term reverse mission conjures and the fact that we still have many african congregations, which are very mono-ethnic, reverse mission is still taking place in certain church contexts. this is in places such as historic churches that now have many african christians and ministers” (2020: 65). such is the case for one of the women interviewed, as she is a minister in the church of england. research results ministry in the uk the respondents stated that they started their ministries in the uk because they felt called by god to do so. while some initially came for economic reasons or to study, their calling was so strong that they could not ignore it. this is supported by their responses which stated: i felt the call of god on my life while here in the uk and started a prayer ministry with women and married a pastor. (bn, 2021) i left my country to serve in the diaspora under a prophetic word. when i arrived, i started going to a certain church. i tried to hide my calling, but god used me to perform miracles within that church; for example, i prayed for someone, and they were healed of arthritis which they had had since childhood. i prayed for someone’s child who was dying in icu they got healed. the pastors at that church released me, and i started my ministry and got ordained. i started the church in my basement, and as more people were experiencing miracles, we outgrew it and moved to a building that was packed to capacity. the trans-atlantic and e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 46 pacific alliance of churches (tapac) helped me legalize my ministry in the uk. (gm, 2021) i came for economic reasons and was planted in a church. god made me stay in that church, and he told me to wait for his instruction. a bishop from my home country passed through the uk and stayed with us. we had clarity during his and his wife’s time with us, and started a branch here under his blessing. (jm, 2021) i came through a youth programme and was chosen among the many youths to stay and consider ordination. then i went to bible school. (cn, 2021) i married a pastor who already had his ministry and joined him. (tm, 2021) the calling started back home when i was widowed. when i came here i went to bible school to learn more about the bible but got ordained and i am now involved in widows’ ministry within my church. (ph, 2021) i felt the calling of god on my life and started an independent church which i run for six years. (pe, 2021) i was running a cell group which turned into a church for six years. i then moved to another part of london and i now lead a prayer ministry. (pe, 2021) me and my husband were sent over by our main church back home to train and support pastors in ministry here in the uk. (lm, 2021) discipleship, mentorship and training for ministry in the limited way i am discussing it in this paper, discipleship is a process by which a follower of jesus learns from the one they chose to follow. the person they chose to follow assumes the role of a mentor to an extent. according to naar m’fundisi-holloway—discipleship, mentorship and training 47 hull, “mentoring is a personal one-to-one way of being and making disciples” (hull, 2006: 209). the bible is also clear on the role that jesus played as a mentor to his disciples (freeks and lotter, 2014; roldan, 2018: 162). the respondents experienced several challenges living and starting ministries in the uk. these legitimized the need for guides or mentors to disciple and train these missionaries in a foreign context. when asked about the type of discipleship they received in preparation for ministry in the uk, the two that started branches linked to founding churches in africa stated they hadn’t. those that started independent ministries also stated they sought discipleship within their diasporic communities. their responses were; when we got here from africa we were one of the senior leaders in our denomination and everyone was under us so everyone was looking to us for discipleship. we had no spiritual parents, so we had to fully depend on god for direction. (lm, 2021) none, my husband who is also a pastor disciples me and i watch youtube videos from other ministers. other african female pastors also mentored me in the process and involved me in their ministries. being part of women’s networks who have experience helped me know where to reach out for grants especially during covid-19. when i eventually went to bible school here in the uk, i received training. tapac helped us come up to speed with rules and regulations for ministry in this country.3 (bn, 2021) “none except through tapac who helped us and gave us certification, training and information on gift aid and the charity commission. we were also trained on people skills.” (gm, 2021) i received training as part of bible school here in the uk. i was given placements to gain exposure to various ministry contexts in the uk and what discipleship looks like in other churches. through training i have had opportunities to preach, visit 3. “founded in 1993 the charity is an umbrella organisation of independent pentecostal and charismatic churches aiming to foster unity and co-operation in the body of christ, giving proper recognition, authenticity and power to member churches and ministries in north and south america, the caribbean, europe (including uk) africa and the pacific regions.” https:// register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search/-/charity-details/4004637 e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 48 hospitals, work in drug recovery homes and how to do mission in deprived areas. (cn, 2021) i met other women who taught me a lot about ministry in the uk. (tm, 2021) because the church was growing so fast i didn’t get a chance to be mentored or disciple. (pe, 2021) the three who went to bible school in the uk received classroom training and discipleship through placements. it is evident that although some of these women had some form of mentorship, it was inadequate as it did not equip them for ministry in the diaspora. others have registered with organizations like tapac which have helped them come up to speed with regulations regarding ministry in the uk. at the same time, others have made use of youtube to learn from others in ministry. even though organizations like tapac play an important role in preparing people from other countries for ministry in the uk, these women have had to adopt an entrepreneurial approach to accessing discipleship and mentorship for themselves. they have mainly sought out mentors from networks with other women in ministry from africa and asia. above all else, these women cite divine intervention which continues to enable them to navigate areas in ministry where they feel inadequate. the role of the holy spirit cannot be minimized in empowering people for ministry. however, just like jesus’ relationship with his disciples, being discipled and guided by someone who has more experience is vital in any ministerial context be it in a local context or the diaspora. when respondents were asked to comment on the adequacy of some of the discipleship and ministerial training they received, they mostly said they could have done with more personalized training. it wasn’t very adequate because there were gaps in the training. for example, i was never taught how to do baby dedications. (jm, 2021) it was not very adequate because where i was a co-pastor there was no training. i just had to fulfil the tasks i was assigned to do by the senior pastor. (ph, 2021) naar m’fundisi-holloway—discipleship, mentorship and training 49 analysis and interpretation the place of african women in places of power and church ministry has been contested for many years. several feminists and womanists have reflected on this. the works of african feminists like mercy a. oduyoye, isabel a. phiri, nyengenye r. m. ajambo, bolaji bateye, to mention but a few, have critiqued how the location of african women has been problematized because african women are mostly silenced (e.g. oluwatomisin, 2016: 160; ajambo, 2012). in some african contexts, women are not complete unless attached to a man. for example, “a woman who manages her affairs successfully without a man is an affront to patriarchy and a direct challenge to the so-called masculinity of men who want to possess her” (oduyoye, 1995: 4-5). the fact that some women are now able to engage in full-time ministry as ordained ministers in their own right on the african continent is revolutionary as some churches still disallow it. even more ground-breaking is how some of these women have successfully started their own ministries in the west thereby contributing to reverse mission. oduyoye refers to jesus who saw women as human beings in a society where they were dehumanized. this is why he took the time to “teach, heal and save them from victimization” (oduyoye, 2008: 83). therefore, just like men, they too “should enjoy the privilege of being members of the family of god” (ajambo, 2012: xii) as they are participants in god’s mission wherever they are (phiri, 2004: 422) despite the hurdles and challenges they experience by virtue of being women in ministry. when asked about their experiences in engaging in ministry in their home countries, they stated the difference between there and in the uk. they mentioned how easy it was to proselytize within the african context. on the flip side, in some cases, they found that some men within the african context failed to acknowledge the leadership of women in ministry (bn, 2021). gm’s experience within the uk context was that “people are more sceptical about the gospel and very dependent on the state. even when they are healed, they worry that they might not continue to receive benefits from the state which means losing their income” (gm, 2021). two of the women suggested that the spirituality of africans can be both cultural and religious which makes it difficult to disciple them effectively as they seem to know the religious vocabulary and can articulate their faith in ways that are convincing when in actual fact their faith is shallow (cn and jm, 2021). furthermore, another stated, “because people mainly come to the diaspora for economic reasons, they struggle to commit to church and discipleship because their priority is working and are more likely to pick up extra shifts at work than come to church” (jm, 2021). these differences e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 50 are linked to some of the challenges which the respondents have faced while engaging in ministry in the diaspora. one of the questions asked in the interviews was around some of the challenges that these women have faced while engaging in ministry in the uk. many challenges presented were socio-economic, issues of prejudice, cultural and language barriers, and challenges in balancing running a ministry as well as working in order to not only support families in their home countries, but their ministries as well in the uk. their experiences are far from those which european missionaries to africa experienced. this challenges the assertions made by paul freston (2010: 155), who suggests that reverse mission can be deemed reverse colonialism. the term “colonialism” itself is entrenched in power and privilege, which none of the women interviewed have. their influence resides within the parameters of their ministries and other diaspora ministries. these pastors who are mostly economic migrants from majority world countries have to navigate issues of immigration and other challenges that come with being an immigrant which grant them no privileges whatsoever in comparison to historical missionaries who had finances, power, and influence. the immigrant pastors i interviewed fall under what samuel escobar calls “missionaries from below” (2003: 18). in addition, the mission that happened in africa, unfortunately, had close affinities with land dispossession of african people, due to the privilege that white missionaries had. this is what makes it different to reverse mission in the west (kumalo, 2020: 2; lephakga, 2015: 145). the respondents stated that they navigated these challenges mainly through prayer and with the help of the holy spirit. it appeared that having connections with friends and other women in ministry helped them deal with the challenges of ministry in the diaspora. those that had links with tapac mentioned how invaluable the knowledge they gained through that organization was. some of the women who suffered burnout and issues of self-identity benefited from mentors who guided them through these challenges. for example, jn stated: i experienced burnout in 2017 and stopped our ministry. my husband and i joined another church because we needed to rest. we eventually started to participate in the ministry there in order to make up where we were deficient and see how things are done. we got the exposure we needed. we needed the experience of ministering in a diverse church with young people which is what we were lacking. (jn, 2021) naar m’fundisi-holloway—discipleship, mentorship and training 51 the respondents outlined several things that would have been helpful to know prior to starting ministry in the uk. these included training about the culture, information about the spiritual strongholds in the country, how to present yourself as a missionary and some guidance on how to run a ministry in the diaspora. all the women believed that mentorship is important prior to starting ministry in the uk as it prepares people for things they might not expect. they also believed that an aspect of discipleship or mentorship which would be helpful to african women starting ministry in the uk would be that which helps them understand their purpose and who they are (lm, bn, gm and jm). this is because it is easy to lose one’s purpose and identity because of various experiences of uk culture and the challenges that come about as a result of being an immigrant in the uk. they also emphasized the importance of discipleship provided by mentors who have been in ministry in the uk for many years and from diverse church leaders who would provide opportunities to learn from observation and practice. other examples of the type of discipleship they would require included the following: discipleship which helps people understand what their purpose and call is. this discipleship should be done by leaders and prayer partners. also discipleship which helps black women with their identity in the uk. (lm, 2021) discipleship from women’s support networks and courses for selfimprovement. (bn, 2021) discipleship from people who are ministering to the people you want to attract. (jm, 2021) discipleship from both male and female mentors. you need someone who speaks into aspects of the culture and has networks that are diverse. also mentoring which helps you with your identity. (cn, 2021) being discipled by people who provide spiritual covering and help you know who you are and your purpose. (pe, 2021) from their experiences, these women have been able to articulate what type and level of discipleship and training they believe would be helpful for african e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 52 women who have the calling to engage in ministry in the uk. despite the respondents being african women, their challenges and needs have a universal feel as other women in different ministerial contexts, whether in the diaspora or not can relate to this. the respondents also referred to the need to receive discipleship which helps them with their identity. this has implications for their african identity within western contexts. i struggled with issues of identity as a young person being trained in a predominantly white college. i was struggling with self-acceptance. i kept asking myself why i’m i here? what is my voice since i am taught by white people? when i write my assignments, who am i. i felt like i was losing myself. (cn, 2021) after much personal reflection on her identity, cn said she is on a journey of self-acceptance and endeavours to have her authentic african voice to be heard despite being a minister in a predominantly white denomination. she was able to make links with another african minister who has served in the same mainline denomination in which she is serving. he has been her mentor and has helped her work through her identity issues based on her experience and she is on a journey to use her african voice in her ministry. on articulating one’s identity, joe aldred professed to being a “male caribbean british christian, a bishop in a black-led pentecostal church who currently works in the field of intercultural ecumenism and as a local pastor” (2005: 28). israel olofinjana responds to this: “aldred understands that we cannot divorce theology and the practice of ministry from our cultural background and experiences” (olofinjana, 2020: 53). while olofinjana’s assertion holds some truth, it appears some of the respondents would like to create ministries that do not represent the countries they are from. this is to attract people from other cultures and backgrounds. while trying to maintain their identity, it is interesting that some of the challenges these female pastors have faced in their ministries are based on the expectations of congregants from their home country. some of the congregants joined their churches because they wanted to have a sense of belonging. therefore, they expected church services to operate in indigenous languages. some congregants wanted us to do ministry like back home. they wanted us to speak the local languages and sing songs from back home. some left the church because they were frustrated as they wanted a zambian church. (gm, 2021) naar m’fundisi-holloway—discipleship, mentorship and training 53 a challenge we faced when we started out own ministry was people wanting our church to be a typical zambian church speaking local languages. there was an expectation for us to be there for people all hours of the day but we were working too and people took offence. now i am afraid to ask people from my country to come to our church. (jm, 2021) what is evident is a sense of nostalgia when people join these churches and the need to feel a sense of belonging from a church that is led by an african from their country of origin. it was apparent from the interviews that there are attempts for the pastors to reach indigenous white british people with the gospel, however their ministries are generally monocultural except for the pastor in ministry within a white british church. these women have experienced some level of success in their ministries and use social media platforms to showcase their ministries, advertise their ministries, and to interact with a wide range of christians within and outside the uk. for example, pastor bn through her ministry has been invited to other countries in asia and africa to preach the gospel. this is an interesting dynamic because while their ministry in the uk falls under the term reverse mission, these pastors have created other networks that enable them to travel to other parts of the global south in order to preach the gospel and are considered as coming from the uk. one thing that was not evident in the interviews was focus on integral mission or mission which “focuses on contextualization and integrating evangelism with social concern” (wan and sadiri, 2010: 48). except for one pastor who spoke about getting a grant in order to supply foodstuffs to people in their neighbourhood during the covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the rest did not refer to that at all. this could be due to limited financial resources, as one stated “doing ministry in this country is a struggle because people don’t give finances easily as compared to back home” (lm). there are some wealthier west african-led newer pentecostal churches in the uk like kingsway international christian centre (kicc) in kent, new wine church in woolwich and jesus house in brentwood with substantial human and financial capital who engage in social action and evangelistic initiatives that benefit the wider society (bremner, 2013: 2). however, the ministries run by the women interviewed have not gone beyond providing spiritual nourishment and a place to call home for their congregants. they are also yet to begin to address and speak into structures that are responsible for change. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 54 conclusion in this paper, i have provided some insights into the discipleship, mentorship and training needed for african women in ministry in the diaspora. i have also outlined what type of discipleship or mentorship would empower african women for ministry in the uk by investigating the type of discipleship attained as they prepared to start ministry in the uk. the findings suggest that out of the eight women, only one received some form of intentional discipleship and training. two sought it out from bible colleges they attended in the uk and the rest sought mentors from the women’s networks they belong to in the uk. it is evident that it takes a calling and courage to navigate ministry within the diaspora. many of the women came for economic reasons and it was therefore a big challenge having to juggle working, going to bible college and then running a ministry. in addition, “many pastors and missionaries from africa, asia and latin america lack intercultural training and are therefore not well prepared to deal with the complexities of the context of mission in postmodern britain” (olofinjana, 2020: 56). despite these challenges, these women have remained resilient in pursuing their ministerial calling. these ministries whether large or small have also demonstrated how important local networks are with other diaspora churches. their quest driven by a vision of winning converts offers a unique opportunity to analyse its impact on local levels (adogame, 2013: xi). it is also clear that those that start independent ministries while already in the diaspora need to find experienced guides to mentor them adequately as they embark on ministry in the diaspora context. these ministries are relevant especially “within the locus of changing, more complex migration trends and policies, these collective religious representations will continue to assume immense meaning and relevance particularly for african immigrants as well as the avenues for adapting into the host social, cultural and religious milieu” (adogame, 2013: x-xi). there is no doubt that many ministries started and led by missionaries from the majority world are thriving and contributing massively to christianity in the uk. in addition to organizations like tapac, i believe these women and others who fall within this category would benefit from organizations like centre for missionaries from the majority world (cmmw)4, an organization that trains pastors and missionaries from the majority world in britain, in order that they are able to contextualize their mission. 4. https://cmmw.org.uk/. naar m’fundisi-holloway—discipleship, mentorship and training 55 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about:blank naar m’fundisi-holloway—discipleship, mentorship and training 57 wan, e. and j. t. wan sadiri. 2010. “filipino diaspora missiology and missions in the context of the twenty-first century,” ttj 13 (1), pp. 45–56. interviews lm. 2021. interview with naar m’fundisi-holloway. 15 may, virtual. bn. 2021. interview with naar m’fundisi-holloway. 18 may, virtual. gm. 2021. interview with naar m’fundisi-holloway. 18 may, virtual. jm. 2021. interview with naar m’fundisi-holloway. 19 may, virtual. cn. 2021. interview with naar m’fundisi-holloway. 20 may, virtual. tm. 2021. interview with naar m’fundisi-holloway. 21 may, virtual. ph. 2021. interview with naar m’fundisi-holloway. 22 may, virtual. pe. 2021. interview with naar m’fundisi-holloway. 23 may, virtual. _hlk95485040 _hlk96334497 _hlk91151276 _hlk99228587 _hlk92923612 _hlk92923636 _hlk72870314 sample _hlk102057148 _hlk102058336 _hlk102058373 editorial nigel rooms problems with “pioneering” mission: reflections on the term “pioneer” from germany, south africa and the uk setting god’s pioneers free? the need to release lay pioneers from the church of england’s narrative of resourcing and equipping james butler discipleship, mentorship and training which empowers african women for ministry in the diaspora naar m’fundisi-holloway communal maturation and missional discipleship: a congregational study nick ladd joyful disciples: a study of a missing link in considering spiritual disciplines and corporate missional habits mike harrison we want the good life now: insights from lived religion for a whole person and communal approach to salvation in the twenty-first century dejan aždajić book reviews kwiyani, harvey. 2020. multicultural kingdom: ethnic diversity, mission and the church. london: scm press. reviewed by sabrina müller roxburgh, alan j. 2021. joining god in the great unraveling: where we are & what i’ve learned. eugene, oregon: cascade books. reviewed by steen olson susan lucas (ed.). 2020. god’s church in the world: the gift of catholic mission. norwich: canterbury press. reviewed by luke larner olsen, steen, 2020. jacob’s ladder: missional church in the 1970s. st. marys, australia: sa & rl olsen. reviewed by patrick r. keifert ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 1 79 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13749 a r t i c l e s doi: 10.54195/ef13749 balancing visible and invisible belonging for korean migrant missional churches in aotearoa new zealand hyeong-kyoon kim abstract this paper explores how korean migrant churches in aotearoa new zealand can find a balance between missions (understood as extending the church) and mission1 (construed as participation in the missio dei), in relation to their sense of belonging. for this purpose, the research uses a qualitative methodology interview method guided by interpretivism. the paper begins by identifying key contextual factors related to koreans in new zealand as migrants, christians and missional beings. the responses of 31 research participants regarding what constitutes a “sense of belonging” are analysed in terms of visible and invisible belonging. visible belonging is associated with churches that have strong boundaries, and invisible belonging is found in one’s relationship with god; the two can be correlated with missions and mission, respectively. the analysis suggests that a missional understanding can be a trigger for enabling interaction between visible belonging as missions and invisible belonging as mission, through three missional concepts: purpose, progress and experience. finally, the paper suggests practical ways that korean churches in new zealand can balance missions and mission by following three missional guidelines. keywords: korean church; mission and missions; belonging; missional; migrant purpose and structure the phrase “mission vs missions” has been used to illustrate different perspectives on the mission of the church. “mission” and “missions” are at times controversial issues in korean churches (han 2012: 90–99). for example, some korean churches 1 in order to distinguish these two terms, the author has capitalized mission throughout the article. 80 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13749 that emerged from evangelical movements are strongly oriented toward church growth, and thus emphasize the importance of missions (han 2012: 93–96; ma, 2017). in contrast, other churches with a more ecumenical outlook tend to focus on mission as missio dei (an & park, 2008: 313). korean churches in new zealand are not free from this controversial issue. however, both mission and missions are essential to live out jesus’ command to embody life in the kingdom of god. therefore, the primary purpose of this paper is to explore the meaning of belonging in korean churches in new zealand with the aim of building a bridge between mission and missions through missional perspectives. with this purpose in mind, a sampling of 31 korean christians in new zealand answered the question: “what is the sense of belonging?” their responses can be summarized in three categories: visible belonging, invisible belonging, and missional belonging. purpose, process and experience are missional triggers that provide a stepping stone to establishing a bridge between mission (invisible belonging) and missions (visible belonging). the paper is divided into two main sections. the first section explores three contextual terms: korean churches, missional, and belonging. this section also provides the rationale for incorporating the contextual background in missional and practical theology studies. the second section is the analysis of the 31 interviews, which identifies three different understandings of belonging: visible belonging, invisible belonging, and missional belonging as a catalyst for synthesizing the first two concepts. following the analysis, the paper suggests practical ways to enable korean missional churches in new zealand. scope this research is located in the fields of missional and practical theology studies. missional and practical theology approaches are linked to contextual interpretation, although the two approaches have different focal points. for example, the field of missional studies tends to emphasize direction, like a route on a map, whereas practical theology suggests practices for achieving visible results. despite these differences, the interpretation of contexts is an essential starting point for both approaches. swinton and mowat describe practical theology as “recognising and respecting the diversity of interpretation within the various expositions of performed gospel” (swinton & mowat 2006: 5). in other words, practical theology focuses on observing 81 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13749 and interpreting context through “performed gospel”, which means the gospel realized in our context. contextual interpretation is also important in missional studies. as darrell guder writes, “our understanding of truth is always an interpretation relative to our context and cultural understanding” (guder and barrett 1998: 40). in terms of methodology, this paper uses an interview method based on a qualitative and interpretivist methodology which is useful for analyzing contexts in light of practical and missional perspectives. the aim is to observe korean churches in new zealand and to encourage these churches to be missional churches both within and beyond ethnic boundaries. this study does have certain limitations in terms of sampling and translation. first, although 31 interviews provide a suitable sampling size for the case study, the sampling is limited in the sense that the participants were drawn from only two korean churches. however, i maintain that this is nonetheless a representative sampling, because the two churches are the oldest korean churches in the two largest cities and korean communities in new zealand. these two churches can thus adequately represent migrant korean christians’ perspectives despite the geographical limitations. the second limitation is related to translation issues, as it is impossible to translate an interview from korean to english without changes in nuance and emphasis. as a result, i have used an interpretivist methodology. this is a methodology in the social sciences that is suitable for contextual analysis because it offers scope for a variety of interpretations related subjectively to specific contexts (furlong and marsh 2010). this paper accurately records interviewees’ perspectives, but some words, phrases and sentences may be interpreted by the researcher to provide a clearer meaning in english. three contextual terms the title of this paper incorporates three main terms: korean churches, missional, and belonging. these words have developed in a specific context, and thus it is necessary to define the three terms contextually. first, ‘korean christians’ in new zealand construct their own boundaries as a way to interpret their christian faith within korean culture. this is in line with bevans’ characterization of contextual theology as being based on “present human experience” (bevans 2002: 4). second, the term “missional” first emerged from real issues in north american churches, so it is impossible to understand “missional” without this contextual under82 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13749 standing (guder and barrett 1998). finally, the sense of “belonging” obviously cannot be excepted from contextual understandings. this section explains the contexts of the three core terms in this order: the korean church, the missional understanding and the sense of belonging. it also explores how a possible relational structure can be built between the three contextual categories. korean church context the character of the korean church is best described in terms of diverse characteristics developing in different times and locations, because every church has roots in living societies, united by a belief in an unchanging divine being. contexts rely on “personal and communal experience, culture, social location and social change” (bevans 2002: 7). applying this claim to korean churches makes it clear that they are contextual churches through their experience, culture, social location and experience of social change (guder and barrett 1998). korean churches in new zealand have erected unique boundaries to help them understand and live in the new zealand context. they are grounded culturally in korean culture and locationally in new zealand. these churches have experienced migrant life and extreme social changes from korea to new zealand. korean migrant churches in new zealand are comprised almost exclusively of korean rather than other ethnicities, and the korean language plays a pivotal role in these churches (chang, morris and vokes 2006). in contrast, the majority of new zealand churches are rooted in european or, to a lesser extent, maori cultures, so the english and maori languages are essential in their churches to sustain religious and cultural identities. koreans in new zealand refer to churches that use english and consist mainly of europeans (pakeha) as ‘kiwi churches’ (chang, morris and vokes). korean migrant churches in new zealand attempt to preserve their culture through korean christianity, an approach deemed the “anthropological model” by bevans, who writes that “the primary concern of the anthropological model is the establishment or preservation of cultural identity” (bevans 2002: 54). korean churches in new zealand have a strong connection with their members’ experiences as koreans and as migrants, and with the korean language. because of these strong bonds, members of korean churches can recognize their differences and similarities in relation to broader new zealand society. in new zealand census results, korean christians are categorized in three ways: their experience in korea; their experience in new zealand; and their experience as 83 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13749 migrants moving between korea and new zealand. figure 1 shows the percentages of christians in three different contexts: christians in south korea, christians in new zealand as a whole, and korean christians in new zealand. the percentage of christians is decreasing in all three contexts, so the numerical weakening of christianity is common to each context. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 2004 2006 2013 2014 2018 2021 christian population (%) new zealand korean churches in nz korea figure 1 christian percentages in three different contexts korean and new zealand censuses are tabulated in different years, so it is not possible to perfectly compare the percentages of christians in korea and new zealand. however, while the census data is drawn from different years, the purpose of this comparison is to check trends. korean christianity in new zealand has unique characteristics compared with christianity in korea and in new zealand as a whole, regardless of denomination. first, the percentage of korean christians in new zealand is significantly higher than in the other two contexts. according to three censuses in new zealand, the percentage of koreans who were christians decreased from 73% in 2006, to 68% in 2013, to 57% in 2018 (stats.govt.nz, 2018). but while the percentage of christians among koreans in new zealand has indeed decreased, these statistics show that koreans in new zealand have a solid christian culture compared with those in korea itself. christianity has been one among several religions in korea from the missionary period until now (gallop.co.kr, 2021). in contrast, in the new zealand korean commuhttp://stats.govt.nz http://gallop.co.kr 84 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13749 nity, christianity is the main religion, and the percentage is more than double that of christians in korea. as a result, koreans belonging to religions other than christianity are comparatively marginal in the korean community in new zealand (kim, hocking and mckenzie-green 2016). the point is that koreans in new zealand tend to cultivate a more christian-centric culture than koreans in korea. moreover, compared with the overall percentage of christians in new zealand, the korean christian percentage in new zealand is outstanding. theologians and sociologists interpret this phenomenon as one in which korean migrants believe that their christianity plays a crucial role in how they are perceived in the social (secular) arena (butcher & wieland 2013). for example, butcher and wieland illustrate the perception of the korean church in new zealand through the phrase “god and golf”. one reason for the high percentage of christians in the korean community in new zealand may be that new migrants struggle to integrate into new zealand society because of the linguistic and cultural differences (chang, morris and vokes 2006; morris, vokes and chang 2008). interestingly, several other migrant ethnicities also show a higher percentage of christian affiliation in new zealand than in their home countries (stats.govt.nz 2018). korean churches and perhaps other migrant churches in new zealand offer members a safe space in which to escape from the stresses of integrating into new zealand society. in sum, korean churches’ characteristics in new zealand are shaped by their migrant context. missional perspective defining the word “missional” is not straightforward because this terminology is a fairly recent addition to the field of missiology, emphasizing certain distinctive directions related to mission (roxburgh and boren 2009: 30). missional has been defined briefly as “the doing of the mission” (ott, strauss & tennent 2010). however, roxburgh and boren highlight the danger of only “doing” something to achieve visible results and escape confusion between missional churches and the so-called “attractive” churches. roxburgh and boren offer two helpful warnings for the missional journey: “beware of formulas for creating missional churches, and beware of missional church models” (2009: 23–25). because the missional movement is shaped by specific contexts in different places and times, roxburgh and boren assert the importance of reading contexts carefully. missional movements are linked inextricably to the act of interpreting contexts. http://stats.govt.nz 85 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13749 the starting point of “reading context” in a missional movement is the word “here” – “where we stand” (roxburgh and boren 2009: 122). “the missional journey begins where people are, not from some vision for where we would like them to be” (2009: 123). this is a crucial point in connecting the missional movement and local churches, because “the local church we belong to is shaped by a history that forms the ways it works and how people interrelate” (2009: 124). this statement can be applied to the korean churches in new zealand insofar as they are shaped by a migrant history that has influenced the ways their context unfolds and how they relate to people in the host country. the gospel and our culture network has examined missional boundaries in north america along these lines, and found that regional context plays a pivotal role in this missional network (guder and barrett 1998: 7–12). missional approaches seek to erect a bridge between the gospel and local culture. “the gospel is always translated into a culture, and god’s people are formed in that culture in response to the translated and spirit-empowered word” (guder and barrett 1998: 11). this means that a missional approach offers a meaningful gospel lens through which to settle in a new culture, and revises forms of christian proclamation in the light of culture (guder and barrett 1998: 12). therefore, when interpreting the missional movement in the korean church context in new zealand, previous experiences related to the korean church will be their past “here” context, and more recent experiences of the sense of belonging will influence their present “here”. moreover, the missional movement has the energy to move toward missio dei – the mission of god – beyond visible results seen in church programmes and campaigns (franke 2020; terry 2015). missional language does not limit a church’s boundaries, and for this reason alan roxburgh uses the phrase “missional people” instead of “missional church” to focus on missional life broadly understood (roxburgh and romanuk 2011). in this perspective, missional language can be a trigger to move beyond a church-centred life. this is a transformation from “god-church-world” to “god-world-church” (an & park 2008: 273–81). the sense of belonging the third key word or category is “belonging.” generally, this refers to the sense of belonging in a certain place or community. discussions of belonging in a church context may include, for example, reflections on how to grow membership. however, the sense of belonging encompasses not only such visible aspects but also an invisible aspect, focused on belonging to god. 86 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13749 visible belonging may refer to “fitting in” in an institution, group, ethnicity and so on, and invisible belonging may be experienced through culture or traditions (kim 2021:  73–75; painter, 2013: 1–2). but even though the sense of belonging can be divided into these two “types”, it is impossible to separate them too rigidly, because the sense of belonging is connected with the real world in all its dimensions. according to emile durkheim, the sense of belonging in a moral community is the foundation of religious life, and he calls this community a church (1995: 44). therefore, the church as a moral community is a visible manifestation of belonging. similarly, max weber (2005) asserts that the sense of belonging is expressed in cultural and religious communities. in this sense, a denomination established on the basis of religious belief can create a visible boundary around the sense of belonging, and a cultural boundary like christendom can create an invisible sense of belonging. secularization theorists assume that religious communities and gatherings will fade away over time in the societies where they are located (dobbelaere, 2009: 602). as a case in point, religions such as christianity, the major religion in europe in the past, came to maintain a cultural function instead of a religious one. secularization theorists thus claim that christianity in western countries is an example of invisible belonging through culture (davie 1994; 2002). secularization theorists rely on an understanding of visible belonging to strengthen their theory that religion will fade away in modern societies. church attendance or membership is seen as evidence of visible belonging. rational choice theorists evince a similar understanding of visible belonging to support christianity’s revival in the united states through the numerical evidence of membership and attendance (stark and finke 2000). sociological approaches do not lean toward one side of the sense of belonging, visible or invisible. they see the meaning of the sense of belonging not as unchangeable but as influenced by contextual factors. philosophical or ontological research tends to situate belonging in invisible boundaries like culture, and practical or epistemological research, such as a census, attempts to provide clear evidence for visible belonging. for example, researchers at pew research centre interpret church belonging in terms of affiliation with a congregation or denomination (mohamed, cox, diamant and gecewicz 2021). this means that unaffiliated people do not “belong”, even if they have christian beliefs, so the sense of belonging is restricted to visible forms of 87 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13749 church boundaries. new zealand censuses have interpreted belonging to denominations and other groups in the same way (stats.govt.nz 2018). interactions among the three contextual terms in the previous sections, i explained the three contextual terms at the heart of this study: korean churches, missional and belonging. these concepts are related to each other. for example, missional is based on “here,” where korean churches are located, so the fact that korean churches in new zealand are migrant churches is an influential context. since belonging consists of two aspects, visible and invisible, visible church boundaries and invisible cultural boundaries also interact in korean churches. in this interaction, the korean church is an influential factor for missional movement, as a context for developing a sense of belonging beyond visible boundaries. however, it is also possible to go in the opposite direction, such that the sense of invisible belonging can develop into visible contexts through a missional understanding. the understanding of mission has two dimensions: one is mission as missio dei, which emphasizes god’s mission, and the other is missions, which describes the churches’ human activities to extend the gospel (franke 2020; gailey & culbertson 2007: 8; terry 2015). in this study, i adopt a new frame to describe mission and missions: mission–invisible belonging–missio dei; and missions-visible belonging-church (its human side). balancing visible and invisible belonging therefore means balancing mission and missions in korean migrant churches. the coming sections will address the interrelation between the three contextual terms by analyzing interviews with 31 korean christians in new zealand. analysing interviews the earlier sections explained the three core contextual terms by drawing on theoretical and scholarly sources, in order to establish an interacting frame for the three words. this section investigates this frame in korean churches in new zealand by means of a qualitative methodology, based on 31 interviews with korean christian migrants in new zealand. the interviewees’ ages spanned from people born in the 1940s to people born in the 2000s, and their migrant years ranged from the 1980s to the 2010s. in addition, some interviewees were born in new zealand and are known as the second generation (kim 2021: 170). the interviewees were primarily recruited for my phd research, so this paper re interprets their earlier interviews through a missional lens. specifically, this study interprets interviewees’ answers to the question, “what is the sense of belonging?” http://stats.govt.nz 88 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13749 to maintain confidentiality, i use fictional names instead of the names of the participants. this section first explores specific expressions of belonging related to the korean church, followed by insights regarding how the concepts “missional” and “belonging” are understood by the interviewees. visible belonging in korean churches korean churches have two primary visible aspects. first, some concrete information is recorded and maintained to indicate membership, beliefs and identities. second, other words and activities focus on the people’s context as migrants. these visible aspects might be summarized in two orientations: human-centred, and church-centred. visible belonging can be expressed by tangible boundaries in the church. one interviewee, gong ji-hu, described the sense of belonging as providing a way to maintain korean culture by emphasizing the boundaries within the church that separate and preserve korean identity and culture over against the dominant “kiwi” identity and culture. the korean church is thus a place-based boundary within which to teach and enact korean culture. in the church, korean migrants can affirm their uniqueness and their differences from the dominant new zealand society. lee an, who is second generation, described the sense of belonging in terms of recognizing these differences, and she also felt a stronger sense of belonging in a church group whose members are of a similar age. park do, who is also second generation, likewise emphasized finding a sense of belonging in a korean christian group which has shared interests. in addition, interviewees focused on institutional norms and organizations, which are boundaries in themselves. the denomination was one of the crucial reasons for choosing a church after migrating from korea to new zealand, because the presbyterian denomination provides a lens through which they understand christianity. korean migrants thus naturally prefer to attend church in the same denomination to which they belonged in korea. this explains why the presbyterian church is the main denomination of korean migrants in new zealand, because it is the major denomination in korea, compared with methodists, anglicans, pentecostals and others. denominational boundaries are crucial in maintaining korean christians’ religious identities. maintaining their identity as korean, christian and presbyterian expresses a church-centred understanding of visible belonging. 89 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13749 in addition, several interviewees described the korean church in new zealand as a kind of base camp for nurturing social activities and relationships. this is because the korean church is one of the most comfortable places to meet other koreans, in the face of the larger context in which new zealand is a comparatively strange place. these are trusting relationships, as korean churches represent family, home and friends. relationships with others in the church thus play a leading role in constructing visible boundaries. kim sung-hyun emphasized that the korean church is a place for “working together”, which can also be understood in terms of socializing with friends. hwang eun explained that feeling a sense of belonging in the church means “living together like a family and helping together”. korean churches are also crucial for socializing without language barriers, and butcher and wieland describe korean churches as “golf communities” (butcher and wieland 2013). korean migrants feel similarities with other koreans regardless of faith, but visible membership in a church is a safety boundary for developing and extending their relationships and feeling connected to others as social beings. these relationships illustrate the second aspect of visible belonging, the human-being centred focus. invisible belonging in korean churches the previous section focused on the role of visible belonging in migrant korean churches in new zealand, but that is only a part of understanding what the sense of belonging means for people in these korean churches. invisible aspects of belonging show the desire to belong to god rather than to manufactured systems, institutions and practices. invisible belonging is closer to the missio dei perspective. according to choi sung-je, the sense of belonging is a sensitive issue and he describes the sense of belonging as being “a child of god.” park hyun also explains the sense of belonging as “to stay in god”. many korean christians in new zealand, especially the first-generation migrants, converted to christianity from other religions after migrating to new zealand. hence, they firmly believe that migrating to new zealand was god’s plan to save them. park hyun and choi sung-je thus both say, “i am elected” as a child of god when explaining the sense of belonging. the “child of god” symbolism focuses on the relationship with god instead of membership in a religious institution. in the confucian perspective, humans are connected to the divine being, dao (道) or tae-kuk (太極) through jung (情) or yang-ji (良知). and recovering the harmo90 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13749 nious relationship is illustrated the healthy relationship between parents and children (kim, 2000; 2022: 152–55). moreover, humans are related to the whole world, including animals and nature, via jung or yang-ji. missio dei for korean christians is underpinned in part by these confucian principles. in other words, belonging in the sense of being a “child of god” is a korean expression based on the confucian understanding found in passages such as john 14.11 and 15.5. among six first-generation interviewees who migrated to new zealand after 2010, five articulated their understanding of belonging in terms of their relationship with god, using phrases such as “a child of god”, “my root is god”, “always [i] belong to god”, “belong to god” and “the relationship between god and me”. these expressions all emphasize the relationship with god instead of the sense of belonging to institutions. lee gao explained the difference between social belonging in the form of “membership” and religious belonging, stating that belonging is about one’s relationship with god, which is not found only through being a member of a church. of the 17 interviewees who were from the first generation, 11 also stressed that the sense of belonging is not found only within social boundaries but in one’s relationship with god. as one said, “the sense of belonging is not [related to] u-ri as a church, korean churches and denominations, but to the relationship with god.” understanding the sense of belonging in terms of one’s relationship with god was not only found in the first generation but also in the younger generation. lee bun-woo described the sense of belonging in this way: “as i belong to god, [i practise god’s love] even though i meet unfamiliar people who are different from me. [this is because] they are also one of god’s creatures.” this sense of belonging plays a pivotal role in developing one’s identity. choi hee-su added that because the core of belonging, which is the relationship with god, is nurtured in a church, church membership is one way to enhance this relationship with god. the children of the first generation of migrants used phrases such as these to illustrate the sense of belonging: “god stays with me”, “god’s plan” and “[being part of] one body”. kwon suk’s starting point for describing the sense of belonging was a question: “where do i belong?” he already has membership in a korean church and strong friendships with other koreans there, but his relationship with god is nonetheless the core element in his sense of belonging. prioritizing the invisible sense of belonging was also spelled out in cho il-eun’s explanation of the connection she makes between belonging and identity: “clearly, before 91 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13749 i had firmly believed [in god], i felt that identity issues were very important [in my life]. am i a korean or a new zealander? even though i am a korean and kiwi by half and half, the proportion of the mixture was different. in this situation, [i] was confused by having no absolute standard [to recognize my identity]. [however], this problem was solved after finding belief [in god].” in summary, research participants preferred to use phrases such as the following to explain invisible belonging, regardless of different migrant generations, genders and ages: belong to god, the child of god, unity with god, in christ, one body, invisible relationship with god. in other words, their invisible belonging prioritized divine being rather than human beings and manufactured systems. missional movement as trigger i have described above the relationship between membership in korean churches as a visible sign of belonging and belonging to god as an invisible aspect. these two features interact continuously, and there is therefore a need for a catalyst, such as a missional orientation, to create interacting movement or an active interrelation between the two. this section analyses possible trigger words for this missional movement which emerged in the interviews. these trigger words that stimulate interaction between visible and invisible belonging can be divided into three categories: purpose, progress and experience. the first category is related to the purpose of becoming church, but it is not results oriented. interviewees dreamed of the church as the kingdom of god, which is impossible to achieve on earth. lee sung-an asserted that the final goal of belonging is “the recovery of the image when created by god”. kim so-mi said that belonging is not an artificial but a natural phenomenon; there can be no intention to gain it because she already belongs to god. kim ham-in also felt that belonging is not something one can attain or achieve on one’s own, whether it is manifested visibly or invisibly. in expressing the original purpose of the church, interviewees tended to use words associated with essential christian faith, such as “salvation”, “calling”, “comfort”, “the place of meeting god”, “hope”, “love”, “christ” and “identity”. the interviewees used these words to describe why they believe the church exists on earth. interviewees hoped to develop resilience related to these more idealized purposes of the church, in the face of several disappointing experiences of church, such as church splits, conflicts and corruption. shin ji-su emphasized the importance of flexibility and resilience in the life of faith, and these traits could be seen as triggers to stimulate a healthy interrelation between visible and invisible experiences of belonging. 92 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13749 the second triggering category is progress in christian discipleship, and this category is closely connected with practical actions. this can be seen in interviewees’ references to the importance of special acts of faith, such as love, sharing and contributing. interviewees hoped to make progress toward becoming mature christians through actions that grow out of belief. however, these actions do not focus only on individual tangible achievements but on inner spiritual progress or growth in the life of faith. many interviewees asserted that these actions are the responsibility of all christians. gong stated that belonging is not only to a church but to the life of a christian. son mi-ju had a similar perspective, describing belonging as “the progress of reaching to god in my life.” actions such as love, sharing and giving, which are essential to living daily life as a christian, synthesize or integrate visible belonging to a church and invisible belonging to god. the last category which can be a missional trigger is experience. belonging is not only a theoretical concept but an experienced reality. according to interviewee lee gao, the sense of belonging is “living together”. this is a meaningful understanding of belonging because it is not only an individual experience but a communal experience of christian life. living together can connect all of the aspects related to belonging: sharing, solidarity, love, recovery and so on. “sharing” is impossible to do alone, since sharing needs to be done with other beings. to summarize, the key words highlighted in the interviews can all be grouped under the “missional” concept, and these words are not result-oriented but progress-oriented, in the service of realizing the purpose of the church and the life of faith. progress-oriented words include aspects of experience beyond individual activities; progress is understood as spiritual and moral development, which has concrete implications for the actions we take. these missional concepts can be a catalyst to balance and interweave the visible sense of belonging found within the boundaries of korean churches in new zealand and the invisible manifestations of belonging associated with missio dei. implications defining korean churches in new zealand is impossible without taking into account the korean migrant context, and so the earlier sections of this paper explored korean migrants’ understanding of the church in light of their migrant experience. in light of their visible and invisible experiences of belonging in relation to their christian faith, i introduced a missional approach to integrate a missions orientation based on visible 93 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13749 belonging with a mission orientation associated with invisible belonging to god. this section suggests possible implications for korean churches in new zealand. according to christian life, a newspaper published for korean christians in new zealand, there are 109 korean churches or christian institutions in new zealand. they exist largely to support koreans rather than other ethnicities or english-based christians (christianlife.nz, n.d.). less than 10% of korean churches in new zealand belong to “kiwi” (english-based) denominations such as the pcanz (presbyterian church of aotearoa new zealand), elim, gpcnz (grace presbyterian church of new zealand) and others (onechurch.nz n.d.). there are several reasons korean churches find it hard to relate to kiwi churches, but the central reason is differing understanding of “missions and mission”. korean churches put considerable effort into overseas missions, in countries such as vanuatu, fiji, and other asian countries. however, the korean migrant churches do not always sense this same zeal for missions in the english-based denominations in new zealand. but how do the missions of the korean migrant churches in new zealand interact with mission, with its sense of invisible belonging? first, the “purpose” of missional orientation is a valuable way to identify christianity’s unchangeable purpose on earth, in the process mitigating differences between ethnicities, denominations or religious traditions. korean migrant perspectives can be very helpful in this regard. as one example, the belief of all christians in an eternal life with a return to a heavenly home, an original homeland, triggers korean migrants’ connections with other christians in new zealand, because we are all migrants on earth. second, the “progress” of missional orientation has the potential to move beyond the church-centred focus that is geared toward church growth to encompass a spiritual growth focus on living a mature christian life. in this regard, the chaplaincy system, which exists outside the church, is a valuable point of connection with non-christians. in new zealand, pastoral care for students in schools is mandated by law and must be provided (nzqa 2021). chaplaincy can connect students regardless of religion or background, and for international students, having a chaplain of a similar background can help to mitigate their isolation. in a larger sense, encouraging korean church members to join local non-profit organizations or charities might stimulate korean christians to live out their christian faith through acts of love and service outside the church walls or concerns about church growth. the “progress” missional element is also not only for individuals but for http://christianlife.nz http://onechurch.nz 94 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13749 communities. therefore, encouraging korean churches to work with other denominations, charities, government agencies or other institutions is pivotal in bridging the gap between the churches’ missions and god’s mission. conclusion this paper has explored three contextual terms related to korean churches in new zealand: korean churches, the missional orientation and the meaning of belonging. through this exploration, the understanding of the korean church context was linked inextricably both to visible belonging, in the form of missions which are human and institutional works, and invisible belonging in the form of mission as missio dei. both missions and mission co-exist in korean migrant churches in new zealand. however, while missions and mission are ideally essential aspects of all churches, they are at times in conflict in korean churches in new zealand. this prompted me to explore more deeply korean christians’ understandings of what it means to “belong” as migrant korean christians in new zealand. this paper therefore analysed, through a representative sampling of interviews with korean christians in new zealand, their understandings of the sense of belonging, highlighting both visible and invisible manifestations of belonging. their perspectives, in turn, suggested possible resources (related to purpose, process and experience) for balancing missions and mission in new zealand’s korean churches, with the aim of being a healthy missional church in the midst of their contextual realities as an ethnic minority in new zealand. about the author hyeong-kyoon kim moved from south korea to aotearoa new zealand in 2017. he is interested in the voice of migrants, especially asians, in new zealand. he lives in palmerston north with his family and works at hanmaeum church and alphacrucis college, aotearoa new zealand. contact: hyeong.k.kim@gmail.com references an, s., and b. park. 2008. hyeondae seongyogag gaelon: introduction to modern korea. seoul: clsk. bevans, s. b. 2002. models of contextual theology. maryknoll, ny: orbis books. butcher, a., and g. wieland. 2013. “god and golf: koreans in new zealand.” new zealand journal of asian studies 15 (2): 57–77. chang, s., c. m. morris and r. vokes. 2006. korean migrant families in christchurch: expectations and experiences. wellington: nz families commission. 95 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13749 christianlife.nz. n.d. “the lists of korean churches.” https://christianlife.nz/church_address (accessed 10 feb. 2023). davie, g. 1994. religion in britain since 1945: believing without belonging (making contemporary britain). hoboken, nj: wiley. ———. 2002. europe: the exceptional case: parameters of faith in the modern world. london: darton, longman & todd. dobbelaere, k. 2009. “the meaning and scope of secularization.” in p. clarke (ed.), the oxford handbook of the sociology of religion. oxford: oxford university press, 599–615. durkheim, e. 1995. elementary forms of the religious life; trans. karen e. fields. london: free press. franke, j. r. 2020. missional theology: an introduction. grand rapids, mi: baker academic. furlong, p., and d. marsh. 2010. “a skin not a sweater: ontology and epistemology in political science.” theory and methods in political science 3: 184–211. gailey, c. r., and h. culbertson. 2007. discovering missions. boston: beacon hill press. gallop.co.kr. 2021. “han-kuk-in-ui jong-kyo 1984–2021.” https://www.gallup.co.kr/gallupdb/ filedownload.asp?seqno=1209&btype=8 (accessed 10 feb. 2023). guder, d. l., and l. barrett. 1998. missional church: a vision for the sending of the church in north america. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. han, k.-i., 2012. “missional church in the viewpoint of the korean local church.” mission and theology 30: 75–115. kim, h., c. hocking, b. mckenzie-green and s. nayar. 2016. “occupational experiences of korean immigrants settling in new zealand.” journal of occupational science 23 (2): 181–95. kim, h.-k. 2021.  ”circular not linear: the interplay between the religious dimensions of believing, belonging and behaving in korean christian immigrants to aotearoa new zealand.” phd thesis, university of otago. kim, h.-y. 2022. do-ui sinhag, gidoggyo sinhag-ui sae-gil: theology of tao, a new way of christian theology. seoul: dongyeon. ———. 2000. “new understanding of humanity through confucian–christian dialogues: some proposals for doing korean theology of culture.” korean journal of christian studies 19 (1): 439–63. ma, j. c. 2017. “evangelism and church planting: a strategy for the growth and mission of the korean church.” journal of asian mission, 18(1), 3–26. mohamed, b., k. cox, j. diamant and c. gecewicz. 2021. faith among black americans. pew research center, black religion report. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2021/02/pf_02.16.21_black.religion.report.pdf (accessed 16.5.23). morris, c., r. vokes and s. chang. 2007. “social exclusion and church in the experiences of korean migrant families in christchurch.”  journal of social anthropology and cultural studies 4 (2): 11–31. nzqa. 2021. the education (pastoral care of tertiary and international learners) code of practice. wellington: nzqa. onechurch.nz. n.d. “addresses of korean churches in new zealand.” https://www.onechurch. nz/directory (accessed 20 feb. 2023). ott, c., s. j. strauss and t. c. tennent. 2010. encountering theology of mission: biblical foundations, historical developments, and contemporary issues. grand rapids, mi: baker books. painter, c. v. 2013. sense of belonging: literature review. citizenship and immigration canada. https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/ircc/migration/ircc/english/pdf/research-stats/ r48a-2012belonging-eng.pdf (accessed 16 may 2023). http://christianlife.nz https://christianlife.nz/church_address http://gallop.co.kr https://www.gallup.co.kr/gallupdb/filedownload.asp?seqno=1209&btype=8 https://www.gallup.co.kr/gallupdb/filedownload.asp?seqno=1209&btype=8 https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2021/02/pf_02.16.21_black.religion.report.pdf https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2021/02/pf_02.16.21_black.religion.report.pdf http://onechurch.nz https://www.onechurch.nz/directory https://www.onechurch.nz/directory https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/ircc/migration/ircc/english/pdf/research-stats/r48a-2012belonging-eng.pdf https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/ircc/migration/ircc/english/pdf/research-stats/r48a-2012belonging-eng.pdf 96 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13749 roxburgh, a. j., and f. romanuk. 2011. the missional leader: equipping your church to reach a changing world. san francisco, ca: jossey bass. ——— and m. s. boren. 2009. introducing the missional church: what it is, why it matters, how to become one. ada, mi: baker books. ———, r. stark and r. finke. 2000. acts of faith: explaining the human side of religion. berkeley, ca: university of california press. stats.govt.nz. 2018. “korean ethnic group.” https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/ transport-broken-page/korean (accessed 10 feb. 2023). swinton, j., and h. mowat. 2006. practical theology and qualitative research. london: scm press. terry, j. m. (ed.). 2015. missiology: an introduction to the foundations, history, and strategies of world missions. nashville, tn: b&h publishing group. weber, m. 2005. the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. london: taylor & francis. http://stats.govt.nz https://www.stats ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 1 5 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18728 a r t i c l e doi: 10.54195/ef18728 the two crises of the church jonna van den berge-bakker and marten van der meulen abstract in this article we examine the two crises of the church: crisis 1, which is the decline of the church, and crisis 2, which is the church forgetting its calling. crisis 1 draws the most attention from churches, but it is crisis 2 that churches should attend first. we argue that the order matters: a church paying attention to its calling will not solve its decline, but will help break free from tiresome attempts at repair. it will also help churches to practise an attitude of receiving, being directed at the kingdom of god. the distinction between crisis 1 and 2 will help churches and theologians name the challenges that the church faces and will help prioritize them. it requires that discernment as a communal practice with others becomes an important part of the theological method. keywords: church decline, kingdom of god, discernment, calling, eschatology introduction1 there is a widespread sense that the church is not doing well. in this article we describe the problem, analyse the causes and suggest a way forward. seeing and naming the good that has already been given by god helps us out of despondency, without ignoring the sadness that the decline brings. we find the words of matthew 6:33 (niv) important: “but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” the order is important here. it is about seeking the kingdom of god first and then the other things will be given as well. churches tend to focus on the other things first, such as 1 we like to extend a heartfelt thank you to the many people who have been involved in the making of this article. the ministers, students, colleagues, diaconal workers, theologians and personal friends that have reflected on different drafts of our article and the preceding work have been essential in shaping our thinking and making this article possible. 6 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18728 church growth, the involvement of younger generations, or the social standing of the church. focusing attention on the kingdom of god helps churches to detach themselves from “these things”, to live more carefree lives and to experience what has already been given by god. this takes courage and might cost us more than we like. this article is intended to theoretically develop the distinction between crisis 1 and 2 further and to bring it into a broader conversation with colleagues. our main question is: what is the nature of these two crises and how do these crises relate to each other? the two crises of the church we distinguish two crises of the church. crisis 1 is the decline of the church. crisis 2 is that churches forget what they are called to. both are related, but it is important to distinguish them. crisis 1 is the crisis in which we “happen” to find ourselves. it is the situation of many churches in recent decades, in most western societies, including the netherlands. crisis 2 is in fact a permanent crisis because, as sinful human beings, we constantly forget, ignore and frustrate our calling in ever new and ingenious ways. we should not be surprised that as a church, we do the same.2 the good news is that crisis 1 can help churches pay attention to crisis 2. however, this is not a given, because crisis 1 also evokes other reactions. but first we review the current state of the church in the netherlands. the state of the church we see three different trends.3 the first, major trend for dutch churches is decline. it is clear to all that things are not going so well for the church in the netherlands. this has been going on for decades and, with a few exceptions, affects almost all denominations and churches. the decline makes many people so despondent that they no longer see the good things that already exist. the decline of the church in the netherlands has been documented in various ways. the social and cultural planning office (scp) found in 2022 that more than 50% of the dutch consider themselves to be non-believers. this proportion is growing: in the period from 1991 to 2018, there was a sharp increase of non-believers from 16% to 29%. the netherlands is now one of the most secular countries in europe (de 2 cf. berkhof (1990, 426) who writes: “to a great extent official church history is the story of the defeats of the spirit.” 3 here we will give only a brief overview of these trends. for more details and references to empirical research see our article (de roest et al. 2023). 7 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18728 hart and van houwelingen 2022: 9). this trend is expected to continue, partly due to an ageing membership base of the mainline churches. even the more conservative denominations have started to decline in recent years, partly due to falling birth rates (wijma 2022). at the same time, however, there are also signs of new things happening in churches, or signs of surprising resilience. this is a second trend we see.4 churches and church members are finding ways to continue what they were already doing or finding new ways to be church. some congregations are growing or showing a new vitality. these new developments are much less visible than the bigger picture of closure and decline. yet, they are just as important to understand the situation of the church today. incidentally, in appreciating both new and old initiatives, it is important to see whether they address crisis 2 or are repair attempts to defuse crisis 1. we think new initiatives are not necessarily better at addressing crisis 2 than old practices of church. more on this later. the small signs of renewal and resilience do not counterbalance the decline in terms of numbers or social impact. the new that is coming cannot, at least in the short term, properly replace what has been lost. what was, will not return. it is important to make room for lament and mourning over what has been, or will soon be gone (cf. keifert 2006: 36). the third trend we notice is that of a shyness, awkwardness or embarrassment in living out and talking about faith. the protestant minister wim dekker summarises this as geloofsverlegenheid (dekker 2011). the development of the loss of a sense of transcendence is evident in dutch society as a whole and has its impact on churches. dekker argues that the crisis of the church is not merely a loss of members and buildings, but it is a crisis of faith: this embarrassment, certainly among theologians, but also among church members, has to do with the fact that we are much more secularised than we realise ourselves. we no longer think from the reality of god, as the first. (dekker 2011: 174. translation by authors) wim dekker’s analysis is widely shared. people sense that the crisis is not just about decline, nor do they believe that new initiatives of being church will magically help 4 there are several books and articles describing what is happening with regard to these new initiatives in the netherlands. see de roest et al. 2023; de reuver and vellekoop 2019; stoppels et al. 2020; stoppels 2021. for academic research see verburg-janssen 2024 and de jonge 2022. 8 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18728 the church.5 we think wim dekker and others are exposing a deeper problem, which corresponds to what we call crisis 2. it is important to note this multiple face of developments in the church: there is a general, ongoing, structural and painful decline, new things are happening and people are sensing that there may be a deeper problem to do with our faith. we will describe this in more detail later. but first, let’s take a closer look at how people respond to crisis 1. crisis 1: three responses how do churches respond to decline? we distinguish three ways churches respond to crisis 1: namely cramp, repair and addressing the calling of the church. response 1: cramp a common reaction is cramp: people channel their effort and energy into continu ing with what is still there.6 the word “still” in particular is a common and revealing word. it indicates that people are aware that what they do and have is unlikely to last for long, but they carry on anyway. one of the most common questions asked by churches is: how do we find volunteers and ministers? a logical question, but one that focuses on maintaining the status quo. most people don’t think much about the fact that churches could be something completely different. they just go on doing what they are doing until they cannot go on. often people do not feel the space to rediscover what their church’s calling is in their own context. cramp – or even paralysis – is common in churches. cramp is a dead end. crisis 1 is too profound to ignore for long. churches in cramp will eventually close or merge with another church. response 2: repair another response to crisis 1 is the desire to fix the church system. this manifests itself in all sorts of proposals to address the symptoms of the crisis. churches invent ways to involve more people in their faith community, they want to be relevant to the neighbourhood, or they start programmes for better faith communication in a post-christian society. crisis 1 is then effectively a problem to be solved. above all, 5 for recent examples see van dijk and van leerdam (2023) and van der deijl (2023), who are protestant church ministers reflecting on the crisis of the church. 6 not just in the netherlands. in her study of how churches in the us deal with change, sociologist nancy ammerman found that “inertia” was the most common response to decline: “proceed with business as usual” (ammerman 1997: 63). 9 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18728 churches are expected to adapt to the new reality and come up with creative, innovative ways to overcome the crisis. repair is often presented as an alternative to the cramp. people are sold the idea that this new method will help them remain or become again a vital, growing and young church. this is not always said explicitly. church organizations developing new programmes and methods are well aware of how tough and complicated church development is. however, implicitly, the new methods and programmes give the message: there is a solution to your problem. this subtext can make churches despondent when change does not occur or when they cannot start a programme due to a lack of resources. the repair approach is alive and well in dutch churches. not infrequently, examples of successful churches are studied to discover the success factors that other churches should benefit from. in this light, it is interesting to pay attention to what people cite as examples of successful churches. for example, the nieuwe kerk in utrecht is often seen as a success within the protestant church. the nieuwe kerk remarkably succeeds in involving many young people, aged in their twenties and thirties. a publication on this church (westerbeek 2021) shared the lessons to be learned from their experience. however, dirk de bree, one of the ministers of the nieuwe kerk, is aware of the risks of church growth, and describes the challenges his church faces: as the church attracts more and more members from all parts of the city, there is less involvement in the immediate area around the church building. the missionary dna is less visible. this has also to do with the energy needed to keep ‘things going’. again, there is always a risk that as a growing church we become so busy with ourselves that the mission falls by the wayside. (de bree 2019, translation by authors). what is considered “successful” here is revealing. it says something about where people set their priorities. for us, the focus of many on these successful churches tells us above all else that most churches would also like to attract many (preferably young) people, especially to their sunday worship. the idea that you, as a believer, are church for the purpose of something other than church, namely the kingdom of god, is usually secondary. small, ageing churches are not held up as examples of successful churches, even though they can do just as well (or better) what they are called to do. a church made up of twelve frail elderly people being with refugees may be much more engaged in its calling than a large church with many churchgoers. but few will define that small church as a success. in fact, any church renewal can be used as a way to repair the church. the pioneering programme of the protestant church in the netherlands could also be seen as a repair approach. one of the reasons for pioneering was a study by the dutch research 10 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18728 agency motivaction,7 which showed that of the eight “mentality milieus” motivaction identified in dutch society, only two were actually well represented in the protestant church. pioneering was an attempt to involve people from these other groups in new forms of church. this is also reflected in the protestant church’s definition of pioneering: “a pioneering place is a new form of church, for people who do not go to church.” (stoppels et al. 2020: 5). we do think that a pioneer church can be a place where people rediscover the vocation of the church. there are pioneers who, in their solidarity with marginalized people, rediscover what the gospel means in their context. however, this addressing of crisis 2 does not happen automatically. quite often pioneers are “bothered” by the idea that their pioneering place must ensure that the existing church can continue to exist. they are often asked by people from the inherited church: “so, when will we see these people in church?” in this sense, the repair approach can damage new initiatives. they sometimes succumb to the added burden of having to be a solution to crisis 1. intermezzo: why repair does not work there are three reasons why we think repairing the church does not work. the first and simplest reason is that the repair approach underestimates the depth of secularity. our culture is marked by what andrew root8 calls “secular 3” – most people in our society are not so much against faith, but find faith, church and god so irrelevant that it no longer has any meaning for their lives. “secular 3, then, looks sideways and skeptically at any definition or articulation of human experience that draws on anything other than the immanent” (root 2017a: 139; root 2017b: 110). churches find themselves in a situation where what they do and are is considered strange, irrelevant and even inappropriate by much of contemporary society. churches cannot do much about this. they can have the best programmes, train fantastic pastors and have the most beautiful buildings with modern kitchens, but at the end of the day, most people still find church irrelevant. in practice, churches hardly acknowledge this cultural situation. they react within the frame of “secular 2”. this is an older version of secularity. the idea of secular 2 is that the secular and the sacred are two separate domains. the church’s job then is to get people into the christian domain or keep them there, thus reducing the secular domain.9 it turns out that many churches and believers think that there is a solution 7 not publicly available. 8 root here follows smith’s (2014) interpretation of charles taylor’s book a secular age. 9 we will not elaborate here on what secular 1 is, but for completeness: secular 1 is the model in which the secular and sacred are present in the same domain and the sacred can enter the secular at all sorts of moments. 11 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18728 to secularization somewhere. in this line of thinking, it is difficult, but not impossible, to return to a more pious and christian society, where secularity can be reduced. a second reason why repair does not work builds on the first: it maintains the illusion of a solution. as long as churches still believe that the crisis is solvable and they themselves are repairable, they will feel the temptation to put their energy into repair. the thinking is: if only we work hard enough, put in place the right structures or believe the right things, our church will become vital and healthy again. as long as this illusion persists, there will be churches that spend a lot of time and energy trying to get their own organisation in order. for this last thought, we are indebted to andrew root who traces how the focus on change keeps churches on a treadmill (root 2021: 13). constant change is an aspect of today’s society. churches try to adapt to (increasingly rapid) change. what churches often fail to understand is that this desire for change brings its own problems, because behind every change there is a new change on the horizon. in short, the solution for churches is not the next successful repair programme. this brings us to a third reason why the repair approach does not work: it keeps drawing churches’ attention to themselves. in our view, this is the most fundamental reason why the repair approach can be problematic. churches can use their repair frenzy to keep themselves busy and feel like they are doing good. it helps churches to avoid paying attention to crisis 2. the busyness that is connected to crisis 1 is an obstacle to receiving christ and keeps a church away from the kingdom of god. and that is a temptation that people and churches constantly fall for. response 3: calling the only thing left is to get off the treadmill. this is the moment when you can stop focusing on yourself and instead, direct your attention towards the goodness of god that surrounds you, and learn to receive it. root also moves in this direction. he makes a case for transformation which he defines as an “invitation into grace”: “[transformation] comes with an arriving word, ‘peace be with you’ ( john 20:19). transformation is not the necessity to speed up but the need to open up and receive” (root 2021: 15). churches therefore need not focus on themselves, but on that which comes from outside, and which only needs to be received. doing this however is not easy for churches. we recognize what rooms says in his study of missional churches and their relationship to the world: “god is at work in the world, but it is very hard for local churches to believe this” (rooms 2019: 190). while crisis 1 can obscure a church’s calling, some churches will need to decline before they can pay attention to what they are meant to do. as paas says: “in a time of decline we can rediscover what a church really is: a celebrating community through which god’s salvation is realised. it is very likely that many congregations 12 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18728 will first have to become smaller in order to see this again” (paas 2015: 221, translation by authors). in this sense, crisis 1 can also be a blessing for some churches, helping them get to the question of what their calling is. particularly churches who have attempted all possible solutions and have arrived at the conclusion that their crisis is unsolvable, and they are unable to fix themselves, have the opportunity to question the reasons behind all their efforts. and that question takes them in the right direction, namely towards their calling as a congregation. this is something jonna discovered in her research of a diaconal faith community: that decline was one of the reasons to look for other ways of being church (van den berge-bakker 2023: 26). not all churches do this. we also encounter churches that consciously or unconsciously choose the option of slow but sure death. but some are letting go of the pressure to be successful, big or relevant. they let go of the idea that they first need enough (young) churchgoers, volunteers, money and buildings to fulfil their mission. crisis 2: we forget the church’s calling we have already said quite a lot about crisis 2, but it is good to be more specific here about what we mean by it. we believe that crisis 2 has to do with the church forgetting its calling. there are many answers to the question of what its calling actually is, but we start with the idea that the church exists for the purpose of the kingdom of god. church as sign, foretaste and instrument of the kingdom we take the view that the church is called to be “sign, foretaste and instrument” of the kingdom of god this triad that has been in use, in different versions and variations, in missional literature.10 we think it is helpful, because it diverts attention away from church, without diminishing the importance of church itself. the triad is often associated with the protestant missiologist lesslie newbigin (cf. goheen 2000: 33). newbigin corrected the instrumental approach of hoekendijk, who saw church only as “a means in god’s hands to establish shalom in this world” (hoekendijk 1964: 24). besides newbigin, there are many other theologians who characterize church in similar ways. according to the roman catholic theologian borgman the church’s right to exist “stands or falls with whether it is what it is called to be” (borgman 2016: 40ff). borgman comments: “the church’s task is to make clear – she is the ‘sign’ – and to promote – she is the ‘instrument’ – that people belong together and take into account in their actions that they are dependent on each other, and that together 10 see for example guder (2015: 54–5 and 74). 13 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18728 with the rest of creation they are connected to god” (borgman 2016: 41, translation by authors). the protestant theologian berkhof emphasizes that the church should be oriented towards the world, on the basis of its identity as a community. the church is then the “firstfruits of god’s purposes, as the experimental garden of a new humanity” (berkhof 1990: 419). berkhof mentions that church is a “foretaste” and that the “apostolary orientation of the church is grounded in her communion with her lord as well as in that of her members among each other” (berkhof 1990: 418). while moltmann does not seem to use the “sign, foretaste and instrument” triad, he very clearly sees the need for the church to be directed to the kingdom of god. he argues: “‘christianity’ has its essence and its goal not in itself and not in its own existence, but lives from something and exists for something which reaches far beyond itself” (moltmann 1993: 325). the church then is transformed by this “horizon of eschatological hope”. on this basis the church can “resist accommodation” and can say “something peculiar … to the world” (moltmann 1993: 305). summarizing, many theologians see the calling of the church as being directed towards the kingdom. relating this to our distinction, we argue that when the church addresses crisis 2, it points to the other reality of god, which it does not control and on which it itself depends (sign). nevertheless, we should expect that in every church there is something to taste of the kingdom (foretaste) and that what happens in and through the church contributes to god’s good world (instrument). thus, while there is something at stake, the church is freed from an unattainable compulsion to be perfect. it allows a church to seek god’s goodness without having to realize it. the relationship between crisis 1 and 2 how do crisis 1 and 2 relate to each other? firstly, we think the order is important.11 focusing on crisis 2 is not going to solve the problems with crisis 1, but focusing on your vocation does put crisis 1 in a different light. secondly, this orientation requires an attitude of receiving, and this is a different response from that often seen in a response to crisis 1. order if the church is focused on the kingdom of god, as we argue above, this means that the church must first address crisis 2. this is the actual crisis of the church. 11 we do not go into detail here, but this reasoning connects with what has been called the “ chalcedonian pattern”, where the hierarchical asymmetry between the divine and the human is important. karl barth’s ecclesiology is built around this idea (cf. bender 2005). 14 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18728 addressing crisis 2 means the first question of churches should be what the church’s calling is and listening very carefully to this calling. you can expect that calling to come from outside. crisis 1 will not be automatically solved by paying attention to crisis 2. it does not prevent shrinkage. far from it. the church might stay small and insignificant. however, distinguishing between crisis 1 and 2 might help faith communities to see what they are doing, and take the edge off the panic that churches are experiencing. this does not mean that crisis 1 is not important. the decline is a sad thing because many things that are dear to us are disappearing. buildings, volunteers, well-trained workers et cetera are all important. knowledge of how to engage with young people, set up organisations properly and develop missionary strategies are important. however, our point is that these should be in the service of what you are called to as a church. reflecting further on this aspect of order, we believe that the church is born in the context of the kingdom and not the other way around. this is reminiscent of bonhoeffer who says that the church is where christ is and is actualised by the spirit. he himself cites as an example a conversation between two believers, which he also calls church: where the brother speaks to the brother, christ is in the middle (matthew 18:20) – there he stands as the middle between them. this is love – this is how the spirit actualises the church, not by words or claims, but by what happens between the members of the congregation. (bonhoeffer 2018: 114 translation by authors) so the church happens in ever-changing places and formations. it is often assumed that the concept of church is already fully understood, leading us to believe that we only need to identify alternative methods through innovative theological reflection. our thesis is that our understanding of the concept of church is yet to be fully realized, and its discovery is only possible through listening to our calling and following christ. the church, in turn, is considered as a divine gift from god, which is actualized (bonhoeffer) by the spirit of god. how church is actualized can be different for every situation. this approach is a quite radical departure from missional literature that is concerned with “new forms of church”. when the focus of the church is on the kingdom of god, the form the church takes is of secondary importance. again, that does not mean that form is not important, but rather that form follows calling, and not the other way around. thinking in this way about order might help theologians and practitioners to prioritize and evaluate what they are doing and thinking. a case in point is the work of michael moynagh (2012, 2017), who offers one of the best, practice-based works on what happens in new ecclesial communities, creatively 15 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18728 linking ideas and theories from different fields. his work has been influential in the pioneer movement, in the uk, the netherlands, switzerland and other countries (cf. müller 2016). however, his focus on work can be misused in a repair approach. while moynagh argues that the church should be shaped by the kingdom of god, he focuses most of his attention on the church itself and how it can be adapted to changing circumstances. this makes his work vulnerable to be used as a solution to crisis 1. receiving crisis 1 puts people in an activist mode. something has to be fixed, namely the church. to be directed to the kingdom, however, requires an attitude of receiving. being attentive to god’s kingdom will make one receptive to what god is already giving, in and outside of the church. churches that focus on the kingdom of god, even if they are just a small group of people, have the space to experience what is already given to them. they can receive who and what comes their way as a special gift from god. as samuel wells says, churches that focus on what god gives will experience abundance and joy: abundance belongs with wonder. it is the conviction that if something is of god, there is no shortage of it; that joy lies in learning to live the things god gives in plenty, while misery awaits those who set their hearts on the ephemeral objects of scarcity. (wells 2015: 130) addressing crisis 2 helps churches to realize they are working in a different economy, the economy of abundance. significance for church and theology what can the distinction between crisis 1 and 2 mean for church and theology? first, we think that naming and defining crisis 1 and 2 helps to see what is important first, and what is important next. there are many theologians who have written good things about crisis 1 and 2, without using these names. so crisis 1 and 2 are seen, but often discussed interchangeably. this is not surprising as in daily practice these crises get mixed up, but our simple distinction can help separate the goats from the sheep. for example, it can help a church that has to make a decision about which of two church buildings they are to close. the question, “what are we called to be here and now?” is different from “in which building can we continue sunday worship service for as long as possible?” thinking about their calling will lead churches down a different path, which, we believe, will bring more joy and surprise (and who knows, maybe also a full church on sundays, but that will be of secondary importance). 16 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18728 second, if focusing on the kingdom of god is the most important thing for churches, then this also demands something of theological method. theology has a tendency to degenerate into expert knowledge. the demands placed on theology in the academy, but also the great challenges involved in decline and secularization, lead many people to call for more knowledge and further research. while we have nothing against this (and contribute to it – this article is, of course, itself an example of this), we think that here, too, the order is important. to get a little more concrete: our approach calls for a theological method of discernment with a participatory action approach, where ordinary people who have insights on the kingdom have an important voice. this is a different approach from the ivory tower approach that so often characterises theology.12 we are indebted for this thought to theologian clare watkins, who sees “enabling a culture for discernment” (watkins 2020: 235) as a central task of the church. discernment encompasses a very different set of skills from the models of change or missionary strategies used for crisis 1. this does not mean that this expert knowledge is not important, but rather that it is not the most important. change starts with discernment and living out god’s good world. this is something you can do with all the people around you, including those who ‘happen’ to come your way and may not belong to your faith community. so this approach also puts into perspective what theologians (including ourselves), organizational experts or disruptive innovators have to offer. a church becomes a community where people together discern the goodness of god. as a result, a church might start doing things differently. if this is the result of a collective process, people will be less inclined to want to maintain what is and more likely to try out an alternative. this is the place where theology starts. third, we think it is important to make eschatology more central in ecclesiology. numerous churches are concerned about the future but consider it solely from their existing situation. then they have a lot to worry about. eschatological thinking works the other way round: you understand everyday existence in the light of what is to come. this approach comes from moltmann. as he says: “the thinking of christian hope draws god’s future into the present and thus opens the present to god’s future new world” (moltmann 2019: 122).13 a church that thinks eschatologically identifies for itself and with others where the kingdom of god (for that ís the future) can already be found and rejoices in it. often church is thought of too narrowly and too imprecisely – too narrow because we don’t 12 although the ivory tower also has its uses, see de roest (2020: 253). 13 original quote: “das denken der christlichen hoffnung zieht gottes zukunft in die gegenwart hinein und öffnet damit die gegenwart für die zukünftige neue welt gottes.” translation by authors. 17 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18728 call things that happen in everyday life “church”, and too imprecise because there are many things that we call church that actually are not. eschatological thinking lends the church a clarity that can be put to good use. in its relationship with the world, the church is not just a religious community, it is pointing to “the coming reshaping of the whole present world system” (moltmann 2004: 338). and in this capacity, it is critical of the world around it and embodies itself – if all goes well – a different reality. conclusion concluding, we hope that the distinction between crisis 1 and 2 will help churches and theologians to focus their attention on the things that matter, in the proper order. we believe this distinction has been seen or felt by many people. by putting it in words and reflecting theoretically on the relation between the two, we hope to provide language that helps people discern what they are called to do and discover god’s wonderful abundance in doing it. we hope that the distinction will inspire new empirical research into what the calling of the church might be. we believe this does not necessarily involve an organised, large, and successful church, but that it does involve a church that loses itself and finds new life for the sake of christ. about the authors jonna van den berge-bakker (ma) is a phd student at the protestant theological university, utrecht, the netherlands. she studies faith communities that engage with people in vulnerable positions, to discover theology from the margins. she also works at the headquarters of the protestant church in the netherlands as an expert on church and poverty. dr marten van der meulen works as a senior lecturer sociology of religion at the protestant theological university in utrecht. he also works as strategic researcher at the national headquarters of the protestant church in the netherlands. he is co-leader of a research project titled “future-oriented church”. he studies how people in fragile churches in the secularised northern provinces of the netherlands tell about their experiences of the kingdom of god and reflects with them on how church can emerge in that context. contact: mvandermeulen@pthu.nl 18 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18728 references ammerman, nancy. 1997. congregation and community. new brunswick, nj and london: rutgers university press. bender, kimlyn j. 2005. karl barth’s christological ecclesiology. barth studies. aldershot, hants, england; burlington, vt: ashgate. berkhof, hendrikus. 1990. christian faith: an introduction to the study of the faith. rev. ed., repr. grand rapids, michigan: eerdmans. bonhoeffer, dietrich. 2018. de levende kerk. teksten over de kerk 1932–1933. 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netherlands between 1892 and 2015. amsterdam: buijten & schipperheijn motief. https://theoluniv.ub.rug.nl/561/ https://theoluniv.ub.rug.nl/561/ ecclesial futures 2024 1 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19017 a r t i c l e doi: 10.54195/ef19017 characteristics of a ‘common good building’ church of england church: a case study in a uk southern coastal town ian terry abstract this paper investigates the question, what does a “common good building” church, that partners with others to serve homeless people, look like? this investigation will assist church leaders in focusing resources and training on an outworking of the missio dei that aspires to common good building. the method employed for this investigation was a critical correlation which prioritized the givenness of god within the constructivist approach of producing a qualitative grounded theory. this theory tested qualitative data from focus groups against theoretical sensitizing and further tested it in a “common good building” conference and in abductive reflection with a range of theologians. the research outcome emphasizes the significance of respectful listening in empowering, particularly those with subjugated knowledge of themselves. further conversations are needed between understandings of mission and those of work. how power is used and abused is critical; subsidiarity is central to mission. keywords: partnering, common good, empowering, listening, human dignity, work, subsidiarity 1 introduction in this paper i explore those qualitative characteristics of an anglican parish church which have emerged from fieldwork focused on what to do about homelessness. the fieldwork was central to a research project exploring churches building common good in partnership with others. this research project was a personal and professional response to my repeated horror at finding homeless people all around me in my daily life as a parish minister. 2 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19017 homelessness was very much in the public eye in the uk southern coastal town where i ministered. homeless people camped in churchyards and slept in shop doorways, under the pier, in the woods and on park benches. soup kitchens were so well established that there was competition between them. food banks proliferated. the same people were seen, year after year, and some were vulnerable teenagers. although this town had a tourist industry, finance and creative digital sectors, and thriving universities, nonetheless, there were also two residential areas of significant deprivation. i felt impotent at the increasing complexity of the problem, locally as well as nationally. what became obvious to me was that homelessness was a bigger challenge than any one agency could solve by itself; partnerships with others were necessary. the question for me, leading a parish church, was “can a parish church build such partnerships?” first, i explored that question in practice by beginning to build relationships locally. secondly, i analysed the effectiveness of those partnerships in addressing the root causes of the national problem of homelessness. in doing this, i discovered common good thinking, as set out in catholic social thought, as a tool for analysis. as i delved more deeply into understandings of the common good it became clear that because all human context is contingent and continually changing, so “common good building” is a process. it is most effective for change as a process in which one actively engages with others to build what is agreed upon as the common good, rather than as a system of thought that one might apply in practice. agreeing can be elusive. in my daily ministerial practice, this took me some time to learn. as a result of that learning, i use “common good” primarily as part of an adverb and will refer mostly in this paper to “common good building”. i discovered, after some well-intentioned failures in offering practical help, that “common good building” is about negotiating inclusive empowerment. in this way of trial and error, i realized that partnerships for sustainable empowerment of homeless people must include them as active agents for their own good. this became a guiding principle (the research ethics principle, “not about me, without me”) as i researched inclusive partnerships for “common good building” in the coastal town in which i was parish priest. my experience as a parish priest suggested to me that partnerships with others are fundamental to “common good building”. in the research project described here, i tested this initial hypothesis by taking a sample of practical partnership workings. the focus of that partnership working was on homelessness in the town. during the research project, it became clear that for churches to be effective in partnerships for 3 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19017 common good building they must aspire to, and demonstrate in practice, characteristics that i shall draw out in this paper. research ethics the source of my research ethics cover was the doctoral programme (dth winchester) in which i was engaged. informed consent was obtained from all participants; it covered future publication of research outcomes as well as the initial recording and transcribing of conversations in focus groups. in describing the research to participants, at this very early stage, i summarized the main common good principles as understood within catholic social teaching (cst) and invited participants to comment in focus groups on their experience of the practice of those principles. thus, participants were explicitly invited to contribute in two ways: first, to share their own lived experience of homelessness; secondly, to frame it, to whatever extent they were comfortable, within understandings of common good building. research methodology critical correlation is a methodology combining a constructivist social sciences approach of seeking empirical qualitative data to analyse and evaluate in forming a qualitative grounded theory, with the critical realist approach of my own christian faith. swinton and mowat (2006: 83, 95) propose critical correlation as prioritizing the givenness of god within a mutually respectful conversation between theology and social sciences. from a constructivist perspective, this approach is interpretive and dialogical. from a critical realist perspective, it approaches belief with the respect that swinton and mowat refer to as critical faithfulness; that is, christian belief, open to exploration and cherishing mutually critical dialogue (2006: 95). the practical theologian pete ward helped my understanding, speaking of knowledge of god as “a spiritual discipline of participation in divine being” and suggested that the pursuit of this discipline needs both subjective faith and objective analysis (2018). for me that meant acknowledging where i was situated not just geographically but also spiritually and in terms of my personal beliefs about god. epistemologically, situation forms knowledge and understanding; and therefore i acknowledge my faith as inevitably personal. this sits, in critical correlation, alongside the qualitative analysis of grounded theory. 2 building grounded theory as qualitative analysis, i built a theory that was grounded (glaser & strauss (1967) 2006; corbin & strauss 1998), using data from rough sleepers and those who work with them; altogether, 80 people contributed. meeting between december 2018 and march 2019, a sample of rough sleepers and others, meeting in five focus groups, 4 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19017 shared their situation. themes emerging from these focus groups were shared at a “common good building” conference facilitated by the trust together for the common good (t4cg) and also beforehand (by email) and in personal conversation. the nature of the trauma experienced by homeless people – differently for each person – renders impossible any attempt at uniformity of approach. that is usual with qualitative research. the research outcomes will therefore be like a series of snapshot photographs which make no claims for universal application. different participants might well have given different outcomes. this research is specific and personal and should not be likened to quantitative research. nonetheless, these outcomes can, i believe, enrich understandings of human meaning. during the afternoon of the conference, participants talked in four more focus groups. the models or pictures, shared in this paper, of “common good building” churches emerged from my reflection on analysis of transcripts of those discussions. the analysis and the interpretive lens through which i saw the transcript data, and from which i formed these four models, inevitably reflects how i was formed by my own lived experience and the range of partners with whom i chose to reflect upon it. a significant partner with whom i have reflected has been the trust t4cg, which has its theoretical roots in catholic social teaching (cst). further, i have reflected on what emerged from the research using abductive reasoning (reed 2010: 41) to interpret the results. i see this method, “especially suited to believers engaged reading scripture and performing the liturgy” (reed 2010: 41), as consistent with my pastoral and spiritual practice as an anglican priest. 3 “common good building” as missio dei from this pastoral and spiritual perspective, i see common good building as central to god’s whole purpose, sometimes called the missio dei. quite simply, it is about sharing the wisdom of the heart, focused on the love of god as shown in the death and resurrection of jesus. for me, in practical terms, god’s mission (missio dei) was serving the town centre of my parish. i understand the whole mission of god as god loving the cosmos into fullness of life. we can be sure that god will not only love the church. equally, it would be inconsistent with the all-inclusive loving purposes of god for the church to be god’s only agency of loving. further, my research and parochial experience prompt me to believe that christians can learn much from such partners. on both grounds, therefore, the church can partner with others in serving this universal mission of god for loving all the cosmos, which is the missio dei. 5 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19017 for coherence in serving the missio dei, some churches identify five marks of mission (walls & ross 2008). cathy ross argues that these marks “form a good working basis for a holistic approach to mission” (2008: xiv). in the following i will lean on this understanding. this research on homelessness is located within the working out of the fourth mark of global mission; it is seeking to transform unjust structures of society. this incorporates david bosch’s overall view of mission, which “opens the door” for partnerships in god’s mission with a range of individuals and associations: the missio dei is god’s activity, which embraces both the church and the world, and in which the church may be privileged to participate (bosch 1991: 391). bosch’s understanding is that god’s activity is always ahead of the church and is not limited by it. seen thus, the spirit of god initiates and directs god’s mission. this was accepted by the roman catholic church in the vatican ii document gaudium et spes which says, referring to the social order and its development toward service to common good building: the spirit of god, who, with wondrous providence, directs the course of time and renews the faith of the earth, assists at this development. (vatican ii, 1966: 26) thus, it expounds mission pneumatologically, seeing the holy spirit as directing all development, in the church and in the social order of the wider world, towards common good building. the document adds: such progress is of vital concern to the kingdom of god, in so far as it can contribute to the better ordering of human society. (1966: 39) thomas aquinas (1948), a scholar whose writing has influenced many theologians, reconciled the political philosophy of aristotle with christian faith. in doing so, he argued that a just ruler or government must work for the “common good” of all. social groups find order by sharing a common goal; this is the common good, which is the whole network of social conditions which enable human individuals and groups to flourish and live a fully, genuinely human life. aquinas argues paradoxically that while law is an intelligent instruction directed to reason, it can also be coercive. that is easy to see with both eternal and natural law, because both are sufficiently general to make disagreement in principle hard; however, legitimate human law evolves to serve changing situations and can be open to a variety of interpretations and abuses. aquinas pointed to this danger in his summa theologiae 1:96: 6 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19017 someone exercises dominion over another as a free person, when he directs him to the proper good of the one being directed, or to the common good. … but the social life of a multitude is not possible, unless someone is in charge, who aims at the common good (1948: 4). whilst i agree with aquinas that social life benefits pragmatically from there being “someone in charge, who aims at the common good”, i suggest that such power can be abused, and therefore must be subject to accountability. from my ex perience in governance, accountability works most effectively when exercised by a quite small (8–10) local group who can meet regularly. i suggest that relationships of mutual exchange can develop over time in such a group. i am attracted to the insights of j. neville figgis cr, an anglican priest and historian who argued for seeing sovereignty in local groups or ‘associations’ (1913, 1914). this approach has been supported by david nicholls, an anglican theologian (1995) and by alastair redfern, a diocesan bishop (2009). they argue that “associations” can meet the need for local relationships of fellowship, solidarity and mutual support. churches can be such “associations”, promoting accountability, respect for human dignity and the dignity of work. this is true both individually and socially. cst suggests that relationships that facilitate “common good building” are underpinned by reconciliation, solidarity, participation, association, the operation of subsidiarity and careful stewardship of the natural world. i have been influenced by together for the common good (t4cg), which builds its understandings of the common good on biblical perspectives (2017: 3). it appropriates to the church the words of the prophet jeremiah, “seek the welfare of the city … for in its welfare you will find your peace” ( jer. 29.7 nrsv). t4cg (2017: 15) further appropriates for the church amos 5.14-15, suggesting that “common good building” has both ethical and spiritual dimensions: seek good and not evil, that you may live; and so the lord, the god of hosts, will be with you … hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate. (nrsv) 7 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19017 i suggest that these ethical and spiritual dimensions were focused sharply for the early christian community, as recorded by luke in acts: they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. … all who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising god and having the goodwill of all the people. (acts 2.42-47 nrsv) “having the goodwill of all the people” (v 44) on their hearts prioritizes the welfare of all people, as does “common good building”. this paper explains how, within a research project (dth) on partnerships for putting common good principles into practice, i have interpreted focus group data as showing four pictures of “common good building” churches. it will be suggested, on the basis of the empirical data, that such partnerships can benefit all concerned. the practical theologian dustin benac (2022: 119) shows that only two or three such partnerships are needed to improve the sustainability of northwest pacific coast churches and to create a sufficiently substantial base for resourcing mission. benac’s analysis of his local examples of churches in partnerships suggests that churches which partner to serve god’s mission can be more effective together than they are alone. my focus in this paper, however, is on what can be learned from the research on three local churches in what was my parish. it will give a snapshot picture, valid for that sample, and for the moment at which the snapshot was taken. as such, it bears comparison with other such ethnographic outcome pictures. as explained above (in building grounded theory), four pictures are here outlined of churches building the common good. they have emerged from focus groups consisting of rough sleepers and others. such churches: – affirm human dignity, giving voices to those who are vulnerable; – empower everyone; – affirm the dignity of work; – operate lateral subsidiarity, working “alongside”, sharing power. 8 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19017 3.1 affirm human dignity, giving voice to those who are vulnerable first, for human dignity to be affirmed, each person must be listened to and given respectful attention. a homeless man summed it up for me: talking like this is helping me. because i don’t talk about my problems to no-one. i normally keep it in. and then i’ll go in the corner and cry. you’ve got to accept the help and talk about your problems. (focus group, december 2018) secondly, there is no substitute for listening to such lived experience. a homelessness worker suggested that you do not know what it is like living on the streets until you have done it: if we’re going to collaborate, we need their voice, we need to hear them, we need to include them, because it’s their voice we’re representing. (group 2, conference) thirdly, one should not underestimate the boost that can be given to self-worth by knowing, in faith, that one matters to god. a rough sleeper spoke about his faith keeping him alive: i’m grateful to the lord jesus for being there. without him, there’s no way i’d be alive today. (focus group, december 2018). i found this gratitude in a significant minority of homeless people. moving to reflection on those three insights, i looked to the practical theologian eric stoddart as one who not only affirms those insights from his own pastoral experience (2014: 27), but also adds another dimension, namely, that of god’s future. stoddart recognized that, instead of looking backwards to understand the present, looking forwards gives hope, because the present can be understood through what is believed about the future. this can be a transformational insight for those who have lost their human dignity, for whom looking back is depressing and further compounds their loss. rough sleepers, whose past is traumatic, can be locked, psychologically and emotionally, into looking backwards. looking back at past trauma does not bring hope. “hopelessness” was said by one rough sleeper to be the main problem at the heart of homelessness. by contrast, hope is constructed by unlocking the toxic habit of looking back at past trauma. instead, one looks forward with hope for the future. rough sleepers can see 9 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19017 themselves through god’s eyes, and trust a god to whom all, with no exceptions, are of worth. anglican new testament scholar n. t. wright argues that nurturing such trust is the role of the church: a strong sense of the dignity and intrinsic worth of all human beings, made lively through explicit eschatological hope, is what the church brings to partnerships for building the common good. (2019: 190) a ‘common good building’ church can share tears and joys and find unexpected hope in the synergy and dynamism of partnerships. the anglican theologian a. m. allchin suggests that such synergy and dynamism are a lively participation in the love of god, where those who carry the pain of troubles discover freedom and peace: in the descent of god’s joy into the centre of our world, man’s spirit leaps up into union with god’s spirit, the world’s own power of life is released, its responsive and creative power rises up and participates in the eternal movement of love which is at the very heart of god himself. (1988: 77) i agree that it is that “eternal movement of love”, focused in worship, which seeks the perspective of god’s love. i see the aim as to participate in god’s epistemology of profligate relational love. therefore, i suggest that the common good building church can facilitate faith in god who offers unconditional cherishing. seen this way, all can look forward “through god’s eyes” with eschatological hope. they can see themselves with hope because they know themselves held within god’s epistemology of love. i have been helped in this understanding by jürgen moltmann (1981: 117), who embeds loving relationality at the heart of god and, therefore, at the heart of the outworking of the church’s mission; and also by n. t. wright, who writes explicitly about “the epistemology of love”: the point of love is that it is neither appraisal nor assimilation: neither detachment nor desire, neither positivist objectivity nor subjective projection. when i love i am delightedly engaged with that which is other than myself. (2019: 103) this paper suggests that a “common good building” church can gradually enable such an epistemology of love to take the place, for rough sleepers, of their deeply debilitating subjugated ways of knowing themselves. thus, churches that build common good empower others to reconstruct hope. 10 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19017 3.2 empower everyone empowerment starts with knowing that you are needed and that you also need others; witness a rough sleeper: if they need you, they’re giving you dignity. but if you need them, you’re giving them it. … and you’re creating and strengthening an empowering environment because you need them. (group 3, conference) an empowering church builds self-esteem. a local business partner agreed: their self-respect is diminished. and so, in addition to providing a bed and a meal, they also need to provide some opportunities for people to regain their self-esteem, their self-worth. (group 3, conference) i have chosen to reflect on empowering partnerships in company with chris beales, an anglican priest who has focused on the social and spiritual impact of housing in the north-east of england. in humanising work (2014), beales gives examples of his getting “alongside” working with co-operatives, credit unions and the challenge of mass unemployment. he affirms the insight of the anglican theologian timothy gorringe (2002: 38), that “people en-story and en-soul their places” and “their settlements shape their souls”. beales comments that in some communities, particularly where there are areas of new housing, “the place feels a bit ‘soulless’” (2014: 11). i reflect, personally, looking back on a diverse and busy town centre that i served as priest, that the soul, or essential spirit of life, in community needs nurturing no less than in each person. i suggest, therefore, that it is an empowering function of the church that it nurtures the spirit of life, personally and socially, in collaborative participation within the love of god. but homeless people rarely feel thus nurtured. they live with what michel foucault called a “subjugated knowledge” (foucault 1980: 71) of themselves and how they relate to the wider community. within this kind of knowledge, vulnerable people can see themselves as unworthy of help. they exclude themselves from the dominant discourse about how resource might be allocated. homeless people are typical of this epistemology of subjugated knowledge. this is akin to the practice of diminishing people by gaslighting. in this way, thought and self-perception become altered to only see oneself in a negative light – indeed, as achieved by turning down the gaslighting, and consistently presenting the one who is being dominated in semi-darkness. epistemologically this must change before people who have been diminished in self-esteem can be reintegrated into society. “common good building” 11 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19017 churches can focus their passion for justice on changing this damaging epistemology of subjugation into one grounded in love. to counter subjugated knowledge, local church members can assert the priority of relationships of mutual respect. alastair redfern, from his perspective as a bishop, emphasized understandings that are germane to this: for local churches this implies a challenge to move from beyond the network of groups which comprise a church (congregations, choir, toddlers, lunch club etc.) to serious engagement with associations. … this middle territory of groups and associations is the place where the agenda of the heart can be encountered, illuminated, challenged and changed. … associations frame and interpret the encounters of the heart. (2009: 16) redfern’s emphasis upon encounters of the heart speaks to me of mutually supportive relationships respecting dignity and empowering those who have lost self-respect. my suggestion is that this performs an epistemology of love by asserting that each person is cherished by god. churches are well placed to offer such encounters and doing so can be a characteristic of anglican “common good building” churches. my intuition is that “common good building” churches that are unafraid of experiencing what the anglican theologian terry biddington refers to as the “untamedness” of god (2014: 151) – the wildness and “otherness” of god – might better understand what it is to be homeless. my experience is that the “common good building” church is delighted (not threatened) to see that the “untamedness” of god is such that those outside the church often have a godly capacity to surprise ‘insiders’ with goodness, loving-kindness and joy. 3.3 common good building churches affirm the dignity of work an ex-rough sleeper emphasized the significance of having no work: most of the people out there are just hanging on to their dignity and are fighting to keep a job, and a home, but they’re sitting in agony at home. (group 3, conference) many homeless people are diminished because they have lost their jobs. a homelessness worker spoke of a man who got work, but struggled to keep it, before he got accommodation: i wake him up at five o’clock every morning, so he can go to work. but he still gets grief as a rough sleeper. (group 2, conference) 12 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19017 research transcripts tell me that property often cannot be rented without proof that one is in work and can pay the rent. the vicious circle is that it is difficult to get work if one admits to being of no fixed abode. negotiating this vicious circle can be exhausting and dispiriting. rough sleepers told me that “common good building” churches could offer personal mentoring as people face such discouragement, and also challenge bureaucracies to operate in more user-friendly ways. i reflect that churches that provide mentoring can help people understand that work belongs to the rhythm of a fully human life. such a life can hold together understandings of work, with leisure, with rest, with retirement and with worship. unless work and worship are integrated, churches can be peripheral to “common good building”, worship can appear to be mere escapism and irrelevant to people’s main concerns. i have benefitted, in understanding the implications of these reflections, from catholic social teaching. the encyclical laborem exercens identifies four issues: what work does for people; what work does to people; how workers take part in forming the work experience; and the impact upon the poor and vulnerable (reed 2010: 32). further, laborem exercens affirms the dignity and worth of human beings and summarizes why that is so: work is one of the characteristics that distinguish man from the rest of creatures … only man is capable of work, and only man works … thus work bears a particular mark of man and of humanity, the mark of a person operating within a community of persons. ( john paul ii 1981: 1) whilst this encyclical offers foundational thinking on work from a christian perspective, i have also benefitted from the insights of some anglican theologians. for example, frances ward comments: it makes life worth living – when the person slows down and works in a leisurely, balanced and humane way, with proper rest and a sense of purpose … the idea of god that lies behind this approach is a god who delights in being creative. (2019: 193) sadly, however, to delight in being creative is not the daily prospect for homeless people. i reflect that, for reintegration of homeless people into wider society to be lasting, “common good building” churches can promote balanced and humane ways of living, whereby one does not feel guilty about time spent delighting in creativity. i am grateful to the late john hughes, another anglican theologian, who makes a useful distinction between participation in the divine work of creation and sheer drudgery, which is the “necessary toil of subsistence” (2016: 60). hughes notes that 13 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19017 the sabbath is a model for the former and that “good works” for god endure into the new creation (2016: 55). similarly, nicola slee, another anglican theologian, helps me to understand that elusive work-life balance, writing about the sabbath as “a conversational space, which includes conversation with ourselves … but also conversation with the other” (2019: 113). i find slee’s conversational metaphor helpful in that it is relational, dynamic and focussed on mutual exchange. seen this way, the conversational metaphor for the divine work of creation is about creating space for a mutual exploration, a “knowing” that sits within the love of god; indeed, an “epistemology of love” (wright 2019: 103). this emphasis on mutual exploration coheres with the anglican ethicist esther reed’s assertion that god himself works, and that, at the heart of the godhead, “both god the father and the son are said to be working as they bring salvation and blessing to humankind” (2010: 13). therefore, reed, continues, “work, like love, is a way of saying ‘yes’ to life” (2010: 14). the catholic theologian william cavanaugh similarly analysed the human condition, saying that “humans need a community of virtue in which to learn to desire rightly” (2008: 9). my reflection on what rough sleepers have said, in the light of the scholars whose thoughts i have pondered, is that “common good building” churches can be just such communities of virtue, sharing in both the hope and the struggle. indeed, my experience is that “looking forward in hope”, as a christian, only transcends naïve optimism if it looks to the resurrection of jesus. esther reed makes a strong case for christians to avoid naïve optimism. rather, she says, christian realists derive truth not only from the observation of the things around us but from the event of the resurrection (2 corinthians 5:1-8) and hope of god’s kingdom to come. (2010: 24) and reed takes the understanding further, emphasizing that it is the working love of the risen jesus into which christians are called to participate. i resonate with her conclusion that ultimate hope and also “the strength to struggle for decent, humane work” can be gained from that participation (2010: 111) which can be seen as the vocation of the “common good building” church. 3.4 operate lateral subsidiarity, working alongside, sharing power this homeless man illustrates the difficulty of never having been cared for, nor learned to exercise agency for his own life: i didn’t have a childhood. it’s hard for me to have a normal life. and now i’ve got st  mungo’s and i’ve got this health bus. i’ve got workers here that actually get to 14 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19017 know me ... and ask me what’s best for me. they treat me like i’m a person not just a problem. (group 2, conference) the health bus, started by a local gp, is parked at a church hall and it performs the common good principle that “every person is worthy of respect, simply by virtue of being a human being” (together for the common good 2017: 23). it offers health care alongside other rough sleepers, where a trusting relationship can be forged with the doctor away from the stigma that rough-sleeping brings for those who need to visit local surgeries and a&e hospital departments. bureaucratic processes can depersonalize and accredited church representatives can have the skill, motivation and credibility to challenge that depersonalization. for example, a faith community representative told a group about the difference made by robust advocacy: i took one client into the housing department. they went through the whole thing, considering the vulnerable female i was talking about, who has learning disabilities and has the reading age of an eleven year old … told: “well, we’re not sure you’re vulnerable enough.” and it was only because i said, “well, i’m sorry. i disagree with you about the vulnerability.” then they took it up to management, then it went higher, and then they came back down and changed their decision. (group 2, conference) one participant spoke of one of the underlying difficulties inherent in helping rough sleepers to move permanently off the streets: there are some entrenched rough sleepers that do want to be on the outside. and because that’s their norm it’s very hard to change that. one said, “let’s have a flat so that when i feel like i’m panicking, and i feel really claustrophobic, i can go and put my tent up in the garden.” (group 4, conference) it became clear from the research data that sometimes a stabilizing period can be what is needed, so that, even though housed in a flat, we still go out on the street, because that’s a part of our lives. a transition period. (group 4, conference) my interpretive suggestion is that churches that are determined to build common good will not have an easy ride with people in authority, particularly if they can 15 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19017 access funding; but it is essential that they have the motivation and courage to challenge any approach that questions subsidiarity and reinforces power exercised from a depersonalized distance. an approach that is “alongside” and fluid might be able to meet traumatized people where they are. “alongside” and fluid describes pete ward’s model of “liquid ecclesiology” (2017). ward sees his model as expressing “the dynamic and fluid understanding of the church that comes from the complexity, ambiguity, and nuance that characterises the lived expression of the church” (2017:  5). this “liquid” model facilitates holding alongside each other, in lively lateral subsidiarity, the distinctive and developing contributions that each local partner brings to “common good building”. further, liquidity in local associations will involve what swinton and mowat call “complexifying” (2006: 13), in that it “takes account of the multi-layered and often contradictory data that qualitative research generates” (ward 2017: 56). here paradoxical embodiments of the common good can collaborate with mutual respect. ward finds paradox as suggestive of “the being of god in the world” (2017: 56), and he is clear that “paradox is not an incidental or an unfortunate byproduct in ecclesial existence” (2017: 56). for ward, this essential paradox requires fluidity in both ecclesial vision and operation. fluidity in lateral collaboration with others in local associations is best served by recognizing that people learn by doing, and they build the common good through sharing participatory forms of knowledge (2017: 69). this form of epistemology necessitates a church predicated on subsidiarity, with vocation seen as given by god, in creation, to all human beings. my suggestion is that this fluidity of approach can positively impact how church communities see themselves and the extent to which they welcome outsiders. churches aspire to be comprised of people of all ages. their members are human, and subject to peer group pressure. should they be tempted to make their church an “in-group” – and such temptations exist for all groups, with churches no exception – let them take to heart the common good building principle that “everyone is included, and no one is left behind” (together for the common good 2017). indeed, any “common good building” church aspires to be comprised of people of all ages, and “all sorts and conditions” of people. therefore, considerations about ultimate purpose are germane to churches, and they are intertwined with the extent to which one is subject to the power of others. for good or ill, this affects people of all ages. do children feel empowered at home and at school? to what extent do young people and students find lasting purpose as learners? what about those of all ages who are ill, disabled or members of minority groups? what self-understandings need to adapt to being at boarding school, in hospital, in prison, homeless or in a care home? how is purpose found in the inevitability of aging? 16 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19017 all these matters impact the “common good building” church. how does each one respond to these questions? 4 conclusion homelessness is the problem; there was a superabundance of empirical evidence all around me in my parish that to be homeless was traumatic. the obvious questions were, “what’s going on?” and “what can i do about it?” you start from where you are. i was leading a church. partnerships with others of goodwill seemed to focus energy in positive ways. so i tested it out. i discovered “common good building” as a tool for analysis and a bonding of common purpose. and this study was born. it is a study of the viability of partnerships for the common good, not about homelessness, as such; although i learned much on the research journey. the journey began with me starting from where i was, as leader of a church, and setting up friendly conditions (with normal research parameters, as described above) to see what emerged. a number of suggestions for addressing the problem emerged. some, focused on the central question about partnerships, are described in another paper. in this paper i have scrutinized, analysed and evaluated what emerged about the church. so it is that i have described qualitative research with rough sleepers focused on missional partnerships for “common good building”. i asked, “what might be the characteristics of a common good building church?” what has emerged emphasizes the significance for the church of respectful listening in empowering, particularly those with subjugated knowledge of themselves. there is a suggestion that further conversations would be fruitful between understandings of mission and those of work. equally clear as suggestions for further research are the questions of how power is used and abused and the centrality of subsidiarity to mission. my suggestion is that the “common good building” church can be local in its decision making and in enabling all participants to be active in deciding what is appropriate for their own well-being. hierarchies can be subverted in their controlling uses of power; sometimes it is local bureaucratic processes that are the problem, but very often it is churches, and making the problem an opportunity for empowerment can be as simple as ensuring that people have optimal agency for their own well-being. there is much more of this road to be travelled. i have suggested a few steps forward. 17 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19017 about the author ian terry, frsa, a research fellow of winchester university (dth 2021), worked for uspg teaching in lesotho, after studying at durham and york. he received his phd from st mary’s, strawberry hill, for researching values and characteristics of c of e schools, whilst diocesan director of education for hereford; he has also taught in guernsey, leatherhead and canterbury. ian studied at the ecumenical institute, bossey during formation for the priesthood at the college of the resurrection, mirfield. he was ordained in 1980 and has served in a rich variety of parishes, schools and a prison. he and his wife live in shropshire, near the river severn. contact: ianterry@live.co.uk references allchin, a. l. 1988. participation in god. london: darton, longman and todd. aquinas, thomas. 1948. summa theologiae. notre dame: christian classics. beales, chris. 2014. humanising work. milton keynes: rainmaker. benac, dustin. 2022. adaptive church. waco: baylor. biddington, terry. 2014. risk-shaped ministry. san jose: resource publications. bosch, david. 1991. transforming mission. new york: orbis. cavanaugh, william t. 2008. being consumed: economics and christian desire. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. corbin, juliet, and anselm strauss. 1998. basics of qualitative research. london: sage. figgis, j. neville. 1913. churches in the modern state. london: longmans, green. ———. 1914. the fellowship of the mystery. london: longmans, green. foucault, michel. 1980. power/knowledge. new york: pantheon. glaser, barney g., and anselm l. strauss. (1967) 2006. the discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research. london: aldine transaction. gorringe, timothy. 2002. a theology of the built environment. cambridge: cambridge university press. hughes, john. 2016. graced life. london: scm press. john paul ii (pope). 1981. laborem exercens. dublin: veritas. moltmann, jurgen. 1981. the trinity and the kingdom of god. london: scm press. nicholls, david. 1995. god and government in an ‘age of reason’. london: routledge. redfern, alastair. 2009. public spaces and private faith. delhi: ispck. reed, esther. 2010. work, for god’s sake. london: darton, longman and todd. slee, nicola. 2019. sabbath. london: darton, longman and todd. stoddart, eric. 2014. advancing practical theology. london: scm press. swinton, john, and harriet mowat. 2006. practical theology and qualitative research. london: scm press. together for the common good. 2017. calling people of goodwill: the bible for the common good. swindon: bible society. vatican ii. pastoral constitution on the church in the modern world. 1966. gaudium et spes. dublin: veritas. mailto:ianterry@live.co.uk 18 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19017 walls, andrew, and cathy ross. 2008. mission in the 21st century. london: darton, longman and todd. ward, frances. 2019. full of character. london: jessica kingsley. ward, pete. 2017. liquid ecclesiology. leiden: brill. ward, pete. 2018. notes on lecture at annual biapt conference. unpublished. wright, n. t. 2019. history and eschatology. london: spck. ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 2 a r t i c l e 25 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef16368 doi: 10.54195/ef16368 “they made space for me”: enhancing receptive generosity in an anglican diocese in aotearoa new zealand catherine rivera abstract drawing on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork with young anglican social justice activists in aotearoa new zealand, this article engages with romand coles’s theory of receptive generosity, and the theme of the western church as marginal, to explore why a particular anglican diocese was attracting new, millennial-aged members, most of whom did not grow up anglican. i consider how spaces of generous reciprocity were formed and enabled through living in intentional communities (ics) and being able to engage with pluralistic “broad table” spaces of discussion and dissent. these factors were part of what drew the research participants to this diocese and to anglicanism in general, as well as enhancing their social justice activism. my research shows the importance of intentionally making spaces of belonging for millennials and gen z aged people in a faith community, rather than hoping the status quo of the past will suffice. keywords: anglicans, intentional communities, marginality, social justice, young adults 1 introduction in 2017 i began my phd in social anthropology with the goal of trying to find out why a certain anglican diocese (referred to as “diocese j”) in aotearoa new zealand had many young people (‘millennials’) who were involved in social justice activism.1 i wanted to find out what anglicanism was contributing to their spiritual and activist formation. as an anthropologist and non-anglican, theological concerns were not 1 a very short definition of social justice activism is activities which attempt to bring to public attention issues that impede people or groups having fair and equal opportunities to engage in the society they live in, or which hinder human, and increasingly non-human, rights (plant 2001). 26 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef16368 part of my research question; the main theoretical lenses were civil society, participatory democracy and phenomenological becoming. however, out of my fieldwork emerged themes and observations that should interest church practitioners and those at the coal face of christian formation and discipleship. one of the main observations why my participants were present in diocese j was the opening of welcoming spaces for them and their interests. in the case of diocese j, these spaces were initiated by the bishop and the deputy bishop. these spaces were physical (in the form of intentional communities (ics) where many participants lived) and institutional (through the creation of bridging mechanisms and paid roles which allowed for ecclesial innovation). additionally, the anglican praxis and theology of maintaining a “broad theological table” was found to be attractive to the research participants. i will analyse these spaces through the conceptual themes of receptive generosity and being marginal to argue that a cultural change is required by many western churches to enable flourishing, life-giving and generous spaces of belonging for both their younger members and those who are outside their walls. 1.1 methods for this research project i used standard anthropological data gathering methods of interviewing (eight people), spending time with my participants through “hanging out” and going to events (church services, festivals, conferences, protest marches, meetings, workshops, training events), and examining written texts and materials. participant selection focused on anglican christians in a particular diocese in aotearoa new zealand who were involved in either activist2 or teaching activities which engaged with social justice issues (see the definition in footnote 1 above) and were aged between 22 and 35 years old, although there were some participants who ended up outside of this age range. permission was needed from the diocesan bishops to proceed with the project, once this was obtained, i was able to start contacting potential participants and setting up fieldwork opportunities. most of the fieldwork took place in a large city in new zealand (not named due to ethics permission agreement with diocese j). one of my main goals for my fieldwork was to experience my participants’ world as much as possible, which led me to using a methodological framework called sensory ethnography. this method encourages researchers to move from detached observation to using their body and its senses as a way of understanding the multiple 2 examples of activism activities undertaken by participants included public protests, blockading, gathering public submissions on government policy, awareness-raising events and sit-ins. 27 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef16368 and varied “lifeworlds” ( jackson 2016) that their participants inhabit. practically, this is done by co-creating and forming things together with one’s participants (pink 2015). for example, instead of observing a teaching session, the researcher teaches in that session; instead of watching others pray, the researcher writes a prayer and prays it together with their participants. for myself, this method involved joining in some of the spiritual formation practices of my participants, such as morning and evening prayer, observing lent and advent, using the anglican new zealand prayer book (church of aotearoa new zealand and polynesia 1989) for home devotions, and giving teaching sessions at some of my participants’ events. 2 making space for millennial christians the research questions i have engaged with throughout my graduate study come from trying to understand the contemporary issues that are important to, and formational in, the lives of young people who are christians. the participants in my both my masters and phd research were usually millennials, that is, the generation born between the early to mid-1980s up to the end of the 1990s (strauss and howe 2000), although in my phd project i also ended up with some gen z participants. millennials grew up in an era where the cold war had ended, and the world was becoming increasingly connected in cyberspace through digital technologies (gregg 2017). millennials in the west are one of the least christian generations ever if adherence is measured by attending a church (putnam and campbell 2010; ward 2013). while generally not interested in institutional christianity, both millennials and gen zers are often interested in spirituality, mindfulness, meditation and yoga practices (halafoff et al. 2020; jian lee 2018). considering the characteristics of millennials discussed in the literature, it could be assumed that they would not be attracted to or want to be part of an old religious institution like anglicanism. yet diocese j had a growing cohort of them, and this was a prominent reason why i chose to do my research there. my research found that one of the reasons for the growth of millennial anglicans in diocese j was that space was made for new groups to be incorporated into the diocese at a pace and in a way that let them “try out” being anglican. most of these groups were based in emergent or neo-monastic christianity. the emerging church movement (ecm) has been called “one of the most important reframings of religion within western christianity in the last two decades” (marti and ganiel 2014: abstract). the ecm has roots in evangelical christianity and is primarily made up of “recovering evangelicals” (bielo 2011; cox hall 2017). most academics frame it as a rejection of evangelical right-wing fundamentalism and/or consumeristic “megachurch” christianity (bielo 2011; marti and ganiel 2014). the emc began amongst 28 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef16368 young evangelicals in the early 1990s in the us and other anglophone countries such as the united kingdom, australia and new zealand (guest 2017). new zealand had some of the earliest emerging churches, such as cityside in auckland (taylor 2019). marti and ganiel’s (2014) definitions of the ecm note an anti-institutional stance, the importance of ecumenicalism/pluralism, and a tendency towards experimentation and creativity. gibbs and bolger (2005) include being highly communal, and the importance of practising hospitality and egalitarian participation. dissent and questioning are valued (packard and sanders 2013). most participants in the ecm are millennials or younger gen xers (cox hall 2018; moody and reed 2017). these millennial-aged christians “crave commitments that matter” (spellers et al. 2010: 145) and “value authenticity in relationships and connection with culture” (taylor 2019: 150). neo-monastics are a sub-group of the ecm (carter 2012). they often live in intentional communities (ics) and have a shared communitarian “rhythm of life” that structures each day and can include such activities as morning and evening prayer, practical work within the houses and out in local communities, and shared meals (bielo 2011). spiritual practices such as lighting candles, burning incense, contemplation, meditation, centring and liturgical prayer, silent retreats and observing the traditional church calendar are common in most neo-monastic communities (i. adams and mobsby 2010; cox hall 2018). ethnographic studies have found that many previously independent neo-monastic communities and emerging churches, what steve taylor (2019) calls “first expressions” groups, have aligned themselves with mainline3 churches such as the anglicans and methodists. this was the case in my research also. since “first expression” groups are already using contemplative practices and are attracted to the “old and ancient” (bialecki and bielo 2016), they find mainline churches a good theological fit (snider 2011). in anglicanism this process has been helped by the instigation of the fresh expressions initiative by former archbishop of canterbury rowan williams and based in the church of england (moynagh 2012; taylor 2019). many ecm/first expression leaders become anglican clergy; taylor goes so far as to call ecm/ first expression groups “vicar factories” (2019: 90). 2.1 formational spaces of intentional community intentional communities consist of groups of people who are not biologically related living together in a shared physical space such as a house/s or on communal land (meijering et al. 2007; miller 2010). at the time of my fieldwork (2018–mid 2019), there 3 mainline – the traditional and established denominations of christianity. protestant mainline denominations include anglican/episcopalian, presbyterian, methodist, lutheran, and baptist. some definitions include the catholic church, quakers and the reformed church. 29 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef16368 were four main ics across the diocese consisting of 200+ individuals, with focuses on teenagers/youth, university students, marginalized people and members of a specific, youth-focused, church. each ic usually consisted of a group of houses that formed one community. there were slightly different arrangements of space for each ic, and each had different demographics, consisting of combinations of single people, couples and families with children. the context to this space creation in diocese j was that its bishop, john,4 was not a “cradle anglican”. he had spent many years as the leader of a non-anglican, ecumenical missional community movement. john eventually became anglican and was ordained, and the intentional community movement he and his wife had founded became an anglican order. when john became bishop of diocese j the practice of intentional community living, which already had a presence within the diocese, was resourced and encouraged even more, becoming an important part of its formational discipleship. many of the leaders and members of who were part of the ic founded by john took on pivotal roles in the diocese. this in turn attracted other non-anglican missional and emergent churches/movements and individuals to connect with diocese j. bishop john offered to formalize the relationship with some of these groups through the designation of being a “pioneer mission unit”, which is essentially a trial period for the group to “try out” being anglican. eventually several of these groups became official anglican churches. many of my participants lived in one of the ics and described how this way of living created a space to belong through “grounding and rooting” in a physical locality. relationships and their formation and maintenance are one of the core values of neo-monastic living ( jones 2008). people joining these communities understand that they may not always get along with other members, and there will be tough times (kamau 2002). however, they covenant to work out their differences because the community is envisioned as a family. belonging was something that many who joined the youth ic were looking for, according to its leaders dan and adele. we were created to be in relationship, to belong, and society tells you … the only thing you need to belong to is yourself. community is the reflection of the spiritual truth that we are created to be relationship. one of our girls, she said “when i came here, i didn’t really have friends and now i have family, and i have a safe place where i can come home every day and know i’m supported. i’m not alone and i’m not lonely”. 4 all names of research participants are pseudonyms. 30 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef16368 another ic leader, pete, noted that the speed of change in contemporary society gave young people in their community anxiety about belonging and that lack of belonging amongst millennials had led to high rates of mental distress. there seems to be a sense of constant conflict in the world at the moment and a lot to care about … choice anxiety is huge. too many choices. what will i belong to? what will i give my energy to? … we have an epidemic in mental health, my guess is that most of our people have some form of anxiety [and there are] a lot of mental health disorders that are manifesting in young adulthood. the fast paced and chaotic temporality of the modern world was alleviated to some extent for my participants by the ics that they lived in having a structured “rhythm of life” that was patterned on monastic life, albeit a life that included work and study outside of the community. adele explained what a typical day would look like in their ic house. we eat together, and we have a rhythm of prayer. we do prayers at [name] church twice a day, at 8.15 am and 5.15 pm. everyone is expected to be there providing you don’t have work or university lectures. we share our resources, and we serve in the local parishes. we think that is a core part of doing life together. i noticed during my fieldwork that the times spent in ics where prayer rhythms were used daily gave structure to everyday life. the combination of repetitive, ritualized spiritual practices with a structured and set daily routine was calming. it took some of the anxiety out of everyday life because there were fewer choices to have to make. in a chaotic world, stability can be a greater need than continual and unpredictable change. anthropologist roy rappaport (1999) argued that structured communal rhythms are a form of “communitas” that binds groups together and repetitive everyday repetitions and tempos, such as the daily rhythms of life in the ics, impacts and forms the self as well as the community. anthropologist amy cox hall (2018: 689) agrees, pointing to the daily patterned rhythms of life in neo-monastic communities which “fashioned selves and altered worlds”. these rhythms can also create what heidegger referred to as “clearings” ( jackson 2013), spaces in everyday life which bring forth incremental changes of the self which can encourage transformation and a sense of belonging. on a practical level living in an ic relieved some of the financial pressure that was common to millennials living in urban centres. this included not having to worry about rental precarity and being able to share resources such as food through communal meals. for families with children, living in an ic provided extra hands to 31 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef16368 share childcare duties (sargisson and sargent 2017). all these aspects mentioned above freed up community members to spend more time on social activism and volunteer work. as davina said, it’s not just living together but sort of finding your people, the ones you share values with. particularly in your work having a community is grounding and i think that is necessary for activism … that community is vital in keeping me going. whether that is people that are going to be cheerleaders or people who say “yes i want to do this with you”, and people who are going to call me out and say “maybe you should rethink that”. thus, one of the main findings of my research was that providing structured spaces of belonging through the opportunity to live in an intentional community was an attractive option, and one of the factors why the research participants come to work in and be part of diocese j. 2.2 the pluralistic space of the broad table another factor that was appealing to my millennial participants was the pluralistic and “broad table” theological characteristics of anglicanism. for political philosopher william connolly pluralism is something that is created and maintained by the cultivation of specific attitudes and values; it requires living with tension in the in-between of multiple ideas, beliefs and ways of being; “it requires a tolerance of ambiguity” (connolly 2005: 4). anglicanism has historically had a “broad table” approach (rayner 2003) to maintaining unity amid doctrinal or theological differences by allowing for a variety of opinions to be voiced and listened to in anglican decision-making spaces (for example, the general synod). at the broad table, allowances are made for “competing ideas and incompatible ontologies” (adams 2018: 189), with all who lay claim to being anglican allowed a “seat at the table”. rayner (2003: 59) points out that being able to balance and hold competing tensions for the sake of a wider unity is a feature of broad-church anglicanism; “anglicanism has traditionally been reluctant to excommunicate its radicals”. this openness extends to ecumenical and interfaith learning, with strong anglican involvement in these types of networks (randerson 2015). anglican broadness affirms a wide range of people, practices and theologies, including types of social justice activism that some other christian denominations reject. anglicans in new zealand have had significant participation in various interfaith groups (haggar 2017; pratt 2016) and protest movements, such as the “peace squadron” in the 1970s led by vicar george armstrong which attempted to stop an american nuclear submarine from entering auckland harbour. these interfaith links have become espe32 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef16368 cially important in new zealand since the christchurch mosque attacks in 2019. this historical background of cultivating ecumenical and interfaith religious pluralism was evident in diocese j. it was noticeable during interviews that the acceptance proffered by the “broad table” nature of anglicanism was something that had attracted many of my participants to the denomination. pete said, “the anglican church has a broad table that beautiful and big, and you can be part of that … a broad table which actually looks like the church [should]”. stephen said, “there is a broad spectrum of practices, they allow for … including activism in social justice. the dogma isn’t entrenched, there are opportunities to challenge, question, and think bigger … they made space for me.” neo noted that the ic he had been part of was able to join the anglicans because “it wasn’t questioned that we would be acceptable. anglicans accept anyone, so of course, they accepted us”. for theologian derek, anglican broadness was important since it allowed for his background of training in a lutheran seminary to be used and valued in an anglican context: “i can say ‘this is how i do my theology’ … and there is a place for me at the table. really the goal of the table isn’t to bring everyone together to the centre but rather to honour everyone in the seats as they are.” another reason the broad table concept most likely appealed to my participants was due to being millennials. research on millennials has shown them to be more accepting of pluralism and diversity than baby boomers or gen x (brunell 2013; reysen and katzarska-miller 2013). millennials are particularly prone to reject institutions who are not pluralistic and promote only one way of being: “some are resentful or afraid of a body [the church] they perceive as unwilling to enter into dialogue and are still interested in stridently asserting its own version of the facts about the universe and the true interpretation of these facts” (dormor et al. 2003: 2). while many of my participants were just discovering the delights of anglican pluralism, they had been disconcerted to discover fellow anglicans who were trying to block access to the table. some anglican churches who oppose lgbtq+ rights and/or the ordination of women in the usa, canada, australia and new zealand have split off from their geographic dioceses and come under the authority of conservative bishops from places like uganda and rwanda (hasset 2007). however, within diocese j, the broad table is still in use and attracting those who are leaving christian groups which have become fearful of pluralism and “outsiders”. 33 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef16368 3 discussion theme one – receptive generosity i want to suggest that the ability to sustain a local politics … requires an orientation … that grounds humility – the humility necessary to engage in the slow and painful work of sustaining a community capable of resisting the allure of significance that is the breeding ground of violence. (coles and hauerwas 2008: 24) in considering how space was made in diocese j to incorporate non-anglican millennials, i have engaged with the work of political philosopher romand coles and his work on receptive generosity. according to coles (1997), receptive generosity is a stance or orientation that is open to both giving and receiving from others, especially those that may have a different view. it involves encountering, listening, and vulnerability. coles frames this through the term “caritas”, which refers to the love of god for humans, and vice versa. caritas is giving that is reciprocal. a generosity that only wants to give, but not receive, can lead to the establishment of unequal power structures and is not true generosity. coles gives the example of spanish conquistadors who, like some of the british colonizers who came to new zealand, tried to “gift” christianity to the indigenous people of the new world but did not see anything in indigenous religions that was worthy for them to learn from: “when generosity becomes separated from receptivity it tends toward imperialism and theft” (coles 1997: vii). for coles, christians can have problems with receptive generosity, especially receiving wisdom or input from groups who are “outside the christian story” (coles 1997: 3). however, he argues that there is a theological argument for extending receptive generosity to “the other” because that is what jesus did: “since jesus [was] a stranger, this must mean sitting receptively and generously at the tables of those of other traditions when invited” (coles and hauerwas 2008: 227). coles notes that theology which claims god cannot receive anything worthwhile from humans, especially non-christians, is problematic for creating authentic open spaces, especially if those outside christianity are perceived as having nothing beneficial which can be given to god or his church: “the church construes itself as the foot-washer, but not in need of being foot-washed by non-christians … as server but not in need of being served by others” (coles and hauerwas 2008: 228). it can be argued that the ics and broad table theology created spaces that enabled diocese j to be a receptively generous ecclesia, and this factor increased the amount of young people joining it and the incidents of activism taking place. the historical openness to “the other” brought into being spaces of transformation and “new things”, such as the uptick in social justice activism i observed.  romand coles’s writing, and his conversations with stanley hauerwas, on the concept of receptive 34 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef16368 generosity is a framework to work with as to how creating broad tables can (in)form ecclesial weavings and spiritual formation in a climate shocked, uncertain, twenty first century world. the table can be seen as a space of receptive generosity that encouraged listening and the giving and receiving of gifts from each other, rather than “non-relational charity”. this stance in diocese j had subsequently increased the alliances and relationships with non-anglicans on social justice issues of mutual interest, and attracted young christians who are interested in fighting inequality and poverty. on a local and daily level, receptive generosity was practised and enacted in the intentional communities. here receptive generosity intersected with several theological ideas, including immanence and incarnation – god with us. to be receptively generous was to intentionally embody and incarnate god’s vision of human flourishing by being a good neighbour through acts of service and being in relationship with those who lived close, to “wash feet” as coles says. being receptively generous in diocese j was to envision the local as a sacred space where god dwelled. 4 discussion theme two marginality and liminality during my research, i observed concerted efforts by my participants to construct spaces and tables at which to listen to each other, and those outside of their community. i contend that one of the aspects which encouraged listening in diocese j was the decline in numbers and societal influence experienced by anglicans in new zealand and across the western world. the decline of people identifying as christian in new zealand has been particularly notable amongst mainline denominations such as the anglicans, especially since the end of the 1960s, but applies to christianity in general (ward 2013). census figures from 2018 indicate that more new zealanders now identify as being “of no religion” than christian (losing our religion 2019). more and more christians in western nation-states view themselves as being marginalized and pushed to the edges of secular society (rivera et al. 2023). pentecostal christians in particular feel that their beliefs and views on such issues as lgbtq+ rights and abortion are not considered valid by those in power and society in general (noble 2014). most anglican literature refers to numerical decline as the major concern for the twenty first century (dormor et al. 2003; towle 2007). paradoxically, anglicanism is still the largest christian denomination according to new zealand’s census data; however, identifying as anglican in the census generally does not segue into church attendance. anglicans are also demographically older than pentecostal leaning 35 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef16368 christian denominations, as research participant erin said: “anglicans are aging and shrinking in numbers and resources … the average age is in the 70s and 80s.” marginality encompassed several meanings for my participants. when describing why they wanted to live in an intentional community (ic), one of reasons was that to live in an ic was to “live on the edge” (kamau 2002) as an alternative to ‘the empire’. cox hall (2017: 695) says religious ics “are experiments in living through liminality”. “empire” refers to the societal structures which favour the powerful who oppress the poor and leave the downtrodden to fend for themselves (claiborne 2006; wilson-hartgrove 2008), and are often specifically linked to neo-liberal capitalism. to live in an ic was seen to undermine this unjust empire. my participant, stephen, viewed “empire” as something to be opposed: “the church is not meant to cooperate with the empire, we are called to subvert it”. some of the ics were in suburbs that were impoverished, marginalized and somewhat chaotic. ic members were interested in building relationships with people in their local area who were from marginalized groups. to be marginal was also to be countercultural. pete mused in his interview that living in an ic made one’s faith deeper and the call to challenge empire stronger: “there is something about being on the edge that makes prophetic voices sharper”. neo had a similar observation: “identifying with the margins is being precarious, it can draw you a lot closer to jesus”. being marginal was also applied to the activist groups and causes the participants were part of. stephen was frequently involved in protest marches and blockading events, he said “jesus was very much outside of the camp. he was on the edges. i found myself leaning more towards people who were on the fringes.” being marginal seemed to be a conflicted subject for anglicans in diocese j. my mainly millennial participants dan, adele, pete, davina and neo all thought that it was a challenge to stay marginal and “on the edge” whilst being part of an institutional entity such as the anglican church, which they said tended to draw one away from the edges of society and into the “centre”. dan said, “to be honest this is probably the most ‘centre’ thing we have ever done”, while davina reflected that “it can be a real challenge to try to get somewhere now that we are at the centre”. however, they also pointed out that anglicanism was now marginal in new zealand society overall. in contrast, the sense i got from many of the older anglicans i encountered was that they thought the anglican church in new zealand still had considerable political and civic leverage and influence. neo reflected that “the anglican voice presumes [it] ought to be shaping societal arrangements”. despite this stance, in general there is 36 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef16368 a growing awareness of becoming marginal in new zealand society which, i would argue, has opened spaces for change and transformation in some dioceses that would not have been entertained when anglicanism was at its height of influence. coles and hauerwas (2008) point out that part of learning to listen requires being vulnerable and many anglicans i met were certainly feeling vulnerable as they stared down a tunnel of future oblivion for many of their churches. becoming vulnerable seems to have facilitated more efforts at listening to outside groups, which resulted in these groups eventually joining diocese j and bringing with them listening skills gained from being marginal neo-monastic/emerging christians. 5 final reflection the presence of the ics and the anglican concept of the broad table in diocese j suggest that the incorporation of emergent and neo-monastic groups has helped to enlarge and create spaces for encounter, messiness and taking risks which has attracted younger, previously non-anglican people to the diocese. these new anglicans are aware that in the public square they are one voice among many and have brought with them an awareness of “christianity as marginal” that older anglicans hadn’t quite caught onto. becoming marginal seems to have made some in diocese j receptive to these new groups who bring with them energetic young people who are curious about ancient christianity and the historical “treasures” of anglican tradition and spiritual practices. my research participants had learnt the negotiation skills needed to continually keep open engagement with the “other”, whether that is secular social justice colleagues or anglicans who see themselves as the centre of society and not at the margins. the emphasis on marginality inherent in the ecm and neo-monastic groups, and now being experienced by anglicans, can be linked to my participants’ identification with living on the edge. it can be surmised that identifying with marginality has led diocese j to a more overt emphasis on missionally “being with” rather than only “providing for” the poor and needy. thus, becoming marginal has changed the way that this group of anglicans listened to and engaged with others. it should be acknowledged that in opening space for people like my millennial-aged, non-anglican background participants, there were those who felt that their more traditional anglicanism had been sidelined and starved of resources. thus, when space is opened for the new, it is a delicate balance to include and incorporate what already occupies that space. this is the time then to consider coles’s ideas on being receptively generous to all who hold and value 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power and persuasion (pp. 51–60). abingdon-on-thames: routledge. ward, k. 2013. losing our religion? changing patterns of believing and belonging in secular western societies. eugene, oregon: wipf and stock publishers. wilson-hartgrove, j. 2008. new monasticism: what it has to say to today’s church. ada, michigan: brazos press. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207594.2012.701749 https://doi.org/10.1080/00207594.2012.701749 https://doi.org/https:/doi.org/10.1558/jasr.21175 https://doi.org/https:/doi.org/10.1558/jasr.21175 59 communal maturation and missional discipleship: a congregational study1 nick ladd nick ladd has been an anglican minister for 40 years, during which time he has served in six parishes of very different social make-up. for eight years he was director of ministry, formation and practical theology at st john’s college, nottingham. at present, he works freelance, supporting churches in their missional development with the church mission society, teaching, researching, and offering spiritual accompaniment to clergy. in 2021, he received his doctorate from birmingham university for his thesis, exploring communal maturity: a theological and ethnographic study of a christian congregation. he has published several pieces around the practice of ministry and mission. email: nick.ladd57@gmail.com abstract individualization exercises pervasive power in the modern western church, generating an isolated and privatized approach to discipleship and mission that has been attended to extensively over the years in attempts to foster 1. this article is based upon a thesis submitted to the university of birmingham for the degree of doctor of practical theology in december 2020. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 60 “whole-life” discipleship. my doctoral field work in 2015–17 was with a single church of england congregation that had adopted an outward-looking missional process which disrupted this individualization and challenged people to a personal and communal journey of change in which the public life that they began to share with people in their wider community shaped both their personal and communal maturation. this journey was fuelled by shared communal practices which in turn generated new forms of communal life to express the congregation’s developing public christian identity. this research demonstrates both the challenges and the potential of forming communal identity in an individualized culture. moreover, when mission is undertaken with openness to the other, a profound interdependence between communal maturation and missional discipleship is revealed. keywords: individualization, personal and communal maturation, spiritual practices, missional discipleship setting the scene, personally from 2001 to 2009, i was minister of a relatively young (mostly 20s and 30s) congregation in an english university city. outwardly successful, it was a typical programme church: large sunday services, with a strong emphasis on creativity and excellence, mission and ministry led well by paid workers with volunteer teams, and small groups where people banded together to create a sense of relationship and belonging that was hard to find at a large sunday service. the majority of people lived their faith in a separate world to the rest of their life: the most perceptive of them wanted this to be different, but did not know how to achieve this. in response to this situation, the vision we developed was for mid-sized communities that would challenge people to take responsibility and ownership for ministry and mission, involving more people in using their gifts rather than passively consuming church life. the groups would be big enough to develop a ministry and welcome to a wider community, but small enough for people to feel a sense of belonging. during this period, a woman in her forties – whom i would have counted as a mature christian, someone to whom others looked for spiritual support and mentoring – came to me to say that in order to continue her own journey of growth with god she felt she needed to leave the church as she could not find what she needed with us. nick ladd—communal maturation and missional discipleship 61 i remember my feelings of disappointment and shock, and i questioned why she could not continue to grow by investing herself in the mid-sized community of which she was a part. but, at the same time, i had to admit that this large evangelical congregation was not the easiest place in which to explore complexity and change in one’s life with god – however much i wanted it to be. i had hoped that the journey that we were taking would be one of personal and communal growth and i deeply believed that it could be – but at the same time there were things that i sensed, but could not quite see, that made this trickier than i had imagined. my discomfort with this situation was often submerged by busyness whilst never quite leaving me alone. what would it take to form christian community that was outward looking and yet could be such that people might be able to make complex journeys of personal transformation within them? i had always been committed to forming such christian community, whilst recognizing that community life can be both friend and foe to such development. i wanted to understand better how to foster communal maturation and this is what led me to my doctoral research project at birmingham university. the research context and the research question i considered that my questions could not be addressed through theory alone but needed to be grounded in personal and communal lived experience. i wanted to explore this with ordinary lay christians, attending to what they said and how they lived. i believed this would best be achieved through an ethnographic study, which i began in september 2015 with an anglican church in a suburban setting in nottingham. the church had a congregation of 70–90 adults and 10–20 children across two sunday services. the ministry had been evangelical for the previous 35 years. a good number of the congregation had been formed in this tradition, but the spirituality of the church as a whole was more varied than the label might imply. at the beginning of a guided missional process that they entered in 2012, the congregation was invited to choose pictures and metaphors that they felt best described them; they saw themselves first as a spiritual “filling station” for individuals and then with a mission to the community beyond the church. the vicar expressed to me his weariness with the programmatic approach of the church – something that resonated with my own experience. i participated in a wide range of church and community events, activities and meetings – formal and informal – attending to the way they spoke and e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 62 lived and to the stories they told. i was guided in this by hopewell’s symbolic interactionist approach – allowing the stories they told and the symbols that shaped the stories to illuminate their world view and ethos (1987: 28–39). as well as participating in their life for two years, in the first year i conducted a series of focus groups with most of the adult congregation around themes of growth and development and followed that in year two with a number of one-to-one interviews where the questions were more focused in the light of the unfolding story. i also ran a community survey and one-to-one interviews to discover whether the wider community shared the congregation’s sense of a changing relationship between the two. in the course of the study, i ran focus groups with leaders to explore emerging themes with them and then again at the end with as many of the congregation as wanted to attend. i returned in 2018 to run a focus group exploring further development in the congregation’s journey. i coded the data from focus groups and interviews and correlated this with thematic analysis of my field notes. alongside this detailed analytical work, i also employed narrative analysis to allow me to attend to the emotions, relationships and power dynamics of the interactions. though two years was a substantial period of time for me, it was short in relation to the story of a church. so i felt that stories and commitments in relation to growth and development might arise more quickly if i researched a church that had opted for a journey of communal change. this influenced my choice of church as i opted for one that had entered such a process with partnership for missional church (pmc). pmc is a process of communal spiritual accompaniment designed to enable christian congregations to form partnerships with their wider communities within the mission of god (keifert, 2006; rooms and keifert, 2014). it does this through employing spiritual practices that encourage listening, partnership and hospitality with god and the wider community (ladd, 2021: 101–102 gives more detail). though this was a missional process, it was the aspects of community formation and practice that drew me to pmc in the first place. it was one of the serendipities of the project that it revealed the interdependence of communal maturation and an approach to missional engagement which takes seriously the agency of the other – hence this article. when i spoke to people in the church, i used words like growth, change or development. i felt that asking people about their “maturity” would be akin to asking them about their humility – it would make them introspective and cautious – whereas i wanted them to be free to tell their stories. it was then up to me in my theological reflection to make the connections with processes of maturation. nick ladd—communal maturation and missional discipleship 63 the aims of the research project were encapsulated in this question: what are people’s understanding and experience of change and development when their church journeys with the partnership for missional church (pmc) process? what light might this shed on issues of maturity through community? to summarize: the stories of the congregation’s personal and communal journeys was the focus, the pmc process was the catalyst for many conversations and maturation was my reflective and reflexive question. i took a narrative approach to analysis and interpretation. this allowed me to draw the findings from the stories of my participants – both in substance and feeling. what emerged were two stories or, rather story and counter-story. the story was about a journey outwards towards the wider community and the formation of public christian identity based on partnership and hospitality with the other – divine and human, both proximate and distant, which shaped the way they shared their faith and formed community and was grounded in a democratizing approach to learning and a turning of church inside out. the counter-story was reactive to this, holding on to an “expert-driven” approach to knowledge as the key to growth and a commitment to bringing outsiders in to the church – in principle if not in practice. i will tell these stories and the conflicts between them in future writing. my focus here is on the way in which this journey outwards shaped their maturation both personally and as a community. overview of the argument one of the most arresting findings of the research was the pervasive power of individualization – even when attempts at a more communal practice were being made. individualization fosters an isolating and privatised approach to discipleship and mission – one which is closed to the other who is different, creating a chasm between privatized fellowship and public witness. taylor’s concept of the “buffered self ” is important for understanding this as a cultural norm (2007: 37–42). the missional impulse of the journey outwards towards the other was the way to enable change in their culture as people formed relationship and community in public space. this journey proved both challenging and unnerving e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 64 and took great courage. to make such steps involved a personal journey of individuation and not everyone was willing or able to do this. to make any progress at all required that the journey was grounded communally. personal change was dependent on and embodied by communal transformation in two ways: ◆ it was communal practices that enabled the personal journey towards the other in the public space. ◆ people found that they needed to create new “communal vehicles” to embody their new identity and narrative and to keep them accountable to a new way of being in the public space. this led me to conclude that christian maturation is shaped through engagement with the other in the public space, involving a subtle interplay of the personal and the communal. it was the impulse of a non-colonizing missional approach which prompted the engagement with the other that was the prerequisite for such embodied communal maturation. individualization conceptualizing individualization ulrich beck summarizes individualization as “how one lives becomes the biographical solution of systemic contradictions” (1992: 137). our propensity to look for personal solutions to systemic problems in all walks of life, not least in the church, blinds us to the cultural and communal nature of profound change. our default response is the assumption that individuals carry both the responsibility and the potential to create change in their own lives and that the task of formation – however this is perceived – is theirs alone. historically, individualism has taken different forms. in the early modern period, the commitment to rationalism generated an instrumental individualism in which “rational mastery” is understood in terms of “instrumental control” (taylor, 1989: 149). instrumental reason objectifies the other and from here it is but a short step to use the other as the object of one’s subjectivity – “a solipsistic concept of self whereby the embodiedness of the other is something to escape, possess or control” (irigaray, 2000: 30–39). however, the romantic reaction to rationalism generated a new shape to the individualism, without abandoning other forms. taylor (2007: 473) describes this as “expressive individualism” in which the tendency to use people for one’s nick ladd—communal maturation and missional discipleship 65 own ends is overlaid with an almost moral imperative to form oneself through one’s personal and private choices and relationships; something he describes as “the ethics of authenticity” (taylor, 1991: 29). this expressivism is set within the wider parameters of instrumental control, what taylor describes as the “buffered, disciplined self ” (2007: 476). in contrast to the “porosity” characteristic of earlier ages, he argues that the “buffered self ” is a boundaried and autonomous self, grounded in disengagement; a mind-centred personhood, which is self-referential (2007: 25–54). such “disengagement” may not be “hospitable to a sense of community” (2007: 42). this reading resonated with the data from the established patterns of church life in my research context, where i observed the tendency to use the other in the process of one’s own formation. this should not necessarily be understood as a cynical act, more a cultural norm or expectation. furthermore, the swirling currents of individualism in contemporary culture, make it extremely difficult for christian communities to form public identity with the other who is different in their wider communities – something that was a characteristic of the communal life of the church. individualization in practice how did this manifest itself in the research context? i ran a series of focus groups with the existing home groups to explore their understanding of growth and development and their engagement with the pmc process. members understood the purpose of the home groups as a means of developing their personal learning and knowledge as revealed in this group discussion: e: more recently we’ve shared the leading; each of us have taken one of the sessions and led it. i think that’s a massive step forward for people who are just not used to doing that. they felt that in this approach each one has a chance to prioritize their learning: jjj: i think we should probably have “knowledge” because there is no point in any of it, unless you know what it’s all about. mmm: your growth. you’ve got to grow in the knowledge. ggggg: yes. you’ve got to. e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 66 they also saw them as places of mutual support for personal formation – especially in the challenges of life – a kind of therapeutic individualism. one person said: ggggg: i’ve been through some really tough times. and if it wasn’t for these guys, i probably wouldn’t be here today. it was so tough and if it wasn’t for when i found friends within this group … and they’ve supported me and they’ve helped me. of 55 comments about home groups: ◆ 24 were about mutual support. ◆ 21 were about learning and prayer. ◆ 2 were about the wider church. ◆ 4 were about disappointments with the home groups. ◆ only 4 had any reference to the wider community. members would in theory welcome new members, but because of the inwardfacing and privatized nature of the groups, none had welcomed new members during the last five to seven years, bar one person in one group very recently. they saw these groups as safe spaces and some were honest enough to say that they did not want new people because it would disturb the trust that they had developed. perhaps unsurprisingly, people on the outside of these groups within the wider church told me that they found these groups cliquey and inaccessible. interpreting this through the lens of individualization suggests that the groups existed to support people’s needs for personal development and emotional sustenance. they gathered primarily as a group of individuals drawing on each other for support and strength. the bounded nature of a group of “buffered selves” is such that there was not enough sense of community to risk the penetration of those boundaries from unknown others. when it came to outward focus of pmc, as i listened to the home groups it felt as if this journey was going on somewhere else – and they were either watching, resisting or ignoring it. three of the groups were united in their opposition or passivity towards pmc and had almost no advocates for the process in their midst. two of the groups were more positive and had individuals who had played a genuine part in the missional journey. however, even here, the process had made little impact on the group as a whole and people who were strong advocates of pmc practices in one-to-one interviews were concerned not to “rock the boat” within the group. nick ladd—communal maturation and missional discipleship 67 one of the most common ways of theorising this is fowler’s approach to faith development and what he describes as “stage 3”: synthetic-conventional faith in which he argues we find and form our identity through dependence on significant relationships – conforming to the expectations and judgments of others. fowler associates this with teenage years, but he admits that people may be processing what he calls “stage 3” in their 30s and 40s, something which leads many to be suspicious of the idea of “stages” if not towards the description of stage 3 that he offers (1981: 151–73). fowler argues that the weakness of this stage lies in the internalisation of others’ perspectives for the sake of group identity (1981: 173). if this were all that was going on, then more open, porous groups would develop naturally as people grew out of the need for group think. the theory of individualization adds to fowler’s analysis a dimension which suggests that rather than being shaped only by the group, individuals create a group that protect the vulnerabilities of the buffered self from the unsettling other. arguably, what fowler is describing is less a stage of development and more an observation of what communal life looks like in an individualized culture. this certainly pictures well the character and relationships in the home groups. the groups defended their private world strongly in order to sustain their boundaries towards the other. the journey outwards catching the imagination in my doctoral thesis, i argued that, as a starting point, maturation in scripture is at the very least communal as well as personal and that it is also other-centred in relationship both to god and people – something that becomes attenuated in a culture where a buffered self is the default pattern. however, smith contends that porosity is the ontological nature of human beings and that “the reified western ideal concept of the individual … has alienated us moderns from our ‘essential species-being’” (2012: 60). if this is the case, then it is to be supposed that it would be possible to engage the imagination with a vision that challenges the buffered self of modernity – and this proved to be the case in my research context. alongside the established, privatized life of the church, many (including a good number of home group members) were on a journey outwards to their wider community, which deeply engaged their heart and imagination. the following was spoken with energy and excitement by a church council member: e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 68 if you had asked us at the beginning to find someone to talk to in the community we would have found it really difficult, but now we are falling over them. (field notes: 8–14.09.15) entering uncharted territory pmc works with a number of what it calls “disruptive missional practices”, which focus on attention to the other as subject, whether that other is god, or scripture, or the human other – both proximate in the congregation and more distant in the wider community. all of these practices involve the disrupting of privatized and individualized spiritual life. dwelling in the world, for example, involves attending to the wider community and noticing the people that god brings across our path who we sense might be people of peace (a concept drawn from luke 10.6) – people that we don’t know well but whom we sense might share something of our values, vision and aspiration for the community where we all live. having discerned this, the next step is to initiate a one-to-one conversation in public space – not to make a new best friend, but to discover a possible partner in the mission of god. when they were first introduced to this practice, members of the congregation were paralysed by it and struggled even to make the first steps towards such conversations: it felt like entering uncharted territory – like the encounter with the giants in the promised land – “a land that devours its inhabitants” (numbers 13.32-33). subsequent research on this practice has revealed the same uncertainties (ladd, 2021). people spoke about the fear of their reception and their wariness about approaching people; one person spent three weeks of anxious anticipation before summoning up the courage to speak. she commented that she was “not a person who went out an talked about my faith a great deal”. another spoke of realizing that their faith “existed in a private space and not ‘out in the street’.” anxiety about entering public space is reported consistently in the research and pictures what it feels like for people to challenge the cultural norm of the buffered self. living in such a privatized and individualized culture means that steps towards the other in the public space are fraught with anxiety and uncertainty and need to be handled with care. nick ladd—communal maturation and missional discipleship 69 in pmc, communal missional practices disrupt individualization through the invitation and challenge to attend to the “reasonably friendly-looking stranger” whether in the church as we read scripture together or in the wider community as we risk initiating a conversation with a person of peace. the stranger is a source of anxiety in our culture – sometimes for good reason, often for no reason at all. one church member encapsulates this: rrr: oh my word, some people aren’t that confident that they can go and find a friendly-looking stranger, and how do you know they’re friendly, anyway? just because they’re in the church, don’t make them friendly, does it? that is the embodiment of the buffered self! the impact of instrumental and expressive individualism and the “buffered self ” leads me to the conclusion that our cultural approach of using people in the task of personal formation is also a defence against the vulnerability of true engagement with the other. if maturity has always involved the ability to meet the other who is different, it becomes an even greater imperative in an individualized culture. individualization leads to an attenuation of formation –  whether this be using others within the church for our own formation or using those in the community as fodder for our evangelism. i am not saying that we approach this cynically as the language of “use” might imply, but that our individualizing approaches to discipleship and evangelism makes us blind to the potentially manipulative effect of this – something that is more than obvious to those on the receiving end. a new way of being over the whole of the three-year pmc process, through listening to god and others, through meeting people of peace, through missional experiments with partners in the community, the church began to form a new sense of its missional vocation and identity. after much work together, the congregation articulated this as “sharing life with jesus, with one another and with our communities”, encapsulated as “sharing life”. this may not seem earth-shattering to the onlooker, but to them it was. it represented a move away from an instrumental approach of seeing others as the “targets” of their evangelism, which some saw as lacking in authenticity. previously, their flagship missional activity was a holiday club – one person e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 70 described it as totemic – which absorbed a tremendous amount of time and energy throughout the year, yet which for many years had given people a sense that they were doing evangelism by bringing people into a church activity and putting on something for them. it created a deep sense of community for those involved and so it took tremendous courage to question whether this really was having any lasting impact in the wider community and whether this was actually the way they, as a church, wanted to engage with that community. there was a huge struggle over this, which was still reverberating when i was with them. was the calling to evangelise by bringing people into the orbit of the church or was it to form missional partnerships based on relationship and mutual spiritual discovery? their new sense of relational partnership with people led them to view people differently and to view mission differently – seeking to journey with their “partners of peace” in faith rather than impose something upon them. one congregation member put it like this: j: i think, previously, there was a sense that the church and the world beyond the church were a bit polarised. i think we have begun to see the wider community, not so much as people who we need to evangelise, but people who we need to be partners with. this is a bold journey for an evangelical church to take – but it is one that has borne fruit in terms of broadening and deepening relationships with their community and more experiments in missional partnerships.2 i received this comment from a member of the village’s community group: aaa: it’s very different to anything i’ve experienced before in 45 years. i’ve never seen a church so actively involved in creating a sense of belonging without having to be religious – left to choose to believe. believing in community – god working in community – rather than having to be a believer. 2. there is a wider question about the place of speaking in evangelism as well as listening. the place of this is implied in the use of irigaray’s idea of the third space – co-creation implies contribution by both. however, to see mission in terms of listening and partnership is such a huge shift for a christendom church that this was their focus during the time i was with them. i have explored the question of the place of personal witness in the context of mutual and shared witness to the presence and activity of god elsewhere (ladd, 2021), but there is room for further research on this with churches who have adopted a partnership approach to mission. nick ladd—communal maturation and missional discipleship 71 the interplay of the communal and the personal in the journey of maturation personal formation many people in the congregation followed a journey with the “other” in the wider community that led them beyond instrumental and expressive individualism to a more open and relational approach in which they came to understand mission less in terms of imparting what they already knew and more in terms of a shared spiritual journey of discovery in which they learnt to be differentiated enough to take seriously what others brought, whilst not being afraid to share their own insight. at the beginning of their pmc journey, an external interview team had pictured them as a well-defended castle – something which caught their imagination. a long-term member commented: h: right at the beginning they discerned that our church [had] a bit of a fortress mentality, and we didn’t relate terribly well to those outside. there had been in the past, a sort of “them” and “us” between the church and community. they engaged in some imaginative reflective journeys together called “balloon rides”. and as they drifted over the parish envisioning a new world this is what they said: people imagined that in the future, because of increase in relationships and partnerships, the boundary between inside and outside church would become increasingly blurred. the community would see “us” as part of “them” as opposed to “them and us”. “we’re doing this” would be owned by a greater mix of people. irigaray’s work can help us to see why this can be construed as a journey of personal maturation. she argues that the male-dominated approach to the world treats all relationships as objects to a single subject, leading to the silencing and possessing of the other and the “reduc[ing] of the feminine to a passive object” (2000: 23). by contrast, intersubjectivity results from the embodied encounter of two subjects in which their generic distinctiveness, their story and personhood is respected. there is a mystery to the other which is not to be violated or controlled, but protected on a journey in which identity and mutual knowing is formed through relationship (2000: 17–29). e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 72 this journey to intersubjectivity involves an attentive effort, which she describes as the movement from “sensation” to “perception”. “sensation” sees the other as an object. “perception” is a deliberate choice to listen and not just to look. it is a journey in which we refuse to allow the relationship to be reduced to a single subjectivity, refuse to appropriate the other, but allow them to be “other” in embodied relationship (2000: 40–47). furthermore, this journey of openness to the subjectivity of the other is one in which we must be prepared to guard that subjectivity in ourselves and in the other. the goal is not fusion but rather “a relationship between two subjects, the objective of which is to leave to the other his or her subjectivity” (2000: 51). this leads irigaray to develop the idea of a “third space” – a silence in which there is room for genuine attention to difference, to the history of each, not least to the party whose history has most consistently been unheard (2000: 62–67). though irigaray grounds her work in the objectification and silencing of the feminine in western culture, it is also possible to see the impact of the “monosubjective” in communal relationships in a congregation. she recognizes, if not develops, the implications of her approach to cultures and ethnicities (1999: 156; 2000: 57). this move towards mutual, intersubjective relationships is a bold and risky one in an individualized culture with its grounding in the buffered self. nevertheless, this was a personal journey for some in which they left behind the closed communal structures of their home groups, which they increasingly realized could not sustain the journey they wanted to make. this is akin to fowler’s stage 4 (1981: 174–98) which involves a level of individuating (i prefer this to individuation) – which is well articulated in research on spiritual development from a psychodynamic perspective (rizzutto, 1979: 41; brokaw and edwards, 1994; hall and brokaw, 1995; hall et al., 1998; hall and edwards, 2002; simpson et al., 2008). there was a personal journey of maturation to be made in my research congregation in engaging with the other in public space – leaving behind both privatized spirituality and individualized approaches to mission. this is psychologically and spiritually challenging – and it needs good support. i want to argue that processes of communal maturation are central to that support. communal formation two factors proved significant in providing the communal formation that enabled personal and communal movement outwards in relational mission. nick ladd—communal maturation and missional discipleship 73 first, it was the practices that were introduced to them over the three-year pmc process; and secondly it was the new “communal vehicles” (as i termed them) that they created in order to support their new missional journey in public space. communal practices shared communal missional practices gave them the structure and support they needed to make their personal and communal journeys of change; the vicar used the word “scaffolding” to describe this supportive role. the practices that pmc introduces are deliberately disruptive of privatized community and the buffered self. rather than imposition of or education for change, pmc follows a diffusion model in which people – influenced by one another – journey from awareness and interest in changing their practice through evaluation and experiment, hopefully to adopt new ways of being in relationship with each other and their wider community (rogers, 2003; keifert, 2006: 39–59; rooms and keifert, 2014: 20–24). discussing and reflecting on communal practices was central to people’s conversations with me in interviews. for example, there were 60 positive comments about the practice of dwelling in the word – a practice of reading scripture that privileges the voice of the other, something which began to give them confidence in their own understanding. here are different reflections from two home groups: tt: a new way of studying scripture which is much more equable and democratic and so people listen to one another. c: [i] did not want to do dwelling in the word, hated the idea for lots of different reasons partly it’s about the preaching always comes from the front, because they’ve got the training, they’ve got the experience, why would i take it upon myself, where’s the learning in that? partly, it’s about a sort of learning disability; [it] took a lot of conversations in the background, saying, “okay, well actually, i’ve got the same thing you have, so we’re on a level playing field, that’s fine.” the same practice generated 88 negative comments. rr: so, if you just give somebody a piece of scripture and they look at it and think, “well, i’m not sure i’ve got anything. i can’t see anything e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 74 that i can say to fred bloggs here.” “actually, that’s helped me.” so therefore you can feel embarrassed. nn: [we’re] frightened to make a mistake, frightened of misinterpreting what [we’ve] read, being incorrect, and then being hauled up for it. conflictual debate is a sign of diffusion and evidence of a maturing process in which people take responsibility for and own their views. it is a further mark of maturation when people gave give room to the thoughts and feelings of others and meet together in what irigaray describes as a third space.3 this picture of diffusion is evidenced to a greater or lesser extent in their discussions of the other communal practices. these practices gave them a way to engage in the public space and form relationships with “reasonably friendly looking strangers” – as pmc puts it – who became their people of peace and partners in mission. some members of the congregation embraced this with growing enthusiasm, whilst others remained cautious and suspicious. new “communal vehicles” those who were embracing this more intersubjective relationship with their wider community began to recognise their need to ground these practices more in their communal life together. during lent 2017, a number of the congregation took part in a series of meetings to explore how they might make their new sense of public engagement more secure in the church’s life. gradually they felt their way to the need to create a new kind of small group in which their new vision of public christian life could be embodied and in which they felt they could be accountable to one another for their journey with this; they called them “connect groups”. i described these as new “communal vehicles”. three such groups were formed. in reporting their experience with this, they noted that it helped them ◆ to be supported in and accountable for their vocations as public christians; ◆ to become a porous community – welcoming new people, especially those on the fringe of church life; ◆ to “share life” in ways that went beyond individualised community to something more holistic and communal. 3. there is not space here to discuss this particular journey with conflict and difference at greater depth here; it will be the subject of a later article. nick ladd—communal maturation and missional discipleship 75 they saw these groups as a way of normalising relationship with the other and having a consistent practice of welcome. one lay leader described it like this: k: because you just share what you do … you become intentional about spending time with people and the people you think god’s calling you to. we’ve got a couple coming along who we didn’t know their names. nnn went … “i’ve said you’re welcome to come to the group but i don’t know their names from adam …” i said, “what are your names? do you want to come this week?” and they started coming, and they are on the periphery of church. the interplay of the communal and the personal what their journey outwards with the other demonstrated was that this individuating journey is not the leaving behind of community as fowler supposes, but rather the re-forming of community and the creating of new “communal vehicles” that can carry the new narrative identity of public mission and in which people can find support and accountability for a new way of being. the established home groups could not enable this because they were formed by a vision of privatized, individualized discipleship which created bounded as opposed to porous sets in order to protect what was seen as an environment of safety from the other. individuals needed to make a personal journey of maturation away from this closed vision of community – something which required a challenging engagement with individuation as fowler proposes. but they also needed their communal life to enter a journey of change in order to support and sustain this new vision of life. they needed new communal vehicles to embody their new identity and narrative and in which to be accountable to others for their new public vocation as christians. without this journey of communal maturation – grounded in the engagement with disruptive communal practices – the personal transformation would, i suspect, have been short lived. conclusion now to return to where i began with the person who felt she needed to leave the church in order to grow. what was missing here both for her and for the church was a parallel communal journey of maturation which would have enabled e c c l e s i a l f u t u r e s : vo l u m e 3 , i s s u e 1 76 her personal journey of change. this journey involves an intersubjective relationship with the other and the impetus for this comes from a non-colonising approach to missional engagement, which sets the stage both for communal and personal transformation that goes beyond the self-focus of an individualized culture. the centrality of communal maturation to this lies in the fact that it is through communal practices that individuals are drawn into engagement with the other and to a public identity in the wider community where god is already present and active – thus drawing ever closer to the call to love both god and neighbour and to seek first the kingdom of god. by making this intersubjective journey with the other, my congregation member would have both been part of the church’s missional journey, but also by engaging with difference could have found a context in which to explore the complexity of her own changing perceptions of life and faith. it would also, i believe, have helped that somewhat conservative church to become more hospitable to complexity, uncertainty and provisionality. on such an intersubjective missional journey with the other, the interplay of personal and communal maturation becomes a genuine possibility. references beck, u. 1992. risk society: towards a new modernity. london: sage. brokaw, b. f., and k. j. edwards. 1994. ‘the relationship of god image to level of object relations development’, journal of psychology and theology 22/4: 352–71. fowler, j. w. 1981. stages of faith: the psychology of human development and the quest for meaning. new york, ny: harperone. hall, t. w., and b. f. brokaw. 1995. ‘the relationship of spiritual maturity to level of object relations development and god image.’ pastoral psychology 43: 373–91. hall, t. w., and k. j. edwards. 2002. ‘the spiritual assessment inventory: a theistic model and measure for assessing spiritual development.’ journal for the scientific study of religion 41/2: 341–57. hall, t. w., b. f. brokaw, k. j. edwards p. l. pike. 1998. ‘an empirical exploration of psychoanalysis and religion: spiritual maturity and object relations development.’ journal for the scientific study of religion 37/2: 303–13. hopewell, j. 1987. congregation: stories and structures. london: scm press. irigaray, l. 1999. entre orient et occident. paris: grasset french text edition. irigaray, l. 2000. to be two. london: the athlone press. keifert, p. 2006. we are here now: a missional journey of spiritual discovery. st paul, mn: church innovations. nick ladd—communal maturation and missional discipleship 77 ladd, n. m. 2021. ‘dwelling in the world with people of peace: missional discipleship within the missio dei’, ecclesial futures 2/1. eugene, or: pickwick papers, 100–23. rizzuto, a.-m. 1979. the birth of the living god: a psychoanalytical study. chicago: university of chicago press. rogers, e. m. 2003. diffusion of innovations. new york, ny: free press, 5th edn. rooms, n., and p. keifert. 2014. forming a missional church: creating deep cultural change in congregations. cambridge: grove books. simpson, d. b., j. l. newman and d. r. fuqua. 2008. ‘understanding the role of relational factors in christian spirituality.’ journal of psychology and theology 36/2: 124–34. smith, k. 2012. ‘from dividual and individual selves to porous subjects’, australian journal of anthropology 23/1: 50–64. taylor, c. 1989. sources of the self: the making of modern identity. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. taylor, c. 1991. the ethics of authenticity. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. taylor, c. 2007. a secular age. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. _hlk95485040 _hlk96334497 _hlk91151276 _hlk99228587 _hlk92923612 _hlk92923636 _hlk72870314 sample _hlk102057148 _hlk102058336 _hlk102058373 editorial nigel rooms problems with “pioneering” mission: reflections on the term “pioneer” from germany, south africa and the uk setting god’s pioneers free? the need to release lay pioneers from the church of england’s narrative of resourcing and equipping james butler discipleship, mentorship and training which empowers african women for ministry in the diaspora naar m’fundisi-holloway communal maturation and missional discipleship: a congregational study nick ladd joyful disciples: a study of a missing link in considering spiritual disciplines and corporate missional habits mike harrison we want the good life now: insights from lived religion for a whole person and communal approach to salvation in the twenty-first century dejan aždajić book reviews kwiyani, harvey. 2020. multicultural kingdom: ethnic diversity, mission and the church. london: scm press. reviewed by sabrina müller roxburgh, alan j. 2021. joining god in the great unraveling: where we are & what i’ve learned. eugene, oregon: cascade books. reviewed by steen olson susan lucas (ed.). 2020. god’s church in the world: the gift of catholic mission. norwich: canterbury press. reviewed by luke larner olsen, steen, 2020. jacob’s ladder: missional church in the 1970s. st. marys, australia: sa & rl olsen. reviewed by patrick r. keifert ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 1 79 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18835 a r t i c l e doi: 10.54195/ef18835 proclaiming and embodying peace in pacifist japan: a reformed church perspective1 stéphan van der watt abstract this article assesses a significant peace declaration which was recently released by the reformed church in japan (rcj). through this declaration the rcj affirms her calling and responsibility – as a missional church which is part of a 1% christian population – to proclaim and embody peace in japan and beyond. the article uses an integrative literature review and in-depth theological reflection as its main research techniques. the systematic review addresses the question: what is the significance and meaning of the rcj peace declaration within the wider field of peace studies and in connection with the notion of pacifism in japan and globally? it is argued that theological understandings of peacebuilding can indeed constructively promote peace and justice in worldwide conflicts. the article further explains how a vast corpus of knowledge and practice includes the body of christ in japan which, through the rcj peace declaration, represents a pro-active vision of god’s shalom. public witness is not an add-on to the church’s mission. instead, the church realizes its missional calling when it publicly engages in testifying to true christian peace by rejecting imperial claims. keywords: peace, pacifism, japan, reformed church, east asia, shalom following japan’s loss in world war ii, the nation renounced war in its constitution (preamble and article 9). the foundation of post-war japan has been laid by this pacifist stance. now, however, approaching eight decades after the war, the memories of the conflict are fading, and authoritarian tendencies in japan are intensifying. these tendencies include a resurgence of shintō nationalism since the late meiji era (also 1 this article was partially presented as an academic paper at the asia conference of the international association of mission studies. the conference theme was ‘global sustainability and mission in scholarship’ and was held from 22 to 24 november 2023 at de la salle university in manila, the philippines. 80 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18835 known as state shintō) and efforts to rewrite the country’s laws and constitution to officially make it a fully war-capable nation once more (shimazono and murphy 2009). globally, the frightening destruction caused by an increasing number of authoritarian regimes continues unabated. current conflicts make it clear that those who intentionally make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable. the destructive battles worldwide serve as a warning against oversimplifying complex conflicts between good and evil, as well as against readily taking sides and dividing the world into “oppressor and oppressed” or “colonizer and colonized”. rigid viewpoints like these lead to odd conclusions, like the idea that innocent civilians killed were somehow deserving of it. what we can however safely conclude is that the wounded world we live in is in desperate need of peace. reformed theology has often underlined that all governments should be respected because the state is god-given and can employ power to combat evil. but many governments become corrupted and do not respect religious freedom. as “watchkeeper” over the state, the church is called to remind state leaders to protect vulnerable people and promote justice and peace. is this strategy viable today, and how might it apply in current political contexts, for instance in japan, where christians represent a mere one per cent of the population? in reformed thought, the right to resistance was often tied to “just war” ( jus ad bellum) principles, greatly derived from the moral roots of augustine of hippo’s apologetic book city of god. during the reformation this tradition guided reformed theologians between the poles of pacifism and the justification of a “holy war”. international humanitarian law now incorporates some just war ethics. the issue is whether international legal terms alone can define justice (sweeney 2003), because there is an evident dearth of virtue-ethical consideration in contemporary just war discourse (vorster 2015). moreover, how can theological understandings of reconciliation and peacebuilding promote peace and justice after conflicts? in consideration of these questions, this article presents and assesses an important peace declaration which was recently released by the reformed church in japan (rcj). through this declaration the rcj affirms her calling and responsibility – as a missional church in a 99% non-christian population – to proclaim and embody peace in japan and beyond. the primary research methodology employed in this article involves, first, an integrative literature review of relevant materials collected on the subject matter (torraco 2016: 62). the interpretation and synthesizing of important data follow the examination of pertinent documents. an in-depth process of theological reflection eventually results in the identification of core findings and the formulation of a conclusion. 81 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18835 the systematic review of applicable literature addresses the basic question: what is the significance and meaning of the rcj peace declaration within the wider field of peace studies and in connection with the notion of pacifism in japan and worldwide? reconsidering the meaning of peace today how can peace be properly understood? peace can imply apathy and the acceptance of injustice when it is defined narrowly. however, peace is more than the absence of war; it also maintains order and justice and promotes the movement toward freedom and human flourishing. norwegian peace studies pioneer johan galtung’s typology of violence – direct, structural and cultural – helps us comprehend peace today (galtung 1990). according to galtung (2008: 92–105), direct violence is visible in terms of aggressors, victims and harm. but structural violence – caused by socioeconomic and political institutions that inhibit human freedom – is more subtle. galtung also helpfully distinguishes between negative peace (where there exists no direct violence) and positive peace (with fair and equitable institutions and structures). with the laying down of weapons, negative peace is achieved, but positive peace is still far off. importantly, the most economically, politically, or socially marginalized members of society are frequently those worst affected by the lack of positive peace. thus, whilst negative peace can simply mean the absence of war, positive peace implies concurrent justice. significantly, meiji era christian and japanese pacifist kanzō uchimura (1861–1930) made a similar positive/negative distinction in terms of pacifism. he asserted that objection to war is a negative part of pacifism, whilst its positive part consists of creating, fostering and maintaining well-being and peace in society (moroi 2012: 378). peace studies – also known as “irenology” – have been neglected for centuries and only became a discipline in recent decades. peace studies specialist david cortright (2008: 1–5) notes that the first peace-related academic programmes and institutions appeared after world war ii. to better understand the processes that lead to a more desirable human condition, peace studies identify and analyse both violent and nonviolent behaviours as well as the structural mechanisms attending social and other conflicts. today these concerns have increased importance and require serious theological contemplation due to the geopolitical aspect of many ongoing global conflicts, in which religion often plays a role. the nature of war has altered drastically in recent decades, with intrastate wars surging while interstate wars have declined. nations now often fight battles over ethnicity, language, religion, or geography, with currently 114 global armed conflicts being fought (geneva academy 2024). how should we theologically interpret ( geo) political violent conflicts? can reformed theology make a constructive contribution to debates and practices concerning these issues? 82 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18835 religion may “justify” aggression and terror but it can also promote peace and reconciliation between adversaries and borders. religious views influence ethical and political discussions over (non-violent) resistance to oppression or protecting innocent people with force. intrastate violence has increased international humanitarian intervention and peacebuilding. the un and other global and regional institutions have institutionalized peacemaking efforts to identify and change war’s root causes (bellamy 2010). this article explores the ways in which the rcj peace declaration can support such peacebuilding goals in japan and beyond. pacifism in the early church era though many sacred books also contain arguments in favour of violence, the religious traditions of christianity, islam, judaism, buddhism and hinduism all include peace-making fundamentals and activities (cortright 2008: 183–210). the absolute pacifism of the early christian communities reflected the gospel of jesus’ unwavering dedication to love and non-retaliation to harm. theologians during the first three centuries of the christian era all agreed that christians should neither fight in wars nor serve in the armed forces. they held that seeking peace was required by their theological convictions, drawing on the life and teachings of jesus (rae 2014: 29–40). quotations promoting pacifism abound in the writings of tertullian (ad 155–220), clement (ad 150–215) and origen (ad 185–253), and in the testimonies of martyrs like marcellus (mid third century–ad 298) (burkholder and holl 2005: 2; kreider 2016: 159–60). early christians were against war because of christ’s commandment to love one another and because they thought that soldiers’ oaths to the emperor were an act of idolatry. significantly, mennonite historian alan kreider (2016: 233–34) describes one core effect of the teachings of the apostles (didascalia apostolorum) in the early church as creating an “ecosystem of peace”. as a concrete embodiment of this ecosystem, the peace greeting formed part of worship services led in tertullian’s and cyprian’s churches. the christians carried peace with them as it were, saying “peace to this house”, from home to home. kreider therefore argues that “the ‘peace’ built a sense of transgeographical family. communities in egypt received strangers from other cities as ‘brothers,’ allowing them to take part in the lord’s supper and no doubt sharing materially with them when they came ‘in peace’ with the recommendation of another church” (2016: 220). peace appears throughout the didascalia. in the gospels, jesus exhorted his disciples to follow him in peacemaking, according to the didascalia ’s authors. they believed jesus’ peaceful path was salvific and that he invited his church to represent his work by living in peaceful relationships and unity of spirit. however, according to kreider (2016: 295–96), today western christians live in a post-enlightenment and post christendom world where christianity is often deemed violent, and that “ christian 83 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18835 mission – however loving its professed intentions – is essentially an exercise in imperialism.” kreider thus calls for a return to the humble patience of early church pioneer christians like cyprian (ad 210–258), origen and tertullian, because after them followed augustine (ad 354–430), whose habitus seemingly lacked patience and peace. augustine turned a corner in the early fifth century. he used top-down means for christian purposes and encouraged rulers to serve god and spread the christian faith. augustine believed he should abandon the patience-saturated christian missional approach and instead rationalized the notion of just war. moreover, the conversion of roman emperor constantine (ad 272–337) in the early fourth century led to military service being fully accepted among christians. consequently, core convictions concerning christian peace and absolute pacifism quickly began to waver. notions of pacifism after the twentieth century many modern theologians in the west have exerted considerable influence on the debate about war and peace. reinhold niebuhr, an american reformed ethicist, is one of them. according to niebuhr (2011), the core mistake of pacifism is its rejection of the christian concept of original sin and belief in human perfectibility. another very prominent theologian is dietrich bonhoeffer, whose peace ethic and his participation in the plot to destroy hitler and national socialism originated in his reformed theology. insightfully, green (2019) links the evolution of his bonhoeffer’s peace principles to a type of conditional pacifism that primarily focused on christological, ecclesial and biblical-dogmatic aspects. following world war i, the word “pacifism” came to refer to a previous, more narrow tradition of non-resistance, or the religiously motivated refusal to support or take part in any kind of warfare. the more popular traditions of pragmatic or conditional pacifism, which rejected war in principle but acknowledged the use of force in self-defence or to defend the weak, were different from this absolutist stance. furthermore, augustine’s just war doctrines were not the same as extreme pacifism. just war theories limited, yet still justified, war (cortright 2008: 8–10). pacifism thus existed as a movement and established idea long before the actual word was coined in 1901 (during the 10th universal peace congress in glasgow). but pacifism does not mean social passivity. political programmes and social reforms were all part of it. pacifism contrasted with quietist religious sects, and after world war i the notion of pacifism was scrutinized and debated. although often overlooked, cortright (2008: 334) believes the distinction between absolute and pragmatic pacifism is crucial. nuclear pacifism absolutely forbids the use of indiscriminate, destructive weapons. however, pacifism is conditional and pragmatic in other conflict dimensions. conditional pacifism assumes a presumption against armed violence 84 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18835 but recognizes that force, restrained by strict ethical criteria, may be necessary for self-defence and for the protection of innocent people. cortright (2008: 335) concludes that pacifism has been distorted beyond repair and may not be worth reconstructing. peace theory and practice may benefit from using peacebuilding and peacemaking instead of the notion of pacifism. peace may never be achieved, and conflict prevention needs proactive human behaviour. peacebuilders are more practical and probably wiser after the twentieth century’s painful experiences. they have learned to not ignore repressed victims’ suffering and pleadings or the links between peace, democracy, social justice and human rights. peace activists know that justice and peace are linked and care strongly about those victimised by repressive regimes and armed groups. christianity’s role in asia and japan christianity’s role in asia is particularly complex because of its identity and status as a minority religious tradition among numerous and dominant ethnic and religious groupings. to fairly evaluate christians’ involvement in both peace and violence throughout asia, christianity must be analysed with reference to various, unique circumstances that are characterized by interrelated and shifting political, social, cultural and religious dynamics. from a historical standpoint, these social change dynamics in asia may be traced back to the globalizing currents and practices of different periods, i.e. colonial, postcolonial and post-cold war. more specifically the pacific, korean and vietnam wars need to be taken into consideration (fernando 2014: 283–84). this article takes cognizance of these realities, although a detailed exploration thereof falls outside its purview. the difficulties that asian churches have are (1) how to work towards changing political structures and distributing power, and (2) how to cultivate a theology of peace amid nationalist strife. in numerous ways, christians have supported efforts to promote peace in asian ethno-nationalist conflicts. for example, in japan, certain churches have opened small windows for much-needed peace and reconciliation in the region by admitting their government committed war crimes during the pacific war and by pleading for forgiveness with the relatives of those killed (fernando 2014: 291–92). during the pacific war most japanese churches embraced the regime’s imperialist doctrine under government duress. they may have done this out of fear of being hounded by the government as unpatriotic. however, not all churches fully succumbed to governmental pressures under the state shintō powers during world war ii. a handful of denominations protested and did not join the united church of christ in japan (called the kyōdan), the body which united all the different pre-war protestant denominations under a legal religious “umbrella” of strict bureaucratic 85 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18835 and imperial domination. several congregations who wanted to re-establish their religious autonomy apart from state control in the post-war era came together and created the reformed church in japan (rcj) in april 1946. having given brief historical overviews of how peace and pacifism have been viewed and of christianity in asia and japan, the discussion now to turns to consider the challenges that christianity and the church face in proclaiming and embodying peace in east asia generally and in japan in particular. east asia and the quest to conquer through strategic partnerships during the past few years, the east asian region has seen an increase in the level of security cooperation. south korea, the united states, and japan recently conducted their first joint aerial exercises, which included a nuclear-capable b-52 strategic bomber aircraft from the us. the japanese defence ministry planned a recordbreaking budget of ¥7.7 trillion in the last few months, to restructure the selfdefence forces (sdf) and equip them with an enormous arsenal of weapons and new, joint headquarters that will enable japan to engage in protracted combat on the front lines of the indo-pacific region ( johnson 2023). with the long-standing japan-asean cooperation, japan has strengthened its private-sector cybersecurity collaboration with several south-east asian nations and is considered a partner of choice in terms of defence and security (dominguez 2023). at present, in okinawa, on the south-western tip of japan, military training is being performed on a large scale at the us forces’ japan bases. in recent months, recruitment advertisements for the japanese sdf have appeared nationwide in convenience stores. levels of alertness among japanese citizens are significantly on the rise, with the looming taiwan strait crisis adding to the anxious uncertainty. proclaiming peace in japan, in unison with global christian faith communities since the experiences of japanese christians in the wake of world war ii were distinct in several ways, it is not sufficient to see japan’s post-war context as a mere addendum to world christianity. it is important to note that japan was both a defeated aggressor and a devastated victim in world war ii. moreover, the people of japan are the only people in the world who have lived through the horrific experience of atomic bomb attacks (van der watt 2023a). this places a unique responsibility on the body of christ in japan to respond. how have churches reacted? in the past, several church denominations have responded to the issue of war, for instance the presbyterian church in japan released a statement in 1993 ( jennings 2003). 86 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18835 the recently adopted peace declaration of the reformed church in japan (rcj 2023) is one example of a church denomination that takes a pro-active, prophetic stance in this matter.2 the rcj, as a small but vibrant church in a 99% non-christian country, is called to be a strong and credible witness to god’s peace and justice, whether the japanese government take due note of its peace declaration or not. in an era of great relativity, where “anything goes”, the rcj’s unmistakable evangelistic nature and scripturally trustworthy preaching are commendable. congregations are battling to survive in a socio-political context that is hostile, albeit clandestine. the rcj’s proclamation of peace should be viewed as a particular faith expression, as part of the worldwide christian faith community. the rcj proclaims peace in unison with many other churches, for instance with the uniting reformed church in south africa which by its belhar confession of faith calls the church blessed because it is a peacemaker. globally, for example, churches are urged by the world council of churches to walk hand in hand and see their shared existence as a focused walk of faith, a religious pilgrimage of justice and peace, “and to join together with others in celebrating life and in concrete steps toward transforming injustices and violence” (wcc, n.d.; see also enns and mosher [eds] 2013). as a concrete example of this pilgrimage, the wcc also recently initiated its emerging peacemakers forum (wcc 2023). at an international meeting for peace held in berlin in september 2023, wcc general secretary jerry pillay aptly contended, “indeed, it takes courage to choose peace as it often implies taking risks, pushing boundaries, and daring to be different, to be disliked, to be criticized and even to be condemned. in today’s complex world, achieving and maintaining peace is perhaps one of the most audacious acts imaginable” (pillay 2023, emphasis added). in addition the wcc has recently created various very significant documents. together towards life is an ecumenical mission affirmation which seeks to further god’s mission of justice and peace so that life may flourish. the affirmation argues that christian mission and evangelism involves active struggle and public resistance. missio dei works for justice, peace, and reconciliation to bring about the fullness of life for everyone on earth. it should be countercultural “because mission belongs to the god of life, justice, and peace and not to this false god who brings misery and suffering to people and nature” (wcc 2013, par. 108). the church’s evangelism cannot be forceful or violent if god’s life represents/is peace. the affirmation duly ends with the prayer: “god of life, lead us into justice and peace!” in other global church circles, the world evangelical alliance (wea) – representing roughly 600 million christians in over 140 nations – has also added its voice to the 2 this declaration can be downloaded from https://tinyurl.com/39yet4rp and although it cannot be included here (because of a limited word scope), should be read in full as integral part of this article. https://tinyurl.com/39yet4rp 87 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18835 “new agenda for peace” which was launched in july 2023 by the united nations. the wea strives to actively participate in christ’s call to peacemaking and the creation of resilient societies characterized by “positive peace” (global peace index 2022: 70). therefore, the wea’s peace and reconciliation network proactively joined the global conversation by submitting their appeal to the un as follows: “a new agenda for peace in a globalized and pluralistic age should welcome and include the convictions, learnings, insights, contributions, and corrections of faith communities that are forming people who inhabit, labor, and serve within the areas and pillars that require crucial attention for the global public good” (schirrmacher et al. 2023). it would be fitting to view the rcj’s declaration of peace as a relevant, local expression of a similar desire to contribute to the global public good, or in biblical terms to god’s holistic shalom in this world (see also lausanne movement 2010, cape town commitment part ii.b and part i.5.c on peacebuilding). shalom is a complicated and profound concept that defines peace as the harmonious expression of all human ideals. shalom embodies the conditions and principles required for war prevention, such as self-determination, economic well-being, social justice, human rights, and dispute resolution through nonviolent means (schwarzchild 1994: 18). the beliefs and actions of christian faith communities aimed at shalom and the global public good – like the rcj, however apparently insignificant the church may be in terms of numbers in the japanese context – indeed have a deeply formative potential. this potential can (but should not) be ignored by power-wielding politicians or international leaders (see van der watt 2023b: 3–6 on the issue of power and the gospel). revisiting japan’s constitution, in particular article 9 demilitarization, democratic principles and the redistribution of power and wealth were all impacted by the post-war (us-led) allied occupation (1945–52), which also cleared the path for japan to experience unparalleled economic prosperity. however, the us military leaders’ intention – led by us general douglas macarthur’s chief of the government section at ghq, general courtney whitney – with the new constitution introduced during the occupation had another double-edged irony: the constitutional gift of peace and democracy was, as douglas lummis (1982: 43) contends, not merely a good idea supported by reason, it [was] also a command supported by the most terrifying power in the history of the world, the power of the atomic bomb. the pacific war and the occupation of course played a tremendous role in shaping the post-war historical stance of both nations, but the lesson each drew from the experience was different. what the japanese people learned was hatred of war, contempt for militarism, love of democracy and awe for technology. to the 88 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18835 americans, on the other hand, the occupation gave the opportunity to experience the sweetness of absolute power, and to convince themselves that the atomic bomb, if in u.s. hands, is a democratic force. how this historical issue can or should be interpreted remains very contentious and exceeds the limits of this short article. however, the issue that is indeed relevant here is the fact that, notwithstanding article 9’s clear ban on war, japan maintains a capable modern military force. although the pacifist constitution was enforced by the us in 1946 and “made the emperor and the japanese people into instant pacifists” (kimijima 2009: 170), its ban on the upkeep of armed forces was rapidly being circumvented. to keep american military supremacy in the western pacific and restrain communism during the cold war period, us policymakers looked to japan as a possible strategic ally. the japan–us security treaty was signed after the korean war broke out in june 1950 and gave – and still gives today – the us extensive authority over japanese foreign policy (cortright 2008: 120). considering the above, a complex conundrum remains: how much of japan’s development vis-à-vis pacifism was self-determined and how much was because of us influence? over the past three decades, since the dissolution of the soviet union, there has been a great deal of political discussion regarding changing article 9 and other provisions of the constitution. the leading liberal democratic party (ldp) drafted constitutional amendment plans in 2005 that included the removal of article 9, which states unequivocally that the “japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes” ( japan 1946). in 2012, the ldp published a comprehensive draft constitution with numerous modifications, including a rewrite of article 9. two years later, the constitution was interpreted to include “collective self-defence”, and more recently, in 2022, japan updated three important security documents, giving the country extra “counterstrike capabilities”. scholars and opponents have branded japan’s expanding military as a “de facto denial of article 9” because of these amendments (harrison et al. 2023: 1–2). in addition, the conservative government is attempting to restore loyalty to the state utilizing the emperor and shintōist symbols. for example, the current government actions harken back to 1890–1945, when all japanese school children were systematically indoctrinated into japan’s nationalist ethos by the regular, solemn recitation of the imperial rescript on education (hastings 2003: 113; see also hardacre 1989 and ion 2003). the post-war japanese anti-militarist stance has no (explicit) theological roots, in contrast to many notions of pacifism in the west. the japanese pacifism is borne from the existential impact of war. a significant portion of the japanese population has responded to the country’s ongoing militarization with great fear and discontent. 89 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18835 in the early decades following world war ii, many peace movements made progress in providing a strong opposition against the revision of article 9.3 after the war, each time the constitution’s pacifism was tested the japanese people reaffirmed it, adopted it and survived the crisis (kimijima 2009: 173). mari yamamoto (2004) therefore rightly contends that japan is unique among nations in the size and breadth of its grassroots peace movements. however, as sakamoto (1982) argues, after the 1960s the fragmented nature of such initiatives made it impossible to create a consolidated, effective peace movement. moreover, “the absence of a national catalyst like the church and the general depoliticization of national labor unions which used to take political leadership in popular movements have created an additional difficulty in identifying national actors for a unified peace movement” (1982: 4). peace studies and the notion of pacifism in japan peace studies in post-world war ii japan has largely focused on the issue of pacifism. very often leaders from the meiji era onwards, many of them christians or social activists – like kanzō uchimura and toyohiko kagawa (see tao 2019) – are referred to as pioneering figures. much fewer attempts have been made to give a comprehensive description of the intellectual history of the development of the notion of peace in japan. robert kisala’s book prophets of peace is a welcome exception to the rule. kisala (1999: 16–19) aptly emphasizes the often-ignored fact that japanese intellectual history, stemming from confucian inner morality (or so-called “philosophy of the heart”) and the pervasive focus on stability and order, predates the meiji era (1868–1912) discourse on pacifism. until this meiji period japan has only been involved in conflicts with very few external combatants, but after the turn of the twentieth century pacifist and just war notions entered japanese discourses, mainly via prominent christian leaders. today japanese people view peace as a moral and political commitment tied to human rights, democracy and economic well-being. heiwa shugi（平和主義 – japanese for ‘peace’ and ‘-ism’ – is the usual phrase for peace campaigning. many people confuse absolute and conditional pacifism because of the term’s ambiguity. heiwa shugi has no english equivalent, although the glasgow definition of pacifism was 3 anti-vietnam war protests, including nuclear armaments docking in japan, also took place during these years. how much protests were against such “de facto” military acceptance of us initiatives or against an alleged revision of article 9 needs delineation. however, such delineation exceeds the scope of this article. 90 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18835 meant to reflect the japanese term’s principled yet pragmatic peace commitment (yamamoto 2004: 10). the reformed church of japan’s prophetic, proactive response japan has a conflicted past concerning its relationship with christianity. in previous eras christians have suffered considerably when professing their faith. although japan’s postwar pacifist constitution includes religious freedom, the challenge remains: how do christians take up the responsibilities that accompany this freedom today? christians in japan (from all denominational backgrounds) are called – as elsewhere – to proclaim and embody peace. many realists typically write peacemakers off as hopeless romantics or, worse, paralysed prophets of doom who refuse to face reality. yet, jesus said that peacemakers are to be blessed as children of god (mt. 5.9), clearly indicating god’s will for peace and his blessing upon those who make peace instead of war (rae 2014: 32). church confessions are typical of protestant (especially reformed) churches. the rcj synod initiated its peace declaration, in a sense, as a reaction to the (above-mentioned) japanese government’s proposed change of its constitution’s article 9. the peace declaration, however, not only prophetically speaks to and critiques crucial decisions made during times of war, but it also directs the church in the actions that are needed in times outside of war. the question “how should we then live, now?” constantly needs to be answered. as the body of christ in japan, the rcj is determined by christ-centred biblical theology that teaches them to focus on deeper spiritual realities with their eyes wide open to the indescribable suffering in this world. the rcj peace declaration can serve as a shared foundation of thinking about a complex variety of issues from the perspective of peace. for instance, in people’s daily lives, where structural violence – based on social injustice and intolerance, including poverty, discrimination, human rights violations and environmental destruction – undermine the right to live in peace and is increasingly prevalent, this declaration can edify the next generation of peacemakers. there are already some projects planned which will be executed in the next few years, to embody the declaration practically. conclusion what is the significance and meaning of the rcj peace declaration within the wider field of peace studies as well as in connection with the notion of pacifism in asia and worldwide (as explicated in this article)? as we face complex issues and try to make 91 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18835 sense of continuing global conflicts, what can we learn from this peace declaration in our varied (church) contexts today? the peace declaration is aimed at a wider audience than just japan. there are several reasons why it is important for those outside the rcj and outside japan to engage with the peace declaration’s content. first, such a conversation can edify all participants who engage in peacemaking. christian faith takes shape and grows deeper and wider across political, cultural and linguistic boundaries. the church of jesus christ is both universal and local in nature. christians need to be reminded regularly of the greater reality of god’s work around the world. second, the theme of peace itself must be continually exposed to renewed exploration and discussion among christians (and others) in general. in times of war, our longing for peace should grow stronger. other items on our socio-political agenda could hardly be more urgent to consider now. a changing post-covid world order forces us to pay fresh attention to the urgent realization of peace and justice, as emanated by the triune god of the bible. thirdly, the rcj’s declaration of peace offers a unique perspective of (reformed) christians in japan, the only nation in the world that lived through the indelible devastation of atomic bombs. reformed christians in japan have something to share that should be taken to heart by other members of the body of christ across the globe. after all, despite our radical differences, there is but “one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope …” (eph. 4.4) we can benefit from a renewed reflection on the issue of peace, as we continue to heed christ’s call to become peacemakers in our own time and place. in this way, we participate in the ongoing, transformative history of the body of christ in connection with biblical shalom. by critically reclaiming our history and constructing our future identities from the ground up, we are constantly and constructively reforming: ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda (the church reformed, always reforming). the early church participated in public witness by overturning the status quo. speaking truth to power as a public witness is the christian practice of presenting critiques and alternatives to reform our societies, based on the vision of god’s kingdom. public witness is not an add-on to the church’s mission. instead, the church realizes its missional calling when it publicly engages in testifying to true christian peace by rejecting imperial claims. the corpus of knowledge and practice around peacemaking has grown because of the simultaneous contributions of religious leaders, philosophers, moral reformers and many others for the sake of a safer, less violent society. this article has explained how this corpus of knowledge and practice includes the body of christ in japan. the rcj, as a minority group in japan, deeply identifies with the predicament and convictions of the early church. therefore, it is important to note that the rcj peace declaration embodies and declares god’s shalom, not from a position of power, but from 92 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18835 the margins of society and from below. the peace declaration indeed gives a vivid christian raison d’étre for realistic peacemaking efforts. finally, the rcj’s peace declaration itself (under its second heading called “war, peace, and the state”) speaks to the core of its pro-active peace vision: what god is ultimately trying to teach us through the biblical accounts of war in the ancient world is the truth that “all who draw the sword will die by the sword” (mt 26:52), so that his people will trust in him as their lord rather than in force of arms. so-called “just wars” or “lawful wars” in christian history were also originally condoned as a last resort to deter war and maintain justice and peace, let alone the claim of “holy wars” to actively promote war in the name of god, which is a fundamental error. therefore, the lord’s church should not justify war as a means of settling disputes, much less affirm contemporary wars that use weapons of mass destruction. we call for the defense of all human life – created in the image of god – to be the path to peace, without being deceived by national politicians and the mass media, who create enemies and try to replace peace issues with military security issues. therefore, we actively cooperate in all non-military work to avert war and create peace among nations, and in particular, as the church in the only country to have experienced the devastation caused by nuclear weapons, we demand the abolition of all weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. (rcj 2023) about the author stéphan van der watt is a research fellow of stellenbosch university faculty of theology. he is also a full-time lecturer of mission studies and pastoral theology and care at kobe reformed theological seminary, where he teaches in japanese. this position, as well as his work as ordained co-operating missionary, generates ample opportunities to study relevant practical theological issues in intercultural ways. contact: jsvdwatt@gmail.com references bellamy, a. j. 2010. “the institutionalisation of peacebuilding: what role for the un peacebuilding commission?” in o. p. richmond (ed.), palgrave advances in peacebuilding (pp. 193–212). london: palgrave macmillan. burkholder, j. r., and k. holl. 2005. “pacifism.” in e. fahlbusch (et al.), the encyclopedia of christianity vol. iv. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. cortright, d. 2008. peace: a history of movements and ideas. cambridge: cambridge university press. dominguez, g. 2023. “japan turns to southeast asia to 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ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 1 63 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13746 a r t i c l e s doi: 10.54195/ef13746 mongolian migrants in a korean missional church: the case of nasom community seonyi lee abstract ever since lesslie newbigin’s missional ecclesiology was introduced to south korean churches in 2000, korean scholars and pastors have been reaching beyond church growth theory to explore alternative and practical models. missional ecclesiology led them to refine their ecclesiology and to restore the essence of the korean church. this paper examines nasom community for mongolian migrants as a model of missional church in korea. this study first describes the situation of mongolian migrants in korea. secondly, the missionary vision and missionary strategies of nasom community, and how they are implemented in practice, are explored. finally, the mission of nasom community is reviewed. this case shows the missionary potential of the korean church for asian mission. keywords: missional ecclesiology; nasom community; korean church; mongolian migrants; asian mission introduction the korean church began as a missional church. while western protestant missions originated from mission societies, the korean church was a missionary community from the beginning. protestantism entered korea through western missionaries in 1885, and the independant korean presbytery was organized in 1907 where koreans were ordained as pastors (moffett 1962: 55). then in 1913 the presbyterian general assembly was organized and sent missionaries to shandong, china. in only 30 years, the korean church had become a missionary-sending church. at the time of the edinburgh world missionary conference in 1910, the korean church was still young. but in the 2000s it was sending more than 10,000 missionaries, and by the end of 2017 it was sending the second highest number of missionaries among all countries (byun 64 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13746 2018: 317). korean churches today play a central role in world mission, serving asia, africa and south america. however, the korean church’s missionary work is not without problems. korean church missions may be characterized as church-focused, self-expanding and individualistic (han 2010: 77). korean christians are used to understanding mission as church-focused. this was naturally the influence of western missionaries and their missiology since the nineteenth century. from the 1980s, missions conducted by single church units had great impact and korean church missions acquired the tendency to focus on the local church’s own self-expansion. this was influenced by the church growth movement that greatly influenced the korean church at the time, the result being to reduce missions to an event of the church rather than the event of the kingdom of god for the world. the church growth movement directed all the church’s resources to numerical increase in visible church membership. this naturally also narrowed christians’ focus on individual spirituality. since the 2000s, the korean church has faced a crisis of stagnation and loss of social influence. in this situation, some scholars and pastors have suggested that missional ecclesiology is a solution. that is why lesslie newbigin’s missional ecclesiology that emerged in uk and then us academia in the 1980s and 90s gained attention in korea in the 2000s (korean society of mission studies, 2015: 198). newbigin’s the household of god: lectures on the nature of the church showed us how to seek the missional nature of church facing secularization and neopeganism in the western world (newbigin 1954). the missional church movement arose during the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. the movement seeks to rethink and redefine the nature of the church and create a new paradigm in which churches are seen as missional in natue. a missional church is a christian community that is focused on engaging with its surrounding community and actively participating in god’s mission in the world (han 2019: 45). this approach emphasizes the church’s role in reaching out to the entire world outside the church and in local context. missional churches seek to break down the barriers between the church and the world by actively seeking to understand the needs and challenges facing their surrounding community. this involves building relationships with people in the community, engaging in acts of service and justice, and sharing the gospel in relevant and meaningful ways. missional ecclesiology was a practical theology to overcome the dominant church growth perspective. it afforded an opportunity to again ask what the church is and to re-establish korean ecclesiology. the missional church movement is a response to the changing cultural context in which churches operate. it seeks to provide a more relevant and effective approach to fulfilling the church’s 65 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13746 mission in the world. nasom community is made up of several institutions including nasom church (http://www.nasomchurch.com). nasom church, a local church, is a part of nasom community. this study examines nasom community as a korean church that practises this essential mission of the church. nasom community is a critical case to study for keeping the nature of missional church and reaching out to migrants who were excluded in korean society. nasom community which is unique in sending migrants back their countries for mission, is a case of missional church in korea. nasom community is involved in both local and overseas mission. this study first examines the situation of korean migrants and the relationship between korea and mongolia to understand the context of nasom community’s mission to mongolians. second, the ministry and activities of each segment of the community to identify the missionary vision and strategy of nasom community is investigated. third, the findings from the perspective of missional ecclesiology is assessed. finally, suggestions are made for the korean church may become a missional church for asia as a channel of missio dei. mongolian migrants in korea the situation of immigrants in korea the number of foreigners staying in korea began to increase in the early 1990s with the influx of manufacturing workers from china, southeast asia, and south asia. during this period, the need for foreign workers for domestic production increased due to rising wages, avoidance of 3-d jobs (dirty, dangerous and difficult), low birth rate, aging population and high educational attainment. therefore, an industrial trainee system, an employment permit system and a visiting employment system were implemented for foregin workers. many of these workers are engaged in manufacturing or menial service, and most of their labour costs less than that of korean citizens, which helps alleviate human resource shortages in these sectors. but the influx of foreigners is not just limited to blue collar industries. in the process of economic growth and transition to high-tech industries, the number of high-wage foreign workers is increasing, and foreign high-skilled people are entering various sectors in major corporations. according to a report compiled by the ministry of public administration and security, the number of foreign residents living in korea reached 2.13 million as of november  2021, increasing fourfold since 2006 (newspower 2022). according to monthly statistics, the number decreased from 2,524,656 in 2019 to 2,135,689 by the end of june  2020 in the aftermath of covid-19 (christiandaily 2020). in 2022, the number of foreign residents was 2,245,921, of whom 849,804 were from china, http://www.nasomchurch.com 66 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13746 235,007  from vietnam, 201,681 from thailand, 156,562 from the united states, 79,136 from uzbekistan, 57,452 from the philippines, 56,995 from russia, 53,038 from mongolia, 50,841 from indonesia, 49,240 from cambodia etc. (seoul.go.kr). however, the number of migrants in korea is expected to continue to increase in the future as korea’s population ages and birthrate falls. the ministry data institute (2022) shared the results of a self-reported survey report on the religious life of 445 foreigners living in ansan and vicinity from 4 july to 22 august 2022. according to this survey, 8% of the participants are currently protestant, and more are buddhists at 12%. more people responded that they have become non-religious after migrating to korea, and the proportion of people adhering to each religion also decreased after migration. in addition, when asked if they had been encouraged to join a religion in korea, 71% responded that they had not. meanwhile, a high proportion of foreign migrants are favourable to protestantism. protestantism topped all categories when asked to identify “the religion that has affection for migrants”, “the religion that best understands the difficulties of migrants”, and “the religion that provides practical help to migrants”. of the non religious migrants, 44.5 % responded that they may be open to protestanism in the future, followed by buddhism (31.1%), catholicism (3.8%) and islam (1.5%). migrants who attended religious events had positive experiences because they “felt peace of mind” (41.9%) and were “welcomed warmly” (31.5%), suggesting that the korean church should become a community of welcome and hospitality. as the number of migrants in korea increases significantly, korean churches must be attentive to missions and strategic ministry to migrants. migrant missions are as important as overseas missions. mongolian migrants in korea mongolian people began entering korea after diplomatic relations were established in 1990. they came pursuing the “korean dream” of economic prosperity. especially with the implementation of the employment permit system and president roh moo hyun’s visit to mongolia in may 2006, migration to korea exploded (korea news 2006). the mongolian government asked the korean government to accept more mongolian workers, and the president and other government officials visited mongolia and signed a memorandum of understanding to permit entry of mongolian workers into korea. the number of mongolian migrants has already exceeded 53,038 in korea, which is nearly 1.6% of the mongolian population. mongolia’s most important source of national finance is mongolian workers in korea. http://seoul.go.kr 67 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13746 about 70% of mongolian workers in korea are highly educated people who graduated from community college or higher education. many of them are also young people in their early thirties. this tells us that most of mongolians visiting korea are the elites in the upper-middle class or young and competent leaders with the potential to shape public opinion in the future. these are the people lining up outside the korean embassy in ulaanbaatar to enter the small country called korea. mongolia was once at the centre of world history and geopolitically located next to the neighbouring countries of china and russia at the heart of the central asian silk road. mongolia is also a museum of religions containing islam, christianity, confucianism, buddhism and shamanism. therefore, there is a potential place for asian mission. the missionary vision and strategy of nasom community the missionary vision of nasom community nasom church was established on 5 october 1997 in the basement of a building in gwangjin district in seoul. the church belongs to the seoul presbytery of the presbyterian church of korea (pck), and naturally began with believers who shared a vision for migrant and multicultural ministry. in 2011, it became an organized church and formed the nasom community (co.) that operates an international mongolian school, mongolia ulaanbaatar cultural promotion centre, seoul migrant mission centre, and nasom multi-culture children care centre. the seoul migrant mission centre, a branch of nasom community, was established on 28  january 1996 in seongdong district of seoul before nasom church was established. figure 1 organisation chart of nasom community the community motto is “serving the migrants, serving by giving, and serving by going forth”, expressing their identity as a community that welcomes jesus christ (nasom community website). the community aim is to support migrants and form a life-giving community. a large proportion of migrants nasom community serves are from mongolia, so the scope of this study is limited to the community’s mission 68 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13746 to mogolian migrants. the seoul migrant mission centre is a missionary agency affiliated with the seoul presbytery of pck. currently, 2,500 migrant workers from 29 countries are registered to receive medical check-up services. over 10,000 people participate in this ministry each year. nasom community is a missionary community founded to support the neighbouring foreign migrant workers. for this article, an interview is conducted with hae-geun yoo, who is the president of nasom community. he graduated from presbyterian university and theological seminary and studied social welfare policy at soongsil university. he was the first general secretary of the korean church foreign labourer missions council. his ministry philosophy is to follow god’s will and stand with the socially marginalized, to incorporate diversity in the rapidly changing context of globalization and information exchange, and to reject a capitalist standard of success. his aim is qualitative, rather than quantitative, church growth, presenting an alternative model of doing church. he is building a migrant ministry and missions network for nasom church to practise faith by serving the migrants and the marginalized. yoo was full of resentment toward god due to his child’s cognitive disability and the loss of vision caused by his disease. he had come to the end of his tether and decided to take his life, but met jesus who more than empathizes with the poor and the marginalized and dwells among them (yoo 2019b: 97–118). yoo affirms that true mission and ministry is to love the marginalized neighbours and to live among them just as jesus did. his vision for nasom church is for it to be a community that serves the migrants and to be the salt and light of the world. he refers to his ministry as “nomadic life and spirituality”. nomads are those who chart new paths and respond to the needs of the time with a constant pioneering spirit rather than building fortresses (yoo 2006: 244–49). especially as borders blur in the age of globalization and information and as modern korean society becomes multicultural, sojourning migrant workers may be the seedbed of world mission. yoo shares the gospel with migrant workers as he sees the potential for world mission through them. currently, about 2,000 migrant workers are registered with nasom community, and more than half of them are from mongolia. in 1999 the community established international mongolian school for the children of mongolian migrants. the school has currently enrolled 65 mongolian students and about 50 korean and mongolian teachers. some of them live in their two dormitories, house of nasom and house of joseph. there is also mongolia ulaanbaatar culture promotion centre, which plays a role in civilian diplomacy between mongolia and korea. in addition, the international mongolian school is essential to prepare for mission to mongolia. education is also the most thriving type of ministry to mongolian migrants. the role of nasom commu69 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13746 nity serves the foreign migrants’ urgent needs. koreans’ perspective may misinterpret the actual needs of the migrants but a true community is an open community that understands and accepts all migrants. the mission strategy of nasom community the number of foreigners staying in korea grew rapidly from about 910,000 in 2006 to about 2.3 million in 2018. to respond to god’s call to be the ark of salvation for the migrants coming to korea, nasom community sends back migrants as missionaries to their hometown, operates missional businesses for financial self-sufficiency and trains retired seniors for missionary work. the seoul migrant mission centre the seoul migrant mission centre, affiliated with pck, was the first among nasom community branches to be established on 28 january 1996. it serves foreign migrants with the love of jesus christ and shares the gospel with them. there are currently more than 150 people worshipping at the centre each week. it serves foreigners and migrant workers with human rights advice and medical support, and holds various gatherings and events. there are regional worship services at the mission centre. every week, 150 migrants attend services for mongolian migrants, for others from southwest asia (mostly india), islamic regions (iran, türkiye), china and vietnam, as well as services in english for others from the philippines and africa. for mongolian worship, 20 to 30 people gather every sunday at 2 p.m. to worship in the library on the first floor of the international mongolian school which also serves as the exhibition hall of the mongol cultural centre. most of the participants are mongolian teachers at the international mongolian school. the services encourage the teachers to share the gospel with the mongolian students and educate them in the christian worldview and values to fear god and love their neighbours. region worship time attendee english-speaking region sunday 14:00 4 teams southwestern region sunday 14:10 15 to 20 migrant workers islamic region sunday 14:00 3 koreans and 3 iranians mongol region sunday 14:00 2 to 30 mongolian teachers china region sunday 13:00 8 to 10 chinese students and worker vietnam region sunday 14:00 7 to 8 vietnamese women & workers table 1 regional worship by seoul migrant mission centre. 70 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13746 in the seoul migrant mission centre, various counselling and medical services are provided to effectively help migrant workers solve various issues they encounter in their employemt. counselling is mainly on employment, wage, passport and visa problems and work-related injuries, to help them file reports and guide them to hospitals. the centre provides practical help for migrants in physically demanding working conditions and advocates for their rights. medical service is provided on internal medicine, surgery and oriental acupuncture on sunday afternoons by volunteers. doctors and specialists provide medical services to migrant workers who have difficulty accessing medical care. the centre conducts a spiritual retreat programme for migrants during the lunar new year holiday every year at nasom multicultural ecology village in yangpyeong. nasom church and seoul migrant mission centre also hold joint easter and thanksgiving services. in addition, a sporting event (may), cross-country pilgrimage (during chuseok holiday) and nasom festival (december) are held annually. about 100  people attend the retreat, where on the first day they have prayer sessions and bible reading and meet in regional groups. on the second day, there is an early morning worship service, breakfast, then the pilgrim’s progress activity when they have time to commit to following christ’s footsteps. they finish the event on the lunar new year, baking and enjoying pizza and spaghetti and enjoying the local hot springs. in easter, members of nasom church and seoul migrant mission centrr worship together to celebrate the resurrection of jesus. after worship, groups from each country present their dance and praise. the presentations are attended by the nasom church members, who serve the migrants. the sporting event promotes mental and physical fitness for the tired migrants and multicultural families and helps them adjust to korean community life. the teams are divided into countries; there are recreation programmes for children and also for their parents. they also worship together for thanksgiving in a gathering of brothers and sisters in jesus christ with different language and culture to offer true worship through praise and prayer. in december, several teams of people from mongolia, iran, india, the philippines, vietnam and china participate in the nasom festival to present their own ethnic song and dance. the groups experience unity and comfort as they take time out from difficult daily life in this foreign land and practise the songs and dances of the country they dearly miss. homesickness deepens by the year end and the new year holiday. these events facilitate the sharing of the love of jesus christ with those who came to korea as migrants. 71 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13746 the centre supports some migrants who accepted the faith in korea to study theology and get ordained and be sent back for mission to their own country to preach the gospel in their own language. there are pastor borma of the mongolian blessed church, pastor l in country a, pastor pangaz kapila and hye-jung lee in india and missionary wentituha in vietnam all work to expand the kingdom of god by evangelizing people in their own language. borma came to korea as a migrant worker and received jesus christ as her saviour in seoul migrant mission centre. she studied theology at presbyterian university and theological seminary and was ordained after graduation. yoo tells her story as follows: a undocumented migrant woman who only wished for money had an encounter with god. ever since then, she prefered to turn the pages of the bible than count cash, and she much more enjoyed serving church members than serving at restaurants. the church pastor who observed her closely supported her theological studies. after three years of difficult ministry training, she is now heading hom to spread the gospel (yoo 2008: 152). in june 2006, pastor borma was dispatched to mongolia blessed church. the blessed church’s sunday 11 a.m. service is attended by 25 adults, 15 to 20 youths, and 20 to 30 children. there are morning prayer services from easter day to 1 september every year. most of the morning prayer meetings are attended by 5–10 elderly ladies. about 10 young people gather to pray for mongolia and for the kingdom of god at 6 p.m. on wednesdays. educational institutions and welfare programme for migrant children nasom community has added several programmes for the children of migrants responding to their need. mongolian culture is a family-centred culture so the migrants bring their children to korea. there are the international monglian school, the nasom multi-culture children care centre and free meal programme and the good samaritan inn. the international mongolian school was established in 1999 with nine mongolian migrant children to provide education opportunities for them when they did not have access to a korean public school. later in february 2005, the school was officially accredited by the seoul metropolitan office of education. it was the first school for children of migrant workers to gain such accreditation. today more than 200 students are enrolled from grades 1 to 12 and are being educated according to the mongolian curriculum. they also receive training in adapting to korean culture 72 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13746 and preparing for globalization so that they may grow into leaders to transform mongolia and the world. about 40 students whose homes are far from school stay at domitories, the house of nasom and the house of joseph. mongolian children are today permitted to attend korean public schools, but it is not easy for them to adjust. they face numerous obstacles due to cultural differences, language gap and financial limitations. they are often bullied by others or suffer low self-esteem in korean schools. the children forget the vast steppes of mongolia and suffer through life in small cell-like rooms. they should be educated to live free as people of the steppes. therefore, the international mongolian school educates using the mogolian curriculum and adds korean language, english language and ict education to prepare them for globalization and leadership in mongolia. the school aims to nuture future leaders of mongolian society (yoo 2018a: 103–70). daycare centres for multicultural pre-schoolers are urgently needed. every child has a right to be educated and protected. they should receive the same benefits regardless of their nationality and residential status. but the korean society still has a long way to go in accepting multicultural families and their children. nasom multi-culture children care centre was established to provide suitable daycare for children of migrant workers and multicultural families aged three to seven. today the centre cares for 20 infants and toddlers of mongolian and other ethnicites. in nasom community, 60,000 meals are served each year – about 100 to 200 each day. it has been more than a decade since nasom community started this ministry. alongside the meal programme, the good samaritan inn provides shelter for homeless and unemployed migrants. unlike korean homeless people, the migrant homeless really have nowhere to go. they are also ostracized from the korean homeless community. they may be found dead in the streets or in forgotten places. some who struggle for basic survival may fall into despair and mental illness. the free meal programme and the good samaritan inn are basic welfare programmes for migrants who have fallen into desperate circumstances. they gain hope for new life as they eat and sleep in nasom community. multi-cultural education programmes seeing the need for education for multicultural understanding, yangpyeong nasom multicultural ecology village was established in 2009 by nasom community as a multicultural learning centre. at this site visitors can experience cultures of various countries such as mongolia, india, iran, turkey, china and vietnam. in addition, it is a venue where urban dwellers can experience various wildflowers, plants and insects. 73 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13746 the mongolia ulaanbaatar cultural promotion centre was founded in 2001 with the official support of the government of the city of seoul and the city of ulaanbaatar. it organizes the annual nadam festival for mongolians in korea, as well as other events. the purpose of the establishment is to introduce mongolian culture through mutual cultural exchange between the two countries, promote friendly relations between the two countries and contribute to cultural development. since its establishment in 2001, it has served as a bridge between korea and mongolia through various exchange activities such as mongolian culture education, the mongolian peace corps and the mongolian language institute. the new life vision school was launched in 2012 to serve as a bridge between foreign migrants and retired seniors willing to serve as missionaries in the next stage of their lives. it provides short-term mission programmes for lay seniors to learn the basics of different cultures and migrant missions and put it in practice in korea and abroad. the 10-week course is provided twice a year in march and september. participants are former teachers, ceos, office workers, entrepreneurs and housewives, mostly in their early seventies. the new life mission is a non-denominational missionary organization led by these graduates of new life vision school. people who trained in new life vision school draw from their their abundant life experience to serve migrant workers and multicultural families through medical service, legal counselling, korean language education, hairdressing and computer education in dongdaemun, where people of various ages and backgrounds gather (yoo 2019a: 128–36). the mongol peace camps were built hoping for the day of korean unification. nasom community established an ivy school to support north korean defector youths. the school provides a network to support them to start their own business and fosters leaders in preparation for unification. in 2016, a non-government organization was started with the youths to provide the defectors with a space of encounter and education. they are working to establish headquarters in mongolia, vladivostok in russia, and cambodia to serve as half-way stations on the road to unification. mongol peace camp is at the heart of this effort. the korean church must remember that east and west german unification was the result of persistent exchange between the east and the west german churches. unfortunately, churches in the north and the south cannot interact, and today the relationship between the north and south korea is at a critical point. but as more north korean defectors arrive in the south, helping and serving them will pave the way to unification (yoo 2018a: 214–23). 74 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13746 missional evaluation of nasom community the implications of nasom community from the missional church perspective seen from a missional church viewpoint, the case of nasom community has the following implications. first, nasom community in conducting ministry to migrants presents an alternative model of church in the multicultural era. members of the nasom community have contacted migrants in local society. they established educational institutions for mongolian migrants and the migrants have worshipped together with koreans. migrants have been helped to set up their own worship service. jesus came down among the lowly and the marginalized, and the mission of nasom community is to meet the needs of migrants in korea. nasom church leads them to the gospel of life and sends the gospel back to their homeland in their language. this suggests that churches and their missionary strategies should be changed in step with changes in missions paradigm from the traditional model of sending cross-cultural missionaries overseas to the new model of sending the people back to their home cultures. this is the work of supporting the wandering nomads to become pilgrims with purpose and vision. second, nasom community aims for a balance between missions and pastoral ministry for the glory of god. yoo asserts that the korean church has a mission toward migrants, and this mission should be conducted by recognizing south korea as a mission field and striving to live and love faithfully in our daily lives (yoo 2019b: 210–13). missions and church ministry are not far removed from each other. mission is proclaiming the gospel and ministering to others in everyday spaces as an apostolic community. in the globalization that has blurred national borders since the end of the twentieth century, migrants who approach us as friendly neighbours should be recognized as seeds of misson sent by god. nasom community is very different from korean traditional churches. most big churches are involved in cross-cultural mission, but small churches are not. however, nasom community was established for migrants in korea. only members of nasom church who followed yoo’s vison remained in nasom community. the priority placed on migrants slows church growth even though yoo seeks the balance between mission to migrants and the local ministry. nasom community members considered not only spiritual salvation but also social issues – discrimination, peace between south and north korea, environmental problems – including migrant problems. nasom church members are involved in social responsibility and this impacts the local community and korean society. 75 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13746 third, nasom community practises giving and serving in daily life. it aims for qualitative maturity based on missions rather than quantitative church growth. as national borders blur under globalization and people of various cultural backgrounds gather, church members primarily see themselves as temporary residents on earth with nomadic spirit, and as the light of hope that shines in darkness. the church description states that it is a community for christians with nomadic consciousness. this community that dwells missionally among the marginalized is distinct from the majority of society steeped in capitalism and growthism. fourth, nasom community has limited financial and human resources. there are four types of missionary work in a multicultural society: planting, parallel, transition and special type (korean society of mission studies 2023: 370–76). planting is when the church is started just for migrants. the parallel type is when church and multicultural centre or school manage it together. the transition type is the church that starts with korean members and turns into ministry to migrants. the special type is when the church member is korean in nationality but of a different culture; this type of church is for north korean refugees. nasom community is the parallel type. the strength of this type is making points of contact with migrants, various ministries through institutions for migrants and an active connection between migrants and local society. however, there is a lack of human resources and finance for managing institutions. people working in the institutions need to share their vision to help migrants. nasom community struggles to manage the institutions rather than the ministry of the local church. in sum, nasom community is a missionary community that shares with migrants the joy of becoming the people of god. it is also as a community of neighbours serving strangers in their midst. it is a missional church that understands god’s will and plan and participates in god’s mission to save by the power of the gospel. nasom community continues to be dedicated to establishing god’s kingdom in various countries with the missionary vision of sending migrants back to their countries. significance of mongolian mission by nasom community the asian continent has the lowest evangelization rate among the six continents. western missionaries worked hard in asian missions until the nineteenth century, but christianity did not take root in asia. asia is multicultural, multireligious, and multi-ethnic, which means asians who share such similarities should participate in asian mission. mongolia borders russia and china. genghis khan in the early thirteenth century founded the largest empire in history. after the decline of the mongol empire, the remaining central region was subjugated under the qing dynasty and outer mongolia became today’s mongolia. the country gained autonomy after the 76 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13746 revolution of 1911 but this was then abolished in 1920. then, influenced by russia’s october revolution, mogolia launched the revolution of 1921 and became independent. of the religious population, 53% identify as buddhist, the majority of them mahayana buddhists, and 4% identify as muslim (mongolia ulaanbaatar culture promotion center). mongolia is at the geographic centre of northesat asia. in the past, it was an important passageway on the silk road, but today it has the potential to be the missionary starting point on the reverse silk road. mongolia has had a communist system for more than 70 years since its socialist revolution that occurred alongside the soviet union. it was the second country to eatablish diplomatic relations with north korea, before mongolia established relations with south korea. mongolia may play an important role in the interaction and unification process between south and north korea. through missions in mongolia, it may be possible in the future to maintain close relations with north koreans and to solve the problem of north korean defectors who flee china. nasom community did not stop at ministering to mongolians who came to korea, but sent mongolians back to their countries for mission work. yoo believes training the migrants in korea and sending them back to their home town is a sustainable missionary strategy (yoo 2008: 144–59). especially when many korean missionaries had to return to korea because of covid-19, mongolian migrants could be sent in the missionaries’ place to continue the work. they have no problems with visa, language or cultural barriers. that is why nasom community has sent missionaries not only to mongolia, but also to turkey, india, vietnam and uzbekistan. this is a new and alternative model of mission. conclusion the korean church has been zealous in overseas missions from the beginning. however, since the 1980s, church-centred and self-expansionary missions rather than god-centred missions have been recognized as problematic. as missional ecclesiology began to be discussed in the korean context in the 2000s, it served as an opportunity to re-establish korean church ecclesiology. there was a move to reflect on the missional nature of the church and to restore the essential mission of the church rather than simply pursuing quantitative growth. although most churches in korea are still not interested in missional ecclesiology, many scholars and pastors have come to suggest the missional church as a desirable alternative. 77 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13746 nasom community is one of the missional churches in korea. its mission is to serve foreign migrants, especially those from mongolia. the seoul migrant mission centre was founded first; then nasom church was established for migrants who came to korea. in addition, the international mongolian school, mongolia ulaanbaatar cultural promotion centre, nasom multiculture children care centre, the free meal programme, the good samaritan inn, the yangpyeong nasom multicultural ecology village, the new life vision school, new life mission and mongolian peace camp are various branches with their own communities, ministries and purposes, yet they also form a coherent whole. yoo writes, “more communities should be formed to turn migrants into pilgrims. send them back home for mission to change the world” (yoo 2018b: 67). as a missional church, nasom community is a church that is responding to the essential call to mission. nasom community serves the migrants, presenting a new model of church in the multicultural era. it is a pioneering community that aims for a balance between missionary work and pastoral ministry. as a community of giving and service, it aims for qualitative maturity rather than quantitative expansion. the church and mission centre for migrants total about 500 in korea (korean society of mission studies 2023: 378). this is less than 1% of korean churches. korean christians should be more interested in migrants in a multicultural society. if the korean church recovers its identity as a missionary community like nasom community, it may be used as a channel for asian mission. about the author seonyi lee has been teaching missiology as a professor at honam theological university and seminary since 2018. she currently serves as academic dean of korea iams (international association for mission studies) fellowship that incubates and encourages young scholars. she is also an editor of theology of mission, a periodical published by the korea society of mission studies. her research interests include asia, mission and gender. she has written numerous articles and books including models of asian missiology (in korean, 2019) and no handle on the cross (translation into korean, 2020). contact: seonyilee@gmail.com references byun changuk. 2018. the mission movement of the korean church. seoul: puts press. christiandaily. 2020. https://www.christiandaily.co.kr/amp/news/95284 (accessed 20  dec. 2022). han kookil. 2010. church embracing the world: wholistic missiology. seoul: puts press. ———. 2019. a theory and practice of missional church. seoul: puts press. mailto:seonyilee@gmail.com https://www.christiandaily.co.kr/amp/news/95284 78 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13746 korea news. 2006. http://ikoreanews.com/news/articleview.html?idxno=3356 (accessed 20 dec. 2022). korean society of mission studies. 2015. missional ecclesiology and the korean church. seoul: christian literature society of korea. ———. 2023. missionary work in multicultural society. seoul: christian literature society of korea. ministry data institute. 2022. “survey on religion of foreign migrants”. numbers no. 171 (accessed 13 dec. 2022). moffett, s. h. 1962. the christians of korea. new york: friendship press. mongolia ulaanbaatar culture promotion center. http://nasom16.cafe24.com/mongolcenter/ bbs/board.php?bo_ table=d03&wr_id=1 (accessed 20 dec. 2022). nasom community. http://nasom.or.kr (accessed 20 dec. 2022). newbigin, lesslie. 1954. the household of god: lectures on the nature of the church. new york: friendship press. newspower. 2022. http://www.newspower.co.kr/sub_read.html?uid=54061&section=sc4&sec tion2= (accessed 20 dec. 2022). seoul.go.kr (accessed 20 dec. 2022). yoo hae-geun. 2006. the korean church’s future learning from nomad. seoul: nagne. ———. 2008. nomad jesus. seoul: nagne. ———. 2018a. i love mongol. seoul, nagne1. ———. 2018b. one who makes a way conquers the world. seoul: ddsyhan story. ———. 2019a. no retired. seoul: nagne. ———. 2019b. to leave home is to succed. seoul: nagne. http://ikoreanews.com/news/articleview.html?idxno=3356 http://nasom16.cafe24.com/mongolcenter/bbs/board.php?bo_ http://nasom16.cafe24.com/mongolcenter/bbs/board.php?bo_ http://nasom.or.kr http://www.newspower.co.kr/sub_read.html?uid=54061&section=sc4&section2= http://www.newspower.co.kr/sub_read.html?uid=54061&section=sc4&section2= http://seoul.go.kr ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 1 48 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13755 a r t i c l e s doi: 10.54195/ef13755 missional discipleship in post-pandemic korea: the case of suwonsung church1 bright myeong-seok lee abstract the decline in social trust in the korean protestant church is a significant social issue that requires attention and action. despite being more involved in community service than other religions, trust in the church has fallen, and it is essential to understand why. this paper will examine the previous dominant method of discipleship training, which may have contributed to this decline. by using a case study of a korean church, the study will analyze the effectiveness of the discipleship training and its impact on social trust. then i will reflect on how the korean church should respond to today’s situation characterized by vuca (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) and the pandemic. this paper will suggest a new approach called missional discipleship, which seeks to create a more engaging and inclusive environment that inspires the church to lead and participate in community service. keywords: pandemic; korean church; reliability; disciple(s); discipleship training introduction besides the mega trends of digitization and climate change, south korea is rapidly aging and the birthrate is falling at an alarming rate. the world encountered a pandemic in february 2020 that tremendously changed the way of life. today’s situation may be most aptly described by yuval noah harari who said that humanity has 1 this paper has been adapted from the author’s article originally published in korean under the title “a missionary discipleship as an alternative in the vuca and pandemic era”, theology of mission 69 (2023): 270–303. the author wants to recognize special gratitude to dr rebekah lee, who translated this article. 49 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13755 technologically developed a canoe into a galley ship then into a steam ship to finally a space shuttle, yet no one knows the direction humanity is headed (harari 2015: 415). in an uncertain, unpredictable, and rapidly changing world there is even less time or capacity to respond. according to doris märtin, the acronym vuca (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) best describes the first quarter of the twenty-first century (2021: 37).2 perhaps one reason why the korean church cannot find a way out of this turbulence is that, as märtin pointed out, we continue to be like an ostrich with our head in the sand rather than facing up to the new reality that requires an openness to adapt to change (2021: 111). the ministry strategies that once worked can no longer guarantee the sustainability of the korean church. it is time for the korean church to sincerely ask if we have the will to transform ourselves to be able to face the new challenges of our age. in this study i will consider reasons why the protestant church has lost public credibility despite being actively engaged in community service, indeed more than any other religious groups. for this purpose, i will analyze the phenomenon of discipleship training that once dominated the korean protestant church. based on the analysis i will consider ways for the church to respond to the age of vuca and pandemic and suggest missionary discipleship as a solution. definition and usage of the term “disciple” according to theological dictionary of the new testament edited by gerhard kittel, the word “disciple” can be defined as a learner or a follower. to be a disciple means to personally draw close and follow after a teacher in all aspect of life (kittel 1967: 44). the etymology of the word “disciple” and its application in different historical periods should be reviewed. “disciple” in the old and new testaments the word “disciple” is not clearly defined in the old and new testament but is merely used to name a group of people. in isa 8.16 the word limud (לּמד) appears once, and it comes from the word lamad (לּמד) which means to learn, train and experience. in the new testament gospels, matthew calls the crowds who follow jesus christ the disciples (mt. 10.1), while luke calls the same people apostles (lk. 6.13). this implies 2 vuca is originally a military term to describe the unpredictable and constantly changing battleground situation, but now it is more often used to describe our complicated and uncertain reality that necessitates swift response. 50 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13755 that in the first-century church community the terms were used interchangeably. the term apostle (apostolos) comes from the hebrew word shaliach (ַח to indicate (שִלי one who was sent from jerusalem with a specific mission to the jewish community dispersed throughout the roman empire. according to robert m. johnston, these jewish apostles were generally supported with funding from the jerusalem temple, and worked through jewish networks ( johnston 2006: 2). for instance, saul from tarsus who appears in acts 9.2 was one such apostle for judaism until he was called to be god’s disciple. the development of the term “disciple” in the early church can be further deduced from the didache.3 george cantrell allen states that the term “apostle” was first only applied to the twelve who had personal relationship with jesus during his lifetime (acts 1.21), but as time went by it also came to mean ones who had been sent with a mission, or missionaries (allen 1903: 21). so, by the time the didache was written, the focus shifted from the importance of direct encounter with christ toward discerning the true apostles from the false missionaries who called themselves apostles (allen 1903: 21). johnston states that apostles are usually those who had been sent by an authority to carry out tasks on their behalf, while the term “disciple” was used specifically for those who were with jesus christ in person ( johnston 2006: 5). in his first letter to the church in corinth, paul tells them, “be imitators of me [μιμηται μου], as i am of christ” (1 cor 11.2). the term “imitators of me” (μιμηται μου) almost reminds one of the image of children imitating their father (1 cor 4.16).4 this means to go beyond cognitive response to paul’s teachings, to imitate paul’s character and even his behaviour. this also expects of the teacher an ethical and exemplary life which the disciples would want to imitate.5 “disciple” in the early church and roman empire in the culture of the roman empire, a disciple was primarily a student, or someone who learns from a great teacher. an example of this use is found in the writings of dio chrysostom (ad 40–120), the philosopher and historian who lived in today’s turkey. in his fifty-fifth discourse, chrysostom says even though one has not lived at the same time as a teacher, someone who wholly lives according to the teacher’s teachings must be called a pupil or a disciple (chrysostom 1962: 383) chrysos3 120 pages of handwritten greek manuscript found in the jerusalem monastery of constantinople in 1873 by philotheos bryennios, bishop of nicomedia. 4 i appeal to you, then, be imitators of me. (1 cor. 4.16) 5 for though you might have ten thousand guardians in christ, you do not have many fathers. indeed, in christ jesus i became your father through the gospel. (1 cor 4.15) 51 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13755 tom’s understanding of discipleship is the extra-biblical evidence of the widespread perception of discipleship in the first century, as christianity was growing. justin martyr (ad 100–165), the church fatherm tells of the interests of the earliest church members. and on the day called sunday there is a meeting in one place of those who live in cities or the country, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits. when the reader has finished, the president in a discourse urges and invites [us] to the imitation of these noble things (richardson 1953: 287). having the people “imitate the noble things” means to go beyond cognitive acceptance to imitate the actions of the teachers according to what has been written by the apostles and the prophets. this is in line with apostle paul’s exhortation to the churches he founded to imitate christ and live as disciples of christ (acts 20.35; gal. 4.12; 1 cor. 11.1; phil. 3.17–21). transforming discipleship the conference on world mission and evangelism, organized by the world council of churches (wcc) in arusha, tanzania from 8 to 13 march 2018 brought to the forefront a new perspective on discipleship for churches worldwide. with its theme of “called to transforming discipleship”, the conference highlighted a novel approach, urging churches to embrace the notion of “transforming discipleship” ( jukko and keum 2019: 5–19). while the traditional understanding of discipleship is often limited to a relationship with jesus, this conference emphasized the need for a proactive engagement in fulfilling jesus’ mission in the world (ross 2020: 18–20). thus, what pope francis has termed “missionary discipleship” is, in essence, the concept of transforming discipleship (francis 2013: 96–98). the arusha conference sounds the alarm that the relentless exploitation of god’s creation to sustain our economic system is giving rise to circumstances of ecological degradation and insists that ecological concern consists of an essential part of discipleship of the churches worldwide ( jukko and keum 2019: 9–11). the conference also emphasizes that “mission from the margins” involves validating the capacity of marginalized individuals, engaging in their battles and embracing their aspirations (2019: 11–12). this requires overcoming the tendency to marginalize, resisting and challenging the influences that promote exclusion in our respective contexts. in this context, embracing transforming discipleship in the spirit of mission from the margins enables the church to re-evaluate our approaches to wielding power, 52 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13755 distributing leadership, and collaborating for mission. it provides an opportunity for us to reset the church’s priorities and explore new avenues for fostering inclusivity and equity in our shared mission. discipleship training in the korean church: the case of suwonsung church (pck tonghap) as is widely known, the new ministry paradigm called discipleship training in korean churches started with rev. oak han-heum of sarang church in the 1970s (hong 2022). oak was inspired by hans küng’s ecclesiology and apostleship of the laity during his study at calvin theological seminary in the us (park, e. 2013: 127). as he studied the training materials of the korea campus crusade for christ and the korean navigators, he recognized problems with the widely used doctrinal (catechistic) approach. oak’s main idea was to implement discipleship training that revolves around small groups of lay members rather than church leadership. his book called to awaken the laity was translated into ten different languages. he led 85 sessions of lay leadership seminars and trained 18,500 ministers on discipleship training (kim, m., 2010). oak poured himself into discipleship training to the point of terminal illness. this discipleship training functioned as the rudder for a generation of the korean church. park eung-gyu has this to say about the impact of oak’s discipleship training programme: one contribution of oak han-heum was to effectively imprint on the korean church the truth that all saints, whether clergy or lay, have inherited the apostleship, and are called to share the gospel passed down in the church and to make disciples of all nations (park, e. 2013: 127). in this way, oak’s discipleship training had at its core the recognition of apostleship of the laity. discipleship training brought fresh change into the stagnant korean church structure, and there is little doubt that it was the new paradigm that grew the korean church since the latter half of the 1980s. the pastor of suwonsung church, in suwon in gyeonggi province, early on adapted this new discipleship training paradigm for his church.6 6 the rationale behind choosing suwonsung church’s discipleship training as the case study originates from the author’s first-hand participation in this training. this experience enabled the researcher to undertake pertinent research on the discipleship training methods implemented by suwonsung church. 53 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13755 the beginning of discipleship training in suwonsung church in this section i will briefly examine the process of discipleship training in suwonsung church and its major characteristics to draw out lessons with which the korean church may be revitalized in today’s changed society. pastor an gwang-soo of suwonsung church first began discipleship training in 1987 when the church was reaching its five-year anniversary. the first cohort of beginners class was conducted for five weeks from 9 june to 10 july, meeting twice a week for a total of ten sessions (suwonsung church bulletin 1987). an says he was motivated to start the training based on his own experience of coming to christ and attending church in his youth. he was frustrated that the church would not teach new believers the basics of christianity and all he had to rely on was the pastor’s sermons (an 2021). based on an’s own experience of asking and searching for answers about god, he wrote a manual accessible to any new believer. he says he was able to use this beginners’ discipleship training class to answer questions new christians may have about the basics of faith and strengthen their convictions. he applied the insights he gathered from the beginners class to his sermons. a characteristic of his sermons is to proclaim the gospel message periodically. in his sermons the essential gospel message is preached at least once a month in ways that are easily understandable for new believers. this means his sermons are generally simple and clear (an 2016). these simple messages had an impact on new believers and other christians who had not been rigorously trained. but these beginners classes focused on personal salvation and neglected the prophetic role churches should have fulfilled for the society in the 1980s and the 1990s. as yim hee-mo pointed out, suwonsung church’s discipleship training was similar to that of other korean churches at the time, in that it tended to focus on personal spiritual salvation. if the korean society is to accept the korean church as a true and trusted companion, discipleship training in the church should also be renewed and integrated to get past its preoccupation with dualistic spiritual salvation (yim 2021). impact and limitations of discipleship training in a multifaith society being aware of the diverse religious landscape in korean society and the challenge of sharing the gospel, an gwang-soo began teaching about the existence of god. his approach was different from traditional catechistic discipleship training used in mission organizations and churches in korea. in the following, he explains the impact of his beginners’ discipleship training class. 54 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13755 the beginners’ class became the foundation for our church. once people became convicted of the existence of god and their own salvation, their spiritual life completely changed. you didn’t need to tell them to come to church, they just did.… this is our church’s greatest resource, our church’s uniqueness and strength, our everything (an 2021). the fundamental principle of discipleship training at suwonsung church was the self-discovery of the laity and their role. in the 1980s and 1990s, the baby boomers born in the 1950s and 1960s took over church leadership just as the korean church grew thanks to various political and economic factors. like sarang church, suwonsung church aimed to form faithful volunteers in the church through its discipleship training. however, by the late 1990s, the training that emphasized the role of christians within the church showed limitations in its missionary function. this structural limitation was similar to what the discipleship training program at sarang church had experienced. as a result, suwonsung church’s discipleship training took a new direction in the 2000s. when one person changes, the world changes an shifted the focus of discipleship training from church growth to world mission, inspiring some people to the missionary calling overseas. an recounts a decisive incident one year when only two people signed up for the evening slot of the discipleship class. it was practically challenging for a senior pastor to devote evening hours regularly for three months just to train two people. but to make matters worse, one of them ended up withdrawing. he prayed whether to continue the training for only one person, and he heard a voice in his heart saying, “when one person changes, the world changes.” he chose to obey the voice and trained the remaining person to the best of his ability (an 2021). this experience led an to recognize the value of each soul and shift the focus of his discipleship training toward world mission.7 han guk-il calls an’s ministry approach “authentic passion” and “authentic leadership”. he believes such an approach is necessary for the church to overcome its tendency towards local-church-centrism and to respond to the world’s disappoint7 this was the experience of this author as i underwent the discipleship training of suwonsung church. the training had a profound impact on my spiritual journey, ultimately resulting in my acceptance of jesus, theological training and two decades of missionary work in africa. this experience has been the subject of two separate publications (kim do-il 2018: 296–303 and han guk-il 2019: 279). 55 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13755 ment with its lack of integrity. according to han, an’s leadership style exemplifies the “missionary infrastructure”“ and “social capital” necessary for the korean church to become a missional church (han 2019: 380). weeping with those who weep (rom. 12.5) by 2009 suwonsung church’s discipleship training took yet another turn. the church adopted a social service missionary system to financially support civil society professionals and activists responding to social issues of the time (pck world 2009; park, j. 2017). most recipients have been christian civil society organization workers struggling to make ends meet while working for social causes. the church supports their living expenses as a way to participate in social service mission (an 2016: 221). this resolve to carry out the mission even when there is no immediately visible impact, and the resolve to work for justice and righteousness, shows that the church’s discipleship training had reached a new level. there was also another incident that led to the greatest change in the church’s discipleship training. that was the sewol ferry shipwreck on 16  april 2014. the ferry embarked from incheon to jeju island, many of its passengers being danwon high school students from the city of ansan. the ship sank in the waters near jindo drowning 304 passengers. at the suggestion of nam gi-up who was a deacon and a social service missionary of suwonsung church, some church members visited the families of the deceased, then invited them to church to let the whole church hear the stories directly. some more conservative church members at first interpreted this event as the pastor taking a political stance. but an persuaded even these churches members saying that obeying the command to “weep with those who weep” (rom. 12.15) and wiping the tears of those who have lost their children is a new mission the church must conduct for society. the korean church has for a long time tried to speak to society but it has rather neglected listening to society instead. this was one of the reasons why the church has lost its credibility in the eyes of the world. now after the covid-19 pandemic the korean church needs a new kind of ministers. unlike the previous generation’s ministers who tried to cast grand visions for the direction of the church and charismatically lead the church at its helm, the world today needs ministers to listen calmly and put their discipleship into action out in the world (roxburgh 2006: 144). the case of suwonsung church shows that the world today calls for obedient and incarnational discipleship that listens to forgotten stories and empathizes with others’ suffering. 56 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13755 proposal: discipleship training from the perspective of the kingdom of god the usual kind of discipleship training in the korean church had a rather narrow soteriology and church-centered bias against the world. this discipleship training focused on gathering the world into the church rather than sending disciples out to the world. the church consequently experienced amazing growth, but it also neglected the command to be salt and light of the world. the church-centric discipleship training also neglected the kingdom of god that is wider than the visible church. the church closed its eyes to the world and did not tend to what it should have. as a result, the church lost its social credibility. these same limitations were found in the discipleship training by suwonsung church. but to overcome the limitations they listened to the demands of the society and sought to practice incarnational discipleship, and these efforts took them to a new level. based on this case i now want to propose some new principles of discipleship training for the korean church as it works to recover its social credibility. sola scriptura and solo scriptura much of discipleship training in the korean church has focused on bible study. suwonsung church’s discipleship training in the 1980s and 1990s also had this emphasis. the korean church inherited the reformed church tradition of sola scriptura which privileges the word of god as the sole authority for christian behaviour. however, throughout church history scriptural interpretation has often relied too much on certain authorities, leading to negative consequences. kevin j. vanhoozer has pointed out the problem of scripture-centrism and the danger of confusing sola scriptura with solo scriptura. the solo scriptura approach risks getting trapped in church traditions or neglecting the need to read scripture as a church community (vanhoozer 2019: 178). stanley hauerwas argues that north american christians have been taught to interpret the bible for themselves without undergoing spiritual and moral transformation. hauerwas goes so far as to say, “no task is more important than for the church to take the bible out of the hands of individual christians in north america” (hauerwas 1993: 15). he also argues that “each person in the church” should not have “the right to interpret the scripture” (hauerwas 1993: 16), meaning that scripture interpretation should not serve personal whims, but rather the church community should be the agent of interpretation. in the same vein, discipleship training in the korean church must go beyond the simple intellectual exercise of reading and interpreting the bible. 57 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13755 lamin sanneh argues that christianity is the only world religion that has spread in languages and cultures different from those of its founder (sanneh 2003: 98). sanneh emphasizes christianity’s translatability and mentions the linguistic translatability of scripture and consequent changes to the power structure of the church. sanneh’s argument for christianity’s translatability is rooted in his own context of the african church that emerged from centuries of western colonialism in which african culture, language and religion were deemed inferior to those of the west. the church has subsequently worked to recover its own identity, and language is a critical element in one’s sense of identity. when sanneh as an african theologian writes of the scripture communicating its depths of meaning in his own language, and not just in a european language, this has more powerful impact. the process of christianity spreading from western europe to africa was a process of exploitation and destruction. translation of the scripture into african languages was thus a momentous event. for discipleship training in the korean church, scripture interpretation must be understood from the perspective of the receiver, not just the sharer. therefore, for a church to produce proper interpretations, it cannot be sectarian. the bible also reveals its full meaning when communities of different languages and cultural experiences read it together (wright 2017: 117–206). this is the path that the korean church must take in its discipleship training. sanctity and discipleship as stewards of creation what made discipleship training trend in the korean church in the 1980s was the principle of apostleship of the laity. suwonsung church’s discipleship training was also in this paradigm. this new perspective leveled the relationship between the clergy and the laity and called all believers to discipleship. but today the society has changed and there are new expectations for the church. constant connection to digital media is engendering problems especially after the covid-19 pandemic. preoccupied with digital media, people have no time to enjoy true rest, and the fall-outs are evident. eun-ah cho observes, “the youth are too busy to take stock of themselves. they live disassembled lives.” in a such of temporal scarcity the youth ultimately fail to find their true identity from within and fall into depression (cho 2022: 23–25). this situation can be remedied by recovering our sanctity. the restoration of sanctity should be a core focus of suwonsung church’s discipleship training, as well as for korean churches in general, in light of the challenges posed by digital media and changing societal expectations in the post-pandemic era. in this regard, the term proposed at the arusha conference, “christ-connected58 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13755 ness”, which emphasizes living our entire lives in close connection with jesus christ, is particularly relevant for churches in the digital age (bevans 2018: 374). as miroslav volf emphasizes, embracing our sanctity requires making space for others and inviting them in (volf 1996: 129). this inclusive approach to sanctity recognizes that “discipleship is not primarily a matter of personal or corporate performance or even the living out of the implications of doctrine, but something more deep-seated in desire and identity that is to do with the human longing for holiness” (cherry and hayes 2021: 331). it is through this deep-seated desire for holiness and connection with god that disciples are called to serve as stewards of creation and adopt a “discipleship as gardening” approach towards caring for their most vulnerable neighbours in nature, as we have learned from the lessons of the pandemic (ewell 2021). ethics and social participation to be set apart from society while fulfilling its function, a christian must remember to participate in society. therefore, recovering the christian sense of ethical and public responsibility is critical. ethical standards that are agreed upon by the entire society, not just shared among christians, should be implemented. the church is responsible for approaching the world in a language they can understand and doing good works so that people outside the church may know its good intentions. along with social inequalities, the sociopolitical divide between the conservative far-right and the progressive far-left is detrimental to society. these divisions cause the public commons to shrink, putting socially marginalized groups in precarious positions. the korean church has remained too long in the private realm and has not been free of the persistent tendency long tendency in the korean society to distinguish insiders and outsiders. political partisanship has also seeped into churches to contaminate preaching from pulpits, and christians have defended the powerful for their financial gain while neglecting the powerless in distress. since 2009, suwonsung church has been operating the social missionary system as the basis for nurturing new disciples. in the twenty-first century, we cannot return to the pre-christendom era when christians were a social minority, as alan kreider, the mennonite historian of the early church, pointed out. however, we must seriously examine how the early church functioned in society as the true disciples of christ (kreider 2015: 22). 59 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13755 suwonsung church’s social service missionary system attempts to recover the sense of ethical responsibility of the early church community. by participating in social issues, churches can fulfill their prophetic calling and function as missional church. hospitality and empathy since the latter part of the twentieth century, robert d. putnam and others have warned that american society is disintegrating (putnam 2000: 15–25). putnam observes that christians in the us have been building social trust by engaging in more social services and charities than non-christians, thereby accumulating more social capital (cemk 2020: 85). similarly, sanneh notes that peter’s apostolic calling began when he broke down ethnic and national barriers. sanneh states, “peter’s insistence that true religion cannot be restricted to mere institutional adherence signals a radical shift to the idea of god as boundary-free truth, of god as one who is without partiality” (sanneh 2008: 4). the korean church must now rediscover god’s acceptance and hospitality in the gospel rather than engaging in political strife and social division. as those who have been accepted and forgiven by god, we must make space for others. to this end, we must embody two things: embracing uncertainty and vulnerability and practicing self-denial. these two aspects must work together, like wagon wheels. the early church demonstrated this in words and loving action (brady 1938: 68). in the third century, cyprian, an early church leader in carthage, encouraged christians to develop embodied habits that he referred to as “patience” (kreider 2015: 224). discipleship training should instil patient love as described in 1 corinthians 13 so that it becomes a natural expression of christian life. another challenge facing the korean church is its inability to relate to society. more people are floating between the church and the world today because the church’s messages and interests do not address society’s challenges. suwonsung church’s discipleship training demonstrates that to be a true disciple of christ, a church must empathize with those in despair outside the church and raise society’s capacity for empathy. according to yim hee-mo, this is precisely what it means to follow, imitate and obey jesus christ in incarnational discipleship, and this is what every korean church must strive for. this is what it means to be a radical evangelical (yim 2021: 248). conclusion the case of suwonsung church provides valuable insights into the challenges facing the korean church and churches worldwide in the post-pandemic world. traditional forms of discipleship training are no longer sufficient, and new approaches must 60 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13755 be adopted. scripture interpretation must move beyond intellectual exercises and embrace the translatability of scripture. it should be grounded in the church community and read collectively by diverse communities with different contexts and cultural experiences to uncover its full meaning. in light of the challenges posed by the rapidly changing digital media landscape and evolving societal expectations in this era, there is a pressing need for korean churches to refocus their attention on the restoration of sanctity in their discipleship training. a more inclusive approach to holiness is crucial as it recognizes that authentic discipleship is rooted in innate human desire for deeper connection with christ (bevans 2018: 374) and requires openness to others and a willingness to create space for them. as responsible stewards of creation, disciples must adopt the “discipleship as gardening” mindset, which entails a compassionate approach to caring for the vulnerable members of society, both human and non-human. through this approach, the church can embody the incarnational discipleship of jesus christ and carry out its mission to uplift and empower marginalized and underserved individuals. society expects the church to practise true discipleship, which entails following the example of jesus christ’s incarnational discipleship. this involves reaching out to the sick at bethany and responding to the requests of the diseased trapped around the pool of bethesda. the sewol ferry tragedy subsequently catalysed suwonsung church’s social missionary services. in the current societal climate, the church must assume a larger role beyond its existing religious institution and expand its public outreach. this responsibility, however, is not exclusive to suwonsung church, but rather demands a collective effort from the broader korean church community. the church should prioritize individuals and society suffering social inequalities and unjust structures. to achieve this, the concept of discipleship and the practical implementation of its principles should transcend the traditional confines of the church and actively engage with those beyond its physical boundaries. missional discipleship is a critical element of a missional church’s work to uplift and empower the marginalized and the underserved. this type of discipleship aligns with the genuine discipleship that society expects of the church. about the author bright myeong-seok lee teaches at acts university in korea. he previously served as an ecumenical coworker in ghana, west africa for two decades and is now the 61 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13755 general secretary of iams (international association of mission studies) and a steering committee member of amriconnect (alliance of mission researchers and institutions). additionally, he is the co-president of the korea iams fellowship, which supports young korean scholars in enhancing their international scholarly activities. contact: brightlee@acts.ac.kr references allen, g. 1903. the didache or the teaching of the twelve apostles. london: astolat press. an, g. 2016. “삶의 길에서 만난 행복” [happiness on the path of life]. seoul: pck book. ———. 2021. interview by author. suwon. (suwonsung church), 26 nov. bevans, s. 2018. “transforming discipleship and the future of mission: missiological reflections after the arusha world mission conference.” international review of mission 107 (2): 362–77. brady, g. 1983. the church at the end of the first century; trans. p. singleton. london: sands. cherry, s., and a. hayes. 2021. “conclusion: the authenticity of discipleship”, in the meanings of discipleship. norwich: hymns ancient & modern, kindle edition: 326–40. cho, e. 2022. “vuca세계 속 선교적 책무” [missional responsibility in the world of vuca]. 44th acts mission forum. yangpyeong: acts university institute of world regions, 27  oct.: 21–27. christian ethics movement of korea. 2020. “2020년 교회신뢰도여론조사발표세미나 자료집” [2020 church credibility survey results seminar source book]. seoul: cemk. chrysostom. 1962. dio chrysostom vol 4; trans. h. crosby. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. ewell, s. e. 2021. “discipleship as gardening: reflections on ecological conversion”. in the meanings of discipleship. norwich: hymns ancient & modern, kindle edition: 293–308. francis (pope). 2013. evangelii gaudium: apostolic exhortation to the bishops, clergy, consecrated persons, and the lay faithful on the proclamation of the gospel in today’s world (eg). 24  november 2013. vatican press. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_ exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium. pdf (accessed 4 mar. 2023). han, k. 2019. 선교적 교회의 이론과 실제 [a theory and practice of missional church]. seoul: presbyterian university and theological seminary press. harari, y. 2015. sapiens: a brief history of humankind. new york: harper. hauerwas, s. 1993. unleashing the scripture. nashville: abingdon. hong, s. 2022. “변혁적 제자도의 선교신학적 연구” [missiological study of transformative discipleship]. theology of mission 65: 340–89. jukko, r., and j. keum (eds). 2019. moving in the spirit: report of the world council of churches conference on world mission and evangelism, 8–13  march 2018, arusha, tanzania. geneva: wcc publications. johnston, r. 2006. “leadership in the early church during its first hundred years.” journal of the adventist theological society 17 (2). kim, d. 2018. 더불어 건강하고 행복한 생태계를 만들어 가는 가정·교회·마을 교육공동체. [family, church, and village education community for a healthy and happy ecosystem for all]. seoul: dongyeon. kim, m. 2010. “옥한흠 목사가 ‘제자훈련’과 ‘사랑의 교회’ 통해 남긴 것” [pastor oak han-heum and what he left behind with his discipleship training and sarang church]. in news mission. https:// mailto:brightlee@acts.ac.kr https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.pdf https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.pdf https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.pdf https://usaamen.net/bbs/board.php?bo_table=john&wr_id=91&sca 62 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13755 usaamen.net/bbs/board.php?bo_table=john&wr_id=91&sca=정보&page=11 (accessed 4 nov. 2022). kittel, g. (ed.). 1967. theological dictionary of the new testament vol. 4; trans. g. bromiley. grand rapids: eerdmans. kreider, a. 2015. “patience in the missional thought and practice of the early church: the case of cyprian of carthage.” international bulletin of mission research 39 (4) (17 september). märtin, d. 2021. 엑설런스 [excellence]; trans. m. bae. seoul: dasan books. pck world. 2009. “사회도 선교대상” [society as target of mission]. pck world 28 april. park e. 2013. “은보 (恩步) 옥한흠 목사의 선교적 교회론과 제자훈련목회” [rev. oak han-heum’s missional ecclesiology and discipleship training ministry]. mission and theology 65: 103–52. park, j. 2017. “대형교회가 시민단체활동가 지원하는 이유” [why a megachurch is supporting civil society activists]. news&joy 27 may. putnam,  r. 2000. bowling alone: the collapse and revival of american community. new york: simon & schuster. richardson, c. 1953. early christian fathers. philadelphia: westminster press. ross, k. 2020. mission rediscovered: transforming disciples: a commentary on the arusha call to discipleship. geneva: wcc publications & globethics.net. roxburgh, a. 2006. the missional leader: equipping your church to reach a changing world; san francisco: jossy-bass. sanneh, l. 2003. whose religion is christianity? grand rapids: eerdmans. ———. 2008. disciples of all nations. oxford: oxford university press. suwonsung church bulletin. 1987 june 7, november 15. vanhoozer, k. 2019. hearers and doers: a pastor’s guide to making disciples through scripture and doctrine. bellingham: lexham. volf, m. 1996. exclusion and embrace: a theological exploration of identity, otherness, and reconciliation. nashville: abingdon. wright, b. 2017. communal reading in the time of jesus: a window into early christian reading practices. minneapolis: fortress. yim, h. 2021. “하나님나라를 세우는 성육신적 제자도 선교” [incarnational discipleship mission that raises up the kingdom of god]. theology of mission 63: 221–62. https://usaamen.net/bbs/board.php?bo_table=john&wr_id=91&sca http://globethics.net ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 2 b o o k r e v i e w 138 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18343 doi: 10.54195/ef18343 okesson, gregg. 2020. a public missiology: how local churches witness to a complex world grand rapids, mi: baker academic. isbn: 9780801098079 reviewed by james butler according to okesson and his colleagues in the public missiology working group, it is time for missiology to go public. his book a public missiology carries the subtitle, “how local churches witness to a complex world” and he argues for a public missiology which moves from solely focusing on individual salvation and begins to understand what it means to witness to ‘publics’. this involves engaging with complexity, something okkesson terms ‘thickness’ – the interwoven nature of public life. okkesson’s thesis is that within the missio dei there is a basis for understanding the witness of the local church not just as being aimed at individuals but as taking place in the midst of public life and witnessing to those publics. after all, christians live the majority of their lives engaging with publics, be that in their working, shopping, eating or playing. what is more, any illusion that there might be some neat divide between public and private is increasingly broken down by media beamed into our homes, not to mention social media. okesson recognizes that churches need to understand the realities they live in, and begin to see themselves as part of, and witnessing to, these publics, not just individuals. drawing on his missiological studies and research, and many years of experience of mission in the united states, kenya, tanzania and britain, okesson provides an introduction to the theological basis and lived practice of public witness. a public missiology, for okesson, must be one which takes account of the thickness of public life and builds and weaves itself into that thickness. to do this it needs to see its life not as a single flow, but as a dynamic weaving, of coming in and going out. he bases this dynamic in the life of the internal relations of the trinity and the way the trinity engages with the world. these dynamics of going in and going out (and okesson offers a number of different metaphors to understand this dynamic from 139 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18343 weaving, to dancing, to organisms in dynamic relations with their ecological environment) become the basis to understand churches’ witness. the book is made up of two parts: the first explores the theoretical and theological basis for a public missiology and the second provides case studies which illustrate what public witness might look like. part 1 has five chapters. okesson begins by laying out his terms and arguing the case for why there is a need to engage in the public realm and why the local church is his focus for that witnesses (chapter 1). there is a passion for the local church in his writings, something which he feels needs defending against a wave of negative feelings towards local churches in a lot of recent writing. he lays out a series of problems which he seeks to address in the book which are based around an enlightenment divide between public and private, the relegation of churches to the private space, the “thickness” of public life and the problem that “thin religion” has in witnessing to thick publics. through part 1 he builds an understanding of what publics are (chapter 2), providing a helpful account of structural sin, or what he calls “complicated wickedness”, and describing what “thickness” entails. he offers an account of the trinity bringing thickness through their dynamic life (chapter 3), providing a model for churches. this is then developed further to offer an account of public missiology (chapter 4) and an explanation and exploration of “thick congregational witness” (chapter 5). the introduction to the study of congregations (chapter 6) at the start of part 2 gives the book more of a textbook feel, and perhaps could have been better integrated into the rest of part 2 or offered in a much shorter form in an appendix. as it is, rather than opening up part 2 i felt it interrupted the flow of the argument. the remaining chapters of part 2 offer case studies from kenya, montreal and nashville, to illustrate and illuminate a public missiology. as i review the book i realize i have a complicated relationship with the book. i am drawn to its vision for public witness, its account of the thickness of public life and its engagement with structural sin. this is much needed, and i found the book stimulating my thinking around these areas. it is a compelling account which resonates with much of my own research, providing helpful language and metaphors for the kind of witness needed. i will definitely use the book in my teaching and encourage my students to think about the “thickness” of publics. what is more, given that okesson’s audience is likely to be evangelical, there is a boldness in the account in challenging accounts of solely individual sin and salvation which are to be welcomed and i hope they are engaged with. complicated wickedness is a helpful and enriching concept. at the same time i find myself disagreeing and somewhat frustrated with the book. it definitely reads as an introductory text, and while it sought to base its 140 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18343 argument in trinitarian theology and soteriology, i felt it never really got into the complexities of those conversations. given its positioning, through chapter 6, within the field of practical theology and the qualitative study of the church, i found its divide between theory in part 1 and practice in part 2 to be misjudged. i was not completely convinced by the case studies, and while okesson read them as engaging in thickness, i think another reading could easily have seen them as somewhat separated from the publics around them. i would have liked to have seen how his account of public missiology might have challenged these churches, not just affirmed them. i think some of that would have come had the case studies got beyond the accounts of the male leaders of the churches and have heard more clearly from the diversity of their membership. this brings me to the biggest problem with the book; for all the emphasis on dynamics, of flowing in and flowing out, there was very little emphasis on relationships with those beyond the church, the kinds of broad-based public relationships encouraged by the likes of community organizing. if churches are to go public, then surely this means not just allowing the thickness of the world to shape how they engage, nor simply acknowledging that thickness in the life of the church, but to build those thick relationships with others who are not like them. there was very little about ecumenical relations let alone interreligious relations, and relations with charities, organizations, companies or public bodies. while the book advocated for a flow in and out to build thickness, a weaving with public life, this flow or weaving felt to be controlled and rather one way. the boundaries of the church may be porous, but little time was given to the way the world shaped churches. the challenge from the likes of al barrett for the flow of the church to be interrupted by its encounters in the world would be a helpful challenge to such a missiology, seeing how the life of the spirit in the world might reshape the churches’ witness. similarly, jenny leith’s work on political formation pushes further into this dynamic, challenging the metanarratives that good formation takes place in the church and bad formation takes place in the world, showing how the world might be forming christians and churches for good. for all that the book encourages a bold approach to publics, the focus on sending parishioners to witness to publics could be seen as a reinforcing and slight adaptation of an evangelical approach to mission, rather than a more radical reimagining of witness to publics. i think a public missiology needs to go further and really embrace the thickness, messiness and complexity of being public. in summary, this book is a welcome challenge to move from individual witness to public witness, and points the way for a public missiology, but there still feels a way to go. i want to celebrate this book as stimulating a vital conversation and testify to the way in which it has caused me to stop, reflect and deepen my thinking. i do 141 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18343 recommend the book as a good introduction to a compelling vision, but it is a vision which needs to continue to build and develop. i concur with the premise and direction of the book that churches and missiology need to go public and yet i wanted a bolder and riskier vision for witnessing to publics. about the author james butler, university of roehampton, london; church mission society, oxford. james.butler@roehampton.ac.uk mailto:james.butler@roehampton.ac.uk ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 2 96 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20159 b o o k r e v i e w doi: 10.54195/ef20159 bradbury, paul. 2024. in the fullness of time: a story from the past and future of the church norwich, uk: canterbury press isbn: 978-1-78622-607-5. £14.99 reviewed by nigel rooms some books arrive on one’s desk because one knew the author a little, appreciated their approach and was curious about what they had to say (and they were clearly interested in the future of the church). and then on reading the book one realizes that here is a book that truly needed to be written and offers a unique insight into very many questions about ecclesial futures. such is the case as i ordered and then read paul bradbury’s new book, in the fullness of time. it is a short book of only 138 pages which does not wear its obvious scholarship too heavily and is therefore a delight to read; in fact in places it is beautifully written. bradbury opens by connecting his purpose in writing to being inspired by james rebanks’ english pastoral (xi), which is a lament for what has been lost through industrial farming, amongst other things, in english rural life while making proposals for its future restoration without retreating into a utopia. so, what we have in bradbury’s book, set out in three sections of “lamentation, waiting and resurrection” (one soon realizes these are not neat sequential categories, but rather they flow in and out of one another) is a reprise of the demise of the place of the (mainly) english rural church in its community and some gently researched “case study” responses to that demise from largely the south and east of england. there are eight of these cases in total, either bradbury has personal experience of them and/or he explores their contexts and talks to their leaders. and this is not all, because bradbury also weaves his own autobiographical reflections into the book as we learn how he grew up in a tiny rural community, came to faith, was called to ordination and then discovered the “pioneer” in him that took him to new and experimental places. there is also creative writing and subtle metaphor, parable and poetry alongside evocative line drawings from an artist friend. bradbury therefore, is a truly creative pioneer 97 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20159 97 practitioner-scholar, based as he is within poole missional communities on the south coast of england. there is much wisdom to be gleaned in the book especially about the “fullness of time”, in a church system that is anxious and searching for ever faster, easier solutions to its predicament on the proverbial “burning platform”. god’s time subverts most of that kind of thinking and bradbury offers evidence for his position from the case studies and his own experience. the book however is also extremely realistic: there are no magic solutions, there is hard work, serious cost and the “wins” are often small, if joyful – i think of the description of an adult baptism – yes just one (40). bradbury the realist also takes on nostalgia which is a driver of so much of what happens in late-modern britain and always brings to mind for me zygmunt bauman’s concept of retrotopia – the backward-looking opposite of utopia. thus, without referring directly to movements in the english church which seemingly desire to recreate what was (and there are more than one of these), bradbury shows us what is possible both from within traditional parish churches and in pioneering experimentation that can and do live alongside each other. in these places, and this is a theme of the book; history and tradition are taken absolutely seriously without becoming absolutes in themselves. the case study priests and pioneers here are “finding a useful future in their past” as i sometimes put it. the examples of how this works throughout the book are particularly instructive. one question that might be raised is whether the book could travel beyond the shores of england and britain, since it is a deeply particular and contextual study. i would say a categorical yes to this since the principles that bradbury elucidates throughout the book are distilled christian wisdom that could easily travel; all good contextual theology can teach us many things. i suggest that one really useful way this book could be used would be to give it to the sceptical, unconvinced even cynical church member or leader who is open to wondering about what, if anything, is possible for the future of the christian communities. bradbury offers realistic and evidenced hope in the god of mission who has not given up on the church. about the reviewer rev canon dr nigel rooms, co-editor ecclesial futures. honorary research fellow; the queen’s foundation for ecumenical theological education, birmingham, uk; department of christian spirituality, church history & missiology, university of south africa (unisa). contact: nigel@praxisworks.uk mailto:nigel@praxisworks.uk ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 2 b o o k r e v i e w 131 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18341 doi: 10.54195/ef18341 flett, john g., and wrogemann, henning. 2020. questions of context: reading a century of german mission theology downers grove, il: intervarsity press. isbn: 9780830851089 reviewed by rein den hertog flett and wrogemann offer a welcome compilation of german(speaking) missiological literature on the topic of contextualization. in six chapters, each covering a particular period, they allow different german missiologists – hoekendijk being a dutch exception – to speak through articles or excerpts from larger publications. each chapter concludes with an analysis that places the various authors in a larger context, and in which flett and wrogemann search for the current meaning of the texts discussed. the final product is much more than just a collection of texts with comments, but also provides an in-depth reflection on the topic of contextualization. the book owes its existence to a request for a bibliography of german missiological texts on the theme of contextualization. this request proved difficult to satisfy. however, not because of a lack of attention to the contextual nature of the gospel within german missiology of the past century. on the contrary, from the beginning, the question of the indigenous embodiment of the gospel played a significant role in german missiological reflection. flett and wrogemann begin their compilation with texts by warneck and troeltsch. whereas for troeltsch, mission is fundamentally about spreading the cultural influence of the west and therefore relates primarily to education and civilization, warneck the father of contemporary missiology stands up for the salvific content of the gospel that must take root like a native plant in foreign soils. the discussion between warneck en troeltsch shows that from the outset there was a focus on the complex relationship between mission and the cultural embodiment of the gospel within german missiology. 132 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18341 a generation later, missiologists such as gutmann, schomerus and knak, influenced in part by a romanticist view on the concept of volk, would emphasize the importance of the primal ties (urtümliche bindungen) and volkstum of indigenous peoples for the mission of the church. while this missiological approach cannot be equated one-to-one with the national socialist emphasis on volk, it did fit seamlessly into the conceptual landscape of nazi ideology. not surprisingly, in response to this problematic entanglement, german missiologists sought a different approach. at first, missiologists like hartenstein and freytag found it in a highly eschatological perspective, in which reality came under the intense criticism of divine judgment. however, by choosing this approach contemporary history and culture – and consequentially contextualization – lost almost any voice in missiology. beginning in the 1960s, things changed in ecumenical circles. attention shifted to the existence of world christianity, and even within german-speaking missiology, missiologists such as hoekendijk, margull and hollenweger brought the world into focus as the locus of god’s agency, while emphasizing the need for vulnerability and dialogue. in the decades that followed, this movement would deepen. to interpret this development, flett and wrogemann refer to shoki coe’s groundbreaking 1973 article, in which he shows that contextualization is a “dynamic process that opens up both the interpretation of the gospel and the local culture to the eschatological future.” (165) coe distinguishes between conscientization, contextuality and contextualization. conscientization refers to “the gaining of a critical awareness of the context in light of the missio dei”. contextuality refers to the result of this, and concerns “the maturity of judgement that instructs the church where and how to participate in the missio dei”. finally, contextualization is embodiment of this “capacity to respond” (166). whereas terms such as contextuality and contextualization have become standard in the english missiological vocabulary, this is not the case in the german-speaking missiological literature. in german missiology there was an increasing emphasis on what coe called conscientization: the critical awareness of the context. in (contemporary) german missiology there is a great sensitivity to issues of contextual embodiment of the gospel, despite – or, one could argue, because of – the problematic history of the 1930s and 1940s. unlike in the prewar period, however, missiologists realize that attention to the local context alone is not enough if the basic framing assumptions are still western, as was the case in pre-war german missiology. one may want to be contextual, but if western standards determine what that exactly means, one 133 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18341 still misses the mark. german missiologists therefore argue for developing a form of theologizing that does not assume a one-way traffic from sender to receiver, but in which all people involved dialogically seek a credible embodiment of the gospel. by taking this approach, missiologists like sundermeijer, lienemann-perrin and wrogemann himself have contributed to the emergence of a so-called intercultural theology. flett and wrogemann’s collection of texts and analyses are very helpful and stimulating in several ways. first, they offer a translation of important german missiological texts and thus function as an introduction to german missiology of the past century. in addition, by design, the book also offers a longitudinal introduction to the developments within missiology of the past century. beginning with the colonial era, the texts take us via the problematic period of nazism and the postwar response to it, through the era of decolonization to the current situation of world christianity that demands a cross-cultural theology. throughout the volume, flett and wrogemann engagingly show how the periods, topics, and themes addressed are still relevant today. for example, the problematic emphasis on volkstum and primal ties resonates even today in donald mcgavran’s still influential church growth movement. clearly, even the developments in german missiology of the first half of the 20th century do not belong to a past that is at a safe distance but still represent a cautionary tale that should be taken to heart again and again. finally, the book offers an engaging and thoughtful treatment of the concept of contextualization. contextualization according to flett and wrogemann is not an easily applicable step-bystep plan but requires a dialogical process in which the universality of the gospel’s message of salvation is not sought in a uniform embodiment, but rather in a multiplicity of cultural expressions interconnected by an ongoing conversation about the normative content of the gospel. furthermore, this process is never finished since it is directed toward the discernment of god’s unceasing and often surprising eschatological agency in this world. in the words of flett and wrogemann: mission is the participation of a community of joy in the ferment of the resurrection, which draws that community beyond itself and so into history and context as the realm of god’s own acting. the word remains a word from outside, meaning that the community is called to encounter its identity as a matter of continual surprise. if we understand the embodiment of the gospel as something that can only come out of the local culture, then mission is itself the process of discovering local expression. the gospel is not something an individual or community can “bring”—it is only something that a community seeks to embody (or is embodied by). (222) about the author dr. rein den hertog, amsterdam, rgdenhertog@gmail.com mailto:rgdenhertog@gmail.com ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 1 116 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19200 b o o k r e v i e w doi: 10.54195/ef19200 spijker, j. van ‘t. 2021. to participate: looking for an ecclesial structure to be a witnessing church today utrecht: eburon academic publishers isbn: 978-94-6301-361-1 reviewed by rein den hertog missionary fruitfulness in the form of new ecclesial communities in a western context is liable to generate uncomfortable scenarios for traditional church denominations. after all, new missionary communities do not always take existing ecclesial cultures into account and often deviate from well-trodden paths. not surprisingly, god’s mission often puts pressure on ecclesial cultures. in this light, the pursuit of fruitful cross-fertilization between traditional denominations and new missionary communities is of utmost importance. ecclesial discomfort it is this very tension that led van ’t spijker to conduct his study of a small reformed denomination in the netherlands: the christelijke gereformeerde kerken in nederland (cgkn). this denomination is characterized by van ’t spijker as having a pietistic slant, thereby placing an important emphasis on the believer’s personal relationship with god. at the turn of this century, a joyful development occurred within the cgkn with missionary communities of new believers emerging in major cities. initially these developments were greeted with joy, but as the years passed, discomfort increased. this discomfort was already painfully visible in the naming: the new congregations were called “missionary congregations”, thereby implying that the traditional congregations were not characterized by the same adjective. but it went beyond the naming, which in itself could be dismissed as a being a matter of mere semantics. the practices within these communities deviated from what was standard in the culture of the cgkn, straining the relationship between the new ecclesial communities and the denomination. at one point, the synod of the cgkn even proposed that the new communities form a separate denomination. it did not come to that, but the 117 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19200 mere suggestion indicates that missionary fruit was seen as a possible danger to the own ecclesial culture. so, which would take precedence: the missionary calling or church culture? missiological conferences and missiologists in his research, van ’t spijker is looking for a fruitful interaction between traditional denominations and new ecclesial communities. how can existing denominations learn from missionary fruitfulness? to do so, he first turns to the missionary discussion of the last century. an overview of ecumenical conferences shows that the church is called to participate in the mission of god, not as an activity alongside its “ordinary” life, but as an expression of its very nature. the church should not be primarily focused on its own growth, but on its service to the kingdom of god. next, to look for starting points for the missio dei within reformed ecclesiology, van ’t spijker puts his ear to the ground of some reformed missiologists who have been decisive for the situation in the netherlands. he discusses successively j. h. bavinck, kraemer, verkuyl and newbigin. remarkably, the name of hoekendijk, who after all had an enormous influence in the netherlands, is missing here. this is unfortunate, because a balanced treatment of hoekendijk’s radical critique of ecclesiocentrism could have helped to bring reformed vulnerabilities into focus. practical theological research with both overviews in mind, van ’t spijker focuses on the cgkn. using the theological action research method, he listens to the normative, formal and espoused voices within this denomination. the conclusions that van ’t spijker then draws on this basis are perhaps not as surprising as they are painful. the pietistic slant of the cgkn results in a vision of salvation “in mainly individual, spiritual (non-physical), post-mortem categories: it is about justification of sin and entering into eternal glory with god. related to this, the physical and communal aspects of salvation that are taking shape in today’s world are only secondary”1 (190). within the cgkn, therefore, there has always remained a certain reluctance toward the concept of missio dei, prompted by the fear that in this way the gospel threatened to become very horizontal. after all, the gospel is about the justification of sinners and not about the betterment of the world. van ’t spijker therefore argues that within the cgkn there 1 van ’t spijker realizes that a pietistic slant need not necessarily result in an inward focus – examples from the past show that pietistic communities can be very much committed to work in the world – but he sees the main problem of the cgkn’s pietism lying in a lack of theology of god’s kingdom. 118 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19200 has hardly been an eye for god’s action in the totality of reality. in such a setting, mission risks narrowing into a form of proselytism. conclusions van ’t spijker draws to a close with a chapter in which he gives impulses for a church structure that does justice to the concept of missio dei. as far as he is concerned, this begins with the fact that the whole of church life must be rethought from the missio dei. this means, for example, that the church order must be re-examined to see if all canon law arrangements are serving the growth of god’s kingdom in this world. it also means that the cgkn must take a critical look at the agenda of church meetings: are the things the cgkn puts on the agenda actually on god’s agenda? in addition, the cgkn must rethink how ecclesial ministry is designed. in the current situation, ecclesial ministries are particularly internally focused, but an open eye to god’s kingdom means that a shift is to occur here as well. assessment van ’t spijker’s research is a welcome addition to the missionary discourse in the netherlands and western europe. based on practical theological research, he convincingly shows how an existing denomination is primarily focused on its own ecclesial culture and therefore has insufficient regard for the work of the spirit outside the walls of its own church. it is to be feared that the cgkn are not an exception in western europe in this regard. van ’t spijker’s study is therefore useful for existing churches that want to live up to their missionary nature while facing a highly secularized culture. van ’t spijker takes a comprehensive approach in which he provides an overview of discussions and states of affairs with a birds-eye view. instead of zooming in on one aspect of ecclesiology or a particular church practice, van ’t spijker observes – from a distance, as it were – an entire denomination. this helps to get the big picture in view without getting bogged down in details. but there is also a downside: the consequence of a birds-eye view is that the vulnerabilities and possible solutions are only drawn sketchily. the final chapter of the study remains therefore slightly unsatisfying: the general areas of concern are localized and loosely characterized, without serious in-depth reflection. positively stated: van ’t spijker’s research calls for a follow-up in which the sketchy drawings are further developed. 119 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19200 about the author rein den hertog, associate researcher, theological university apeldoorn, the netherlands. rgdenhertog@gmail.com mailto:rgdenhertog@gmail.com ecclesial futures 2025 – volume 6 – issue 1 88 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23523 b o o k r e v i e w doi: 10.54195/ef23523 percy, martyn. 2025. the crisis of colonial anglicanism: empire, slavery and revolt in the church of england london: hurst & co publishing isbn: 9781911723585 reviewed by benjamin aldous as someone who was ordained, both deacon and priest, in the anglican church of southern africa i often feel a step removed from direct critiques of the church of england and its complex machinations. with recent gatherings of synod full of tribal invective, handing-wringing over safeguarding failures and continued evasion for a move towards more accountability and transparency, martin percy’s new book is timely. percy explores the complex entanglements between the church of england, the british empire and the accidental birth of the anglican global communion in his typically uncompromising style. percy’s central thesis is that the british empire is primarily an english construction, and the church of england has essentially served as the spiritual arm of this imperial project. he explores the empire’s englishness and how it was embroiled in exploitation, racism and slavery which continues to shape its understanding of itself. divided into 15 pithy chapters, the introduction subtitled implosion sets out to “explore the expansion, gradual retraction, decline and fall of an empire and national church” (1). for percy the church and the empire have always been in lock step and the anglican communion a kind of quasi-ecclesial “commonwealth” riven with factionalism. at the heart of the problem for percy is the church of england’s persistent evasion of scrutiny and transparency, its privileged monarchical pattern of control over clergy and laity and its tacit support for england’s colonial conquest and subjugation of peoples the world over (3). in chapter 2, percy notes that the fear of losing pre-eminence is a particular english vice and he links the desire for the archbishop of canterbury to maintain his primus inter pares with henry viii’s desire for monarchical pre-eminence. he then charts the way in which church of england interests were deeply embedded in the monopoly held by the east india company. in essence the british empire enabled the church of england to move from being a 89 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23523 89 national church to becoming a global communion. where the empire grew in coercive power and influence, in its wake were church of england missionary societies and their clergy effectively being agents of imperialism (49). in chapters 4 to 6 percy deals with the relationship between the slavery, church and colonial racism. under slavery, capitalism and christianity found their interests conflated. the now well-known legacy of english slave trading through the queen anne’s bounty, a charitable foundation which invested significant sums in transportation of slaves to the americas, is a case in point. percy asks why when the church commissioners have roughly £12 billion in investments would they only set aside £100 million (0.83% of the fund) as a way of addressing the church’s historic links with slavery. moreover, it is only the interest generated from this £100 million that will be used. for percy this again speaks of the historical amnesia of the church of england when it comes to the moral reckoning of its past duplicity (79). it is, as far as percy is concerned, a problem rooted in the english psyche. “a nation not able to audit its own historical accounts means telling details get lost in the valorisation of the past” (169). chapter 11 asks why if slavery was the foundation of the british empire and of english colonial expansionism why so few studies have emerged within theology that challenge the notion of the anglican communion has a highly problematic identity and legacy (165). for percy the scale of this entanglement is undeniable and yet is often not faced squarely. in chapter 14 percy compares what he deems the “old world” church of england with that of the “new world” democratic shape of the episcopalian church that quickly evolved in north america. the old world believed in the pre-eminence of a god-willed monarchical authoritarianism which now looks increasingly untenable, out of touch with the vast majority of people in the nation and continually resistant to accountability and transparency in order to protect itself. the new world believed in the inalienable right to democratic equality. the old world offered monarchy. even if benign, kind and good, its citizens were subjects and others were born to rule over them (208). the dogged issues of classism, privilege and power continues to shape the way the church of england operates in the world and puts in an uncomfortable position. finally, percy paints a picture of the anglican global communion as a wounded body never in hope of recovery. percy suggests that the emergence of the communion was an accident of history. anglicans have already stopped doing things together and a family reunion every ten years cannot sustain the familial relations required to knit together a global communion (58). there is no common theological training. evangelical and catholic wings of the church promote different proclivities (59). globally there is no international judicial oversight, no shared canon law and even the 39 articles are not adopted by all of the 46 members of the communion (191). on 90 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23523 90 top of these realities is the fact that the archbishop of canterbury’s assumed default position as the first among equals has been seriously undermined by denouncements by various parts of the global south over the past few years and this is unlikely to improve with the recent resignation of justin welby. the communion is fractured – conservative anglicans now have new networks to enshrine their values. gafcon, anca and smaller groups are effectively outside of any control of lambeth. this, for percy, is partly about the church of england’s hubris and desire to control to be seen as a global church of significance. percy concludes that this postcolonial era is no time to patch things up and move on, as though nothing serious has ever really happened but is a time to face the past and pay the dues owed (236). until the church squarely faces the past, deals with its love of power, its continued racist and classist attitudes and favouring of monarchical privilege it cannot be the church of the nation and nor should it perhaps claim to be. this is an important book, but at times the rhetoric borders on polemic, which can begin to undermine the argument. this is understandable given percy’s own treatment by the church of england (which he has now left to move to scotland and be part of an episcopalian church) and his long-drawn-out and bitter dispute with christ church oxford over various allegations. i think percy fails to give fair treatment to church of england mission societies. everyone recognizes their links to imperial power but there are stories of sacrificial incarnational ministry amongst those who left to share the gospel. again, the anglican communion is a complex animal but percy’s analysis fails to admit there may be any collegiality and value in the gatherings or hope of a new path for the future if the archbishop of canterbury’s role is reassessed. ultimately percy suggests the writing is on the wall for the church of england. in the words of daniel 5 ‘your days are numbered; you have been weighed and found wanting; your empire will be divided.’ or there may be a more hopeful future. about the reviewer rev dr benjamin aldous, principal officer for mission and evangelism at churches together in england, national ecumenical instrument and an honorary research fellow at the queens foundation in birmingham. contact: ben.aldous@cte.org.uk mailto:ben.aldous@cte.org.uk reviewed by benjamin aldous percy, martyn. 2025. the crisis of colonial anglicanism: empire, slavery and revolt in the church of england ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 2 102 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20161 b o o k r e v i e w doi: 10.54195/ef20161 foulger, will. 2023. present in every place?: the church of england’s new churches, and the future of the parish london: scm press isbn: 978-0-334-06203-5 reviewed by james butler will folger is an ordained priest in the church of england and a theologian. he has been involved in church planting, has led the centre for church planting theology and research at cranmer hall, durham and is currently vicar of a church of england church. this book engages with the often polarized debates around church in the church of england and of the significance of place. folger proposes that if you can get past the polarization in the discussion of parish and fresh expressions what you actually find is a common commitment to place, although often expressed in quite different ways. locating himself much more in the church planting and pioneering camp, he recounts his surprise at how much he agreed with the questions and critiques of the likes of alison milbank, andrew davidson, marcus walker and the save the parish movement. however, he found their proposals somewhat baffling. by exploring the debate, the common commitments and the way place is understood more broadly, he tries to distinguish between the commitment to parish and place, and the structures of parish. to do this he turns to language of vocation. he argues that if instead of defending parish in terms of the current structures and rather seeing it as a commitment to a vocation to be present in the particular place, then there actually quite a lot of common ground between those who want to “save the parish” and those committed to church planting and fresh expressions. i have heard foulger described as an apologist and interpreter for church planting and fresh expressions, and he is clearly someone who wants to locate himself in the middle of a polarized debate, encouraging reconciliation and a renewed vocation to be present in place. the book itself is made up of an introduction and four chapters. it begins by looking at the understanding of place, particularly the way it was disrupted and brought to the 103 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20161 103 centre of discussion by the mission shaped church report. foulger unpacks the way in which it was welcomed by some and rejected and criticized by others arguing that at the heart of the discussion is a concern about place. chapter 2 seeks to develop ways to disagree better, asking what it means to be faithful tradition drawing on the work of alisdair macintyre, specifically that it is not about appropriation or rejection but rather about the negotiation and debate, one might say discernment. in this way faithfulness to the parish might well be critique of the parish as it currently is, not simply needing to be more confident in it. chapter 3 dives more clearly into the account of place, exploring place from a variety of other academic disciplines before focusing on the story of the good samaritan as a theological bridge into a renewed vision of vocation to place. chapter 4 argues that proximity is not enough, and what is needed is intentionality – both from parishes and from church planting and fresh expressions. it is this intentional move to be present in a particular place that foulger identifies as the difference between those who successful engage in a place, and those who end up living in proximity to place. the book is based on foulger’s doctoral research, although those wanting a careful account of his qualitative research, thick descriptions and thematic reflections on data will be disappointed. this appears to take that earlier work, which it refers to at various places through the book, and build on its themes and conclusions rather than engage in its nitty-gritty detail of actual churches. given that his argument is about the particularity of place, i would have liked to have heard more of the nuances of how this plays out in particular contexts. the book, however, appears to take the broad findings and focus them in such a way to critique, develop and extend the discussions around fresh expressions, church planting and parish. this is a welcome development, and it is excellent to have fresh, theologically engaged reflection and critique into a somewhat entrenched subject. i agree with foulger that the overly simplistic framing offered by some around the parish being about place, and fresh expressions and church planting being about networks and particular subcultures is a misleading binary, which has little reality in practice. he makes a strong case that place is actually at the heart of the commitment both to parish and to church planting and fresh expressions, and his language of vocation and the church of england’s call to be present in place is one which deserves attention. it would be great to see it seriously taken up by both sides of an, in my view unnecessarily, polarized debate, as a way of finding common ground. where i would like to offer a critique of foulger is around his language of intentionality. this is a buzzword in the church of england, the anglican communion and beyond at the moment, and needs some more detailed unpacking. his use of nicholas healy’s work to justify his turn to intentionality does not do justice to healy’s 104 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20161 104 argument. while healy wants to make the work of the triune god central to the turn to practice, and give a clearer account of the spirit as the one who gives christians their intent, foulger’s use of intentionality draws him into a focus on human will and action. this move inadvertently sidelines, at least in the way it is written, the work of the spirit. while i struggle to share foulger’s suggestion of a way forward around intention – i think a much more complex account of human participation in the work of the spirit in mission is required – i do very much value foulger’s careful exploration of place, his distinction between presence and proximity, and his surfacing of and turn to the language of calling and vocation (which of course gives plenty of scope for an account of the triune god who is doing that calling). i therefore recommend the book, as one which is offering theological tools to move past an unhelpfully and unnecessarily polarized debate in the church of england. about the reviewer james butler, university of roehampton, london; church mission society, oxford. contact: james.butler@roehampton.ac.uk references cray, graham (ed.). 2004. mission-shaped church: church planting and fresh expressions of church in a changing context. london: church house publishing. healy, nicholas m. 2003. “practices and the new ecclesiology: misplaced concreteness?”, international journal of systematic theology, 5.3: 287–308, https://doi.org/10.1111/14631652.00110. mailto:james.butler@roehampton.ac.uk https://doi.org/10.1111/1463-1652.00110 https://doi.org/10.1111/1463-1652.00110 ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 2 1 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20163 doi: 10.54195/ef20163 e d i t o r i a l editorial volume 5 issue 2 steve taylor welcome to what is the tenth issue of ecclesial futures, a journal focused on the mission of god in the world, particularly in local christian communities and the systems that support them. the journal began in june 2020, publishing print only through wipf and stock. ten issues later, in december, 2024, we are online and open access, thanks to the support of radboud university press and open journals, who provide a professional openaccess publishing platform for scholarly, peer-reviewed journals. in this issue you will find eight book reviews, a wonderful testimony to a growing community of scholars who are reading, thinking and interacting together. you will also find five articles that explore the nature of the mission of god as analysed in local church partnerships, spiritual practices, liturgy, patterns of migration and liberative readings of scripture. the authors are located in south africa, philippines, zimbabwe and united kingdom and work within anglican, catholic, pentecostal and reformed denominational systems. the articles and book reviews contribute to a growing body original research about the mission of god in the world in and through christian communities. as always, my thanks to my colleagues nigel rooms (co-editor), patrick todjeras (editor of book reviews), chris pipe (copy-editor) and the team at radboud university press and open journals for their skill and care. original research in a first article, ian terry explores the role of partnerships in transforming unjust structures of society. the research is located in a local church context, as a church of england parish embraces mission with the homeless. a feature of the research was gathering the voices and experiences of the homeless, including eighty participants in five focus groups. these lived experiences are then read in dialogue with common good thinking, as a tool for analysis. 2 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20163 2 the article offers missiologically formed suggestions to empower rough sleepers. four practical steps forward are outlined. these include the role of listening in giving voice to those who are vulnerable, providing opportunities to empower rough sleepers, offering personal mentoring in the finding of work and working toward advocacy with, not for the homeless, as they challenge bureaucracies to operate in more user-friendly, less de-personalised ways. a feature of the research is the case study approach, that weaves local ministry, research with the homeless and theological reflection on “common good building” among the homelessness. concretely, the article argues that local churches build associations, local groupings, to encourage respectful listening and shared decision-making with the homeless. in a second article, mookgo solomon kgatle argues for a pneumatological missional imagination as a way of understanding migration and mission. the article outlines a lack of theoretical frameworks to understand the intersections of migration and mission. three theories are proposed. the pneumatological imagination draws on spirit-mediated encounters, including between god and human beings and among human beings. the missiological spirit understands god the spirit as the missiological spirit, empowering believers to move beyond the local area to other nations in sharing of gospel love. the missional imagination involves the orientation of the whole church towards the mission of god. the article proposes these three be woven together as a pneumatological missional imagination, defined as the orientation of the migrant church towards the mission of god through the empower ment of the holy spirit in encountering people of other nations. this pneumatological missional imagination is relevant for witnessing to others, speaking foreign languages, and orientation to the mission of god. an illustrative example is used, drawing from the challenges facing the apostolic faith mission ministry international in the united kingdom (afmimuk). this allows empirical research, particularly participant observation, to be a resource in examining mission and migration. the article argues that the pneumatological missional imagination can empower god’s migrant people amid the challenges of ministering with cultural relevance in a new country, navigating cultural difference and orientation to the mission of god. the dynamic relationship between culture and faith is explored in a third article. kevin maicom assesses the reception of vatican ii’s directory of popular piety and the liturgy: principles and guidelines (dppl) in the philippines. issued in 2001, the dppl provided guidance in integrating popular piety with the liturgy. the article provides an initial overview of the complicated interactions between filipino popular piety and the catholic liturgy. festivals incorporate connections to societal issues and human 3 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20163 3 emotions. gestures, including dance resonate with the expressive dimensions of filipino culture. prayers address socio-political dimensions like poverty, health, education and food. music draws on cultural elements including the “kundiman”, sad filipino songs about the wounded hero sacrificing everything for love. popular piety can allow people to express their communion with god and within the ecclesial community in local cultural forms. equally, it can distort christian doctrine in liturgical practice. the article then outlines a framework within the dppl for assessing popular piety in the liturgy. four areas – biblical, liturgical, ecumenical, and anthropological – are outlined and tested with an illustrative example. the “salubong” is a common catholic practice which imagines the encounter between jesus and mary, his mother following the resurrection. the article teases out connections that are liturgical, ecumenical, and anthropological and offers a creative re-reading of biblical texts that could be used to deepen the integration between catholic faith and popular piety. rather than settle for static approaches to culture, the article demonstrates how popular piety can enrich the liturgy in dynamic relationships that enhance the lived experiences of the people of god. a dynamic approach to liturgy emphasises the value of theological education for the future life of the church. a dynamic approach to christian life is the focus of a fourth article. peter ruxton assesses new monasticism in britain in light of the missional spirituality of the celtic peregrini who from the sixth century established monastic centres for mission and evangelism in britain and ireland. the article groups the spiritual practices of the celtic peregrini into two categories, one distinctively celtic, the other shared in common with other monastic movements. aware of the danger of romanticising the past, ruxton employs a method of “looking through” original texts. the five distinctly celtic practices involve a intense sense of god’s sacramental presence, a commitment to risky living, a season of formation, an embrace of silence, solitude, evangelism and service and bounded sense of sacred space. two practices are shared with other monastic movements: a daily rhythm of prayer and scripture and shared values in a rule of life. the article then brings the spirituality of the original celtic peregrini into dialogue with four new monastic expressions. the iona community, the community of aidan and hilda, the northumbria community and the 24-7 prayer movement are described. finally, the life of these new monastic expressions is assessed against the spiritual practices of the celtic peregrini. ruxton argues that in an age increasingly ambivalent toward institutions, an increased focus on the original spiritual attributes of these celtic christians will enrich contemporary expressions of new monasticism. 4 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20163 4 in a fifth article, pieter labuschagne uses decoloniality to interrogate the biblical text. the article uses a method of exegesis by story, which labuschagne asserts allows modern readers to dwell in their world yet engage with how an ancient community received and utilised the biblical text. labuschagne demonstrates the “coloniality” present in gideon’s initial interaction and yet the possibilities for transformation of identity. the argument is that within the biblical narrative is the challenge of realising that gideon’s real prison was not built by his coloniser but was located within in his own mind and heart. several conversation partners strengthen the reading offered by labuschagne. one conversation partner is the sermons of martin luther king jr, in particular his use of the zaccheus narrative in a sermon in 1957. a second conversation partner is the literature on decoloniality, particularly in the african context which explores the interplay between oppression and agency. the third conversation partner is a careful reading of the impact of apartheid in south africa on all peoples and analysis of the limits of blaming other cultures. the article raises important questions for a journal focused on the mission of god in the world. christian mission has a history deeply entangled in colonialisation. within the limits of a single article, labuschagne offers a constructive approach, working with a single bible text to test a liberative reading of scripture. as editors, we welcome further thinking on what it means to share good news among communities enmeshed in coloniality. a growing body of ecclesial futures research with ten issues and over fifty articles, as a journal we are now seeing themes not only within an issue but between issues as well. i highlight three examples. – read the article in this issue by ian terry on mission with the homeless alongside the article in volume 3, issue 2 by sally mann on the place of storytelling in ministry amongst the homeless.1 – read the article in this issue by mookgo solomon kgatle on mission and african migration in conversation with the article in volume 3, issue 1 by naar m’fundisi-holloway on women from southern africa who adopt an entrepreneurial approach in local diaspora networks in the united kingdom.2 – read the article in this issue on new monastic spiritualities alongside the article in volume 2, issue 2, by james fox-robinson on the franciscan vow of poverty as an ancient and modern resource for innovative missional practice.3 5 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20163 5 for authors looking to submit articles in the future, we as editors encourage a reading through previous issues of ecclesial futures to explore the richness of scholarship that is developing around the journal’s focus on the mission of god in the world embodied in local christian communities and the systems that support them. transitions and partnerships we bid farewell dr darren cronshaw, who has moved into a different ministry context. darren has been on the ecclesial futures editorial board since the journal began five years ago. as editors, we are thankful for darren’s ministry, in particular the promptness and the constructive tone of his reviews. as a journal, we welcome dr tanya riches to the editorial board. as director of master of transformational development, eastern college, australia, she works with students applying transformational development in the middle eastern, african, asian and australian contexts. tanya undertook phd research that investigated links between urban aboriginal-led congregations’ worship practices and their social justice initiatives. we look forward to being enriched by her research expertise in ethnography, global pentecostalism, missiology and development studies. ecclesial futures continues to be grateful for the partnership with radboud university press and open journals. over the last months, open journals has worked with us to upgrade the website at https://ecclesialfutures.org/ and update policies around transparency in authorship and ethics. through diamond open access, original research is available free to authors and readers. to receive updates via the newsletter, sign up at https://ecclesialfutures.org/. about the author steve taylor, director angelwings ltd and research affiliate, university of otago, ōtākou whakaihu waka. contact: s.j.taylor@otago.ac.nz references 1 sally mann. 2022. “parklife – listening to stories as a deep missional practice”. ecclesial futures 3 (2): 11–29. 2 m’fundisi-holloway, naar. 2022. “discipleship, mentorship and training which empowers african women for ministry in the diaspora”. ecclesial futures 3 (1): 41–57. 3 james fox-robinson. 2021. “the franciscan vow of poverty as an ancient and modern resource for innovative missional practice”. ecclesial futures 2 (2): 73–98. https://ecclesialfutures.org/ https://ecclesialfutures.org/ mailto:s.j.taylor@otago.ac.nz ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 2 1 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20163 doi: 10.54195/ef20163 e d i t o r i a l editorial volume 5 issue 2 steve taylor welcome to what is the tenth issue of ecclesial futures, a journal focused on the mission of god in the world, particularly in local christian communities and the systems that support them. the journal began in june 2020, publishing print only through wipf and stock. ten issues later, in december, 2024, we are online and open access, thanks to the support of radboud university press and open journals, who provide a professional openaccess publishing platform for scholarly, peer-reviewed journals. in this issue you will find eight book reviews, a wonderful testimony to a growing community of scholars who are reading, thinking and interacting together. you will also find five articles that explore the nature of the mission of god as analysed in local church partnerships, spiritual practices, liturgy, patterns of migration and liberative readings of scripture. the authors are located in south africa, philippines, zimbabwe and united kingdom and work within anglican, catholic, pentecostal and reformed denominational systems. the articles and book reviews contribute to a growing body original research about the mission of god in the world in and through christian communities. as always, my thanks to my colleagues nigel rooms (co-editor), patrick todjeras (editor of book reviews), chris pipe (copy-editor) and the team at radboud university press and open journals for their skill and care. original research in a first article, ian terry explores the role of partnerships in transforming unjust structures of society. the research is located in a local church context, as a church of england parish embraces mission with the homeless. a feature of the research was gathering the voices and experiences of the homeless, including eighty participants in five focus groups. these lived experiences are then read in dialogue with common good thinking, as a tool for analysis. 2 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20163 2 the article offers missiologically formed suggestions to empower rough sleepers. four practical steps forward are outlined. these include the role of listening in giving voice to those who are vulnerable, providing opportunities to empower rough sleepers, offering personal mentoring in the finding of work and working toward advocacy with, not for the homeless, as they challenge bureaucracies to operate in more user-friendly, less de-personalised ways. a feature of the research is the case study approach, that weaves local ministry, research with the homeless and theological reflection on “common good building” among the homelessness. concretely, the article argues that local churches build associations, local groupings, to encourage respectful listening and shared decision-making with the homeless. in a second article, mookgo solomon kgatle argues for a pneumatological missional imagination as a way of understanding migration and mission. the article outlines a lack of theoretical frameworks to understand the intersections of migration and mission. three theories are proposed. the pneumatological imagination draws on spirit-mediated encounters, including between god and human beings and among human beings. the missiological spirit understands god the spirit as the missiological spirit, empowering believers to move beyond the local area to other nations in sharing of gospel love. the missional imagination involves the orientation of the whole church towards the mission of god. the article proposes these three be woven together as a pneumatological missional imagination, defined as the orientation of the migrant church towards the mission of god through the empower ment of the holy spirit in encountering people of other nations. this pneumatological missional imagination is relevant for witnessing to others, speaking foreign languages, and orientation to the mission of god. an illustrative example is used, drawing from the challenges facing the apostolic faith mission ministry international in the united kingdom (afmimuk). this allows empirical research, particularly participant observation, to be a resource in examining mission and migration. the article argues that the pneumatological missional imagination can empower god’s migrant people amid the challenges of ministering with cultural relevance in a new country, navigating cultural difference and orientation to the mission of god. the dynamic relationship between culture and faith is explored in a third article. kevin maicom assesses the reception of vatican ii’s directory of popular piety and the liturgy: principles and guidelines (dppl) in the philippines. issued in 2001, the dppl provided guidance in integrating popular piety with the liturgy. the article provides an initial overview of the complicated interactions between filipino popular piety and the catholic liturgy. festivals incorporate connections to societal issues and human 3 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20163 3 emotions. gestures, including dance resonate with the expressive dimensions of filipino culture. prayers address socio-political dimensions like poverty, health, education and food. music draws on cultural elements including the “kundiman”, sad filipino songs about the wounded hero sacrificing everything for love. popular piety can allow people to express their communion with god and within the ecclesial community in local cultural forms. equally, it can distort christian doctrine in liturgical practice. the article then outlines a framework within the dppl for assessing popular piety in the liturgy. four areas – biblical, liturgical, ecumenical, and anthropological – are outlined and tested with an illustrative example. the “salubong” is a common catholic practice which imagines the encounter between jesus and mary, his mother following the resurrection. the article teases out connections that are liturgical, ecumenical, and anthropological and offers a creative re-reading of biblical texts that could be used to deepen the integration between catholic faith and popular piety. rather than settle for static approaches to culture, the article demonstrates how popular piety can enrich the liturgy in dynamic relationships that enhance the lived experiences of the people of god. a dynamic approach to liturgy emphasises the value of theological education for the future life of the church. a dynamic approach to christian life is the focus of a fourth article. peter ruxton assesses new monasticism in britain in light of the missional spirituality of the celtic peregrini who from the sixth century established monastic centres for mission and evangelism in britain and ireland. the article groups the spiritual practices of the celtic peregrini into two categories, one distinctively celtic, the other shared in common with other monastic movements. aware of the danger of romanticising the past, ruxton employs a method of “looking through” original texts. the five distinctly celtic practices involve a intense sense of god’s sacramental presence, a commitment to risky living, a season of formation, an embrace of silence, solitude, evangelism and service and bounded sense of sacred space. two practices are shared with other monastic movements: a daily rhythm of prayer and scripture and shared values in a rule of life. the article then brings the spirituality of the original celtic peregrini into dialogue with four new monastic expressions. the iona community, the community of aidan and hilda, the northumbria community and the 24-7 prayer movement are described. finally, the life of these new monastic expressions is assessed against the spiritual practices of the celtic peregrini. ruxton argues that in an age increasingly ambivalent toward institutions, an increased focus on the original spiritual attributes of these celtic christians will enrich contemporary expressions of new monasticism. 4 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20163 4 in a fifth article, pieter labuschagne uses decoloniality to interrogate the biblical text. the article uses a method of exegesis by story, which labuschagne asserts allows modern readers to dwell in their world yet engage with how an ancient community received and utilised the biblical text. labuschagne demonstrates the “coloniality” present in gideon’s initial interaction and yet the possibilities for transformation of identity. the argument is that within the biblical narrative is the challenge of realising that gideon’s real prison was not built by his coloniser but was located within in his own mind and heart. several conversation partners strengthen the reading offered by labuschagne. one conversation partner is the sermons of martin luther king jr, in particular his use of the zaccheus narrative in a sermon in 1957. a second conversation partner is the literature on decoloniality, particularly in the african context which explores the interplay between oppression and agency. the third conversation partner is a careful reading of the impact of apartheid in south africa on all peoples and analysis of the limits of blaming other cultures. the article raises important questions for a journal focused on the mission of god in the world. christian mission has a history deeply entangled in colonialisation. within the limits of a single article, labuschagne offers a constructive approach, working with a single bible text to test a liberative reading of scripture. as editors, we welcome further thinking on what it means to share good news among communities enmeshed in coloniality. a growing body of ecclesial futures research with ten issues and over fifty articles, as a journal we are now seeing themes not only within an issue but between issues as well. i highlight three examples. – read the article in this issue by ian terry on mission with the homeless alongside the article in volume 3, issue 2 by sally mann on the place of storytelling in ministry amongst the homeless.1 – read the article in this issue by mookgo solomon kgatle on mission and african migration in conversation with the article in volume 3, issue 1 by naar m’fundisi-holloway on women from southern africa who adopt an entrepreneurial approach in local diaspora networks in the united kingdom.2 – read the article in this issue on new monastic spiritualities alongside the article in volume 2, issue 2, by james fox-robinson on the franciscan vow of poverty as an ancient and modern resource for innovative missional practice.3 5 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20163 5 for authors looking to submit articles in the future, we as editors encourage a reading through previous issues of ecclesial futures to explore the richness of scholarship that is developing around the journal’s focus on the mission of god in the world embodied in local christian communities and the systems that support them. transitions and partnerships we bid farewell dr darren cronshaw, who has moved into a different ministry context. darren has been on the ecclesial futures editorial board since the journal began five years ago. as editors, we are thankful for darren’s ministry, in particular the promptness and the constructive tone of his reviews. as a journal, we welcome dr tanya riches to the editorial board. as director of master of transformational development, eastern college, australia, she works with students applying transformational development in the middle eastern, african, asian and australian contexts. tanya undertook phd research that investigated links between urban aboriginal-led congregations’ worship practices and their social justice initiatives. we look forward to being enriched by her research expertise in ethnography, global pentecostalism, missiology and development studies. ecclesial futures continues to be grateful for the partnership with radboud university press and open journals. over the last months, open journals has worked with us to upgrade the website at https://ecclesialfutures.org/ and update policies around transparency in authorship and ethics. through diamond open access, original research is available free to authors and readers. to receive updates via the newsletter, sign up at https://ecclesialfutures.org/. about the author steve taylor, director angelwings ltd and research affiliate, university of otago, ōtākou whakaihu waka. contact: s.j.taylor@otago.ac.nz references 1 sally mann. 2022. “parklife – listening to stories as a deep missional practice”. ecclesial futures 3 (2): 11–29. 2 m’fundisi-holloway, naar. 2022. “discipleship, mentorship and training which empowers african women for ministry in the diaspora”. ecclesial futures 3 (1): 41–57. 3 james fox-robinson. 2021. “the franciscan vow of poverty as an ancient and modern resource for innovative missional practice”. ecclesial futures 2 (2): 73–98. https://ecclesialfutures.org/ https://ecclesialfutures.org/ mailto:s.j.taylor@otago.ac.nz ecclesial futures 2025 – volume 6 – issue 2 124 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef25060 b o o k r e v i e w doi: 10.54195/ef25060 mobsby, ian. 2025. the seeking heart: a contemplative approach to mission and pioneering london: scm press isbn: 978-0-334-06585-2 reviewed by nigel rooms i have followed, at a distance, ian mobsby’s journey as an experimenter in ecclesial new things for many years, since his book emerging and fresh expressions of church was published in 2008 and his involvement with the moot community in london. therefore, i looked forward to reading this book, which connects several of my interests, not least the relationships between silence, contemplation and christian mission. the seeking heart is a development of mobsby’s doctoral research, though i suspect it is largely an edited version of the original thesis. the book overall is a real mixture of insight and thoughtfulness, while at the same time missing opportunities for a deeper engagement with the apophatic, contemplative tradition in christianity. what is most instructive, and a good reason for buying the book, is mobsby’s field work amongst 32 “sbnr” people based in london – that is the so-called “spiritual but not religious”. he charts the rise of the sbnr category in a “post-secular” society (chapter 1), reviews other research in this field, as well as sbnr literature (chapter 2). thankfully he does complexify the notion of the false binary contained within the term sbnr, since spirituality and religiosity are not that easily separated (28), concluding that the sbnr are “a credible grouping, even if they are logically inconsistent” (40). following that beginning, mobsby conducts a thorough qualitative research project amongst the sbnr (chapter 3), and the analysis of the data is helpful in delineating various categories that emerge from within the group. he discovers, perhaps surprisingly, that they are largely happy to speak of god (40), and i was struck, perhaps less surprisingly, how many of them were variously de-churched, having had very unhelpful, even traumatic experiences of christians and church institutions. the second part of the book develops a “contemplative theology and a model of mission” from a large number and a wide range of interlocutors. mobsby’s 125 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef25060 125 contemplative theology is written up in chapter 4 and begins with owen barfield’s “evolution of [human] consciousness” and mark vernon’s development of that in a christian direction. as i read it, this approach is a way of understanding such movements as the pre-modern, modern and post-modern stages of western thought – which can also be discerned elsewhere such as in biblical history, and which spiral around themselves in a cyclical fashion (see 80 for the five stages). the conclusion of this section, which leads to a participatory understanding of relationship with god, is helpful since it allows for the possibility of theosis. however, along the way it seems we must discard indigenous knowledge from “original participation” as “severely limited” (80) and the benefits of science for life today which arise from “withdrawal from participation” (86). i find iain mcgilchrist’s work on left and right brain ways of attention much more helpful on these questions as a way in to recovering the importance of silence in prayer and apophatic theology. mobsby is able, however to argue for the activity of god in the spiritual seeker, moving them from kathryn tanner’s “weak participation” to a strong one; “god is seeking to awaken the seeker through a deep connection with god, even if they are unaware of this” (95). the next chapter (chapter 5, god’s kenosis, our theosis) is even more complex and i am not sure i can do it justice in this short review. what mobsby works on here is a model for tracking the journeys of his research participants towards or away from the trinitarian god of the christian faith. he employs variously hiebert’s set theory, the three-fold spiritual path of purgation, illumination and union overlaid on barfield’s approach to consciousness alongside the work of several other contemporary theologians. overall, for me as a reader, this model (see 131) is simply too complex a schema to be useful, though i can see how it works in the doctoral thesis. on further reflection, it is also perhaps not complex enough – it is too neat, a tying up of every loose end in the author’s mind which leads to something solid rather than fluid, and messy like most of life and spiritual journeys. the final four chapters map the possibility for a “christian contemplative missional journey” through four spiritual stages of awakening, purgation, illumination and union which are given a chapter each. some practical ways of accompanying seekers are offered for each stage, which are useful pointers, though apart from one example subject from the moot community it seems no-one else made the journey to a christian faith (though of course this was not the aim of the research). i have several problems with what is happening in these chapters which i do think need to be aired in a critical review. most serious is the use of the christian spiritual tradition in this work. mobsby himself speaks against “de-traditionalization” (10) as an effect of pluralism and consumerism. but then he would appear to do that very thing when engaging with the “dark night of the soul” from st john of the cross in an entirely superficial way (98, 164). he misquotes elaine heath’s work and is seemingly unaware (as, in fact heath 126 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef25060 126 is) of the four nights of the active and passive senses and the active and passive spirit in st john’s spiritual journey which would seriously impact his model. not to have read, in a thesis of this nature, the primary texts of the christian tradition is a serious omission. this leads us onto his treatment of the goal of the spiritual journey in union (chapter 9). for mobsby this seems to be synonymous with conversion and possible baptism when the subject is incorporated into christ, which is true, but hardly the end of the journey. the ascent of mount carmel would just be beginning at this stage for st john of the cross. and there is no reference in the book to eucharist, which i found puzzling. surely the whole process simply begins again now, following barfield’s schema? some other quibbles are around the place of what mobsby calls the “outer journey” (108–10, 127) which for me is not given enough importance; contemplation and [public] action go together for the christian as two sides of the same coin. non-duality (34, 158) and, with it, buddhism (197) is rather dismissed as even dangerous; this would seem to negate decades of christian buddhist dialogue and miss the possibility of seeking a distinctively christian non-duality following the work of cynthia bourgeault and others from the apophatic tradition. in conclusion, this work is a courageous attempt at engaging with a serious segment of western society, the sbnr, in christian mission and is to be commended. we learn a great deal about these people from the research and i am grateful for that. i am less convinced about the proposals set out here, but i know that mobsby will continue to work with silence and seekers in his new location in canada and i bless him for that. about the reviewer rev canon dr nigel rooms,co-editor ecclesial futures. honorary research fellow; the queen’s foundation for ecumenical theological education, birmingham, uk; department of christian spirituality, church history & missiology, university of south africa (unisa). contact: nigel@praxisworks.uk mailto:nigel@praxisworks.uk ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 1 95 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18541 a r t i c l e doi: 10.54195/ef18541 reflections on faithful innovation in the city of saint francis: icef conference report scott j. hagley, dorte kappelgaard, dustin benac and scot sherman abstract the annual meeting of the international consultation on ecclesial futures (icef) took place in july 2023 in the san francisco bay area of the united states. participants from the united states, europe, south africa and australia gathered to share research around the theme “faithful innovation” and to reflect together on the challenges and possibilities for cultivating innovative missional ministries. this paper reflects upon two significant themes from the consultation: (1) clarifying the tensions between innovation and christian faith, and (2) reflecting upon the ecological conditions that cultivate room for innovation that is faithful, and expressions of the faith that are innovative. keywords: international consultation on ecclesial futures, faithful innovation, creativity, san francisco bay area above a stairway overlooking frida kahlo avenue in san francisco, a statue of saint francis stands, arms outstretched to welcome the city, body shaped like a cross, beatific eyes peeking out under a monk’s hood. the statue was made by the renowned artist benito bufano from over a thousand firearms willingly surrendered after spate of violence in the late 1960s. on the cloak of st francis, a mosaic of assassinated public leaders – john f. kennedy, robert kennedy, martin luther king, jr, and abraham lincoln – witness to the possibilities and impossibilities of peace in violent culture. each figure offered hope, and each figure was tragically gunned down. but as bufano knew, weapons meant to take life can be refashioned into something beautiful. and now st francis, he of “all creatures of our god and king”, whose gentle care for the vulnerable and life of intentional poverty inspired the faithful across medieval europe, is now perched on the lawn of the city college of san francisco, offering a sign of peace. known for its social, technological and economic innovations, san francisco is not thought of as particularly religious. but it has been the site of a peculiar kind 96 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18541 of american religious innovation, often generating new activity that migrates elsewhere, such as the jesus people of the 1970s or the adventurous ecumenism of the consultation on church union in the 1960s or the interreligious cooperation of the 2000s. but these religious movements seem to float above the deep undercurrents of privatized spirituality and fierce independence that have come to characterize the bay area. for these reasons, san francisco focuses the various challenges of missional ministry in a post-christian context into the question of faithful innovation. in a context known for innovation, the modifier faithful does significant work. how might christian communities innovate in ways that are faithful to the gospel? how might such innovations be plausible within the cultural soil from which they emerge, and thus be faithful to a particular place and a time? how, in other words, can congregations in a post-christian context bear witness like “st francis of the guns”, by reshaping cultural materials of time and place to be a sign (and, in the words of newbigin, instrument and foretaste) of god’s reign? the international consultation on ecclesial futures (icef) gathered scholars, pastors and judicatory leaders from the united states, europe, south africa and australia in the bay area during a week in july 2023 to consider the theoretical, theological and practical dimensions of faithful innovation for post-christian and postchristendom contexts. the icef is an invitation-only theological learning community from four different continents who meet annually to work together on questions of christian faith and practice in post-christendom and post-christian contexts. seeking to share wisdom across cultural contexts, each consultation offers opportunity for members to share research around the given topic. seeking to ground the conversation in the soil where the consultation is taking place, each gathering has an “open day” where local pastors and judicatory leaders join in the proceedings. and finally, because god’s mission is always located in a place and attentive to the particularities of people and culture, each gathering situates the conversation within the missional questions of the context where the consultation meets. in san francisco in 2023, the consultation focused on the question of faithful innovation, working with, and learning from, the episcopal diocese of san francisco during the “open day” and sharing research focused on that theme the other days. serving as both muse and case study, the bay area guided and grounded our conversation, causing us to interrogate the two terms and see them in new light. what follows is a brief account of faithful innovation, drawn from the soil of menlo park and viewed from american, european, south african and australian vantage points. finding the faith in “faithful innovation”? in some ways, we remain puzzled thirty years after lesslie newbigin inquired about the conditions of possibility for a renewed missionary encounter with the west. 97 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18541 on the one hand, “the west” is too broad to include the different manifestations of post-christendom in different regions of the united states, or between european state-churches, or in post-apartheid south africa and rapidly secularizing australia. on the other hand, the rapid pace of social and cultural change makes the question a moving target in each of our contexts. as newbigin suggested many years ago in the gospel in a pluralist society, a gospel-encounter in the modern/post-modern west is not simply a challenge of rhetoric or theological imagination, but an invitation for christian communities to witness to the gospel in public and plausible ways (1989). in many judicatories, this task falls to new faith communities and experimental ministries in hope that a mixed ecology of new and traditional ministries might engage both emerging and legacy generations. but rather than a mixed ecology, we too often end up with a division of labour, where new faith communities are expected to innovate, and legacy congregations seek to protect the tradition. innovation and faithfulness are treated like competitors that must be managed rather than a necessary feature of gospel ministry. because, as andrew walls says, there never has been nor will there be a society which can “absorb the word of christ painlessly into its system”, faithfulness to the gospel necessarily makes us pilgrims, makes us odd and at times uncomfortable in our cultural setting (1996: 8). if we are faithful to the word of christ among us, even our legacy congregations will innovate with elements of its traditional inheritance as a matter of attention to this gospel-culture dynamic. similarly, the gospel constrains and redirects our quest for innovation, giving plausible christian witness a bifocal lens. we seek faithfulness to the gospel itself and also the socio-cultural locale. faithful innovation, we suggest, is the gospel-work of the whole church. there is neither a status we can hold onto that says “faithful” nor an end we can claim that says “innovation”, there is only the invitation to join with the uncertain and messy work of cultivating christian community at this time and place, faithful to both god and neighbour, to tradition and god’s future. two papers from our gathering instantiate this approach, showing how church systems might faithfully innovate as part of missional discernment. nelus niemandt, in his role at hugenote college in south africa, has recognized the need to create institutional spaces for creativity, innovation and experimentation. such institutional spaces need to be mission-aligned and integrative, so that groups can work across disciplines on an issue or question related to the mission and context of the institution. in the case of hugenote college, niemandt has created a school for social innovation, which sits between its theological and social work faculties, creating room for theologically-informed projects in community-building for the improvement of society. while a new and innovative structure for the school, it emerges from a contextual assessment of its tradition and history. an innovation itself, the school of social innovation exists to help others do the same by helping 98 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18541 students and social entrepreneurs to consider their faith, values and theology in relationship to pressing social issues and structural inequalities. improvising with existing materials and deeply attentive to the challenges of one’s locale, faithful innovation opens itself to a future in god, to god’s future. as such, it is faithful innovation and also faithful innovation. we need more than institutional space for innovation, however. popular discourse regarding missional innovation tends to put a term like “creativity” on a pedestal, making innovation an end in itself. as andrew root (2022) shows, innovation and creativity make poor ends for the church. in a paper presented at the consultation, dorte kappelgaard reflected upon her work with congregations in denmark and norway, exploring how a theology of creation and a christian aesthetics can reframe the pursuit of innovation from a never-ending quest to forge “the new” to an act of surrender to the mission of god. creativity, kappelgaard argues, should be understood in relationship to a theology of creation, rooted in the biblical narrative of god as creator and human beings as created in god’s image. in the book of genesis, the spirit of god soars above the dark void, seeing and imagining possibility and bringing order out of chaos. god speaks “let there be light”, and there is light. god creates the universe, the earth, nature, animals and human beings, and god blesses them all and sees them as good. several voices in the early church tradition stress the creative movement of love between the father, son and holy spirit: god is one who sends energies of love toward creation and who invites us into the triune god’s own creative dance of love and being (fuhrmann 2011: 56–9). human creativity participates in this movement of god, potentially taking part in the creative, life-giving movement of god’s spirit through the world. in this perspective, creativity is fundamentally about being human. creativity reflects god’s energies of love, moving from person to person, participating in god’s creation and giving shape to one’s local context. it should be a question of love, joy, even playfulness, taking the shape of church, searching to reach out towards the other in fresh, responsive ways. in a christian worldview, participating in god’s creativity will always be flawed. it carries, as winner notes, “characteristic damage” (2018). even our most creative and hopeful acts will reflect selfish motives, fear, worry and/or pride. the church thus faces a choice regarding its own understanding of the human creature. in one approach, being human and being church can be envisioned as competing goods, turning the other into an object for use, consumption, or success. but within another approach, the other person is understood to be a living mystery, a potential co-creator in christ for the sake of something much more beautiful and interesting than the story of one church. in this second perspective, the world is full of possibility and longing, waiting to be released and for life to spring forth, partly in this time and age, partly in the world to 99 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18541 come. understood in relationship to creativity, innovation is a form of self-forgetting, a people caught up in the creative dance of god and god’s world. like listening to music or viewing art, innovation as creativity reconfigures subjectivity, enabling one to be moved and transformed as an actor. this is what the german hartmut rosa describes as resonance between the subject and the world (2016: 298). kappelgaard argues that there is a close relationship between such theological approaches to creativity and theological aesthetics. among many philosophical definitions of beauty, one is that which holds a value in itself (scruton 2009: 26). in the genesis narrative, the goodness of god’s creation is not related to its instrumental value, but rather to its value in itself, a creature of god. in the light of the above, creation holds an inner beauty that god recognizes. the theologian hans urs von balthasar argues that without sensitivity towards beauty, we lose our ability to love (1982, 1: 18). the world was created out of love, just as it is the beauty of god’s creation that makes us love it. creativity – understood as participation in the creative love of god – cultivates spaces, communities, programs, art and music which hold a sense of beauty, of value in themselves, and call for us to love. in her work with congregations, kappelgaard draws from such theories of creativity and beauty to help congregations envision innovation as an open-ended act of communal creativity and exploration in the hope for beauty to appear, without being able to evoke or control it. in listening to god, to each other and to the local context, the church is on a constant, dynamic journey of looking for the deeper beauty, which calls for us to love the other. asking god to help us see the world with god’s eyes, it is the beauty of a potential, a deep dark void in the local neighborhood that calls for us to get up and engage in a journey of creative exploration with the spirit and the stranger. this is not to say that tradition is set aside for the sake of the beautiful. beauty is not in itself related to “the new”. tradition, both understood as that which we hold dear and as the meaning of christian tradition, is connected to beauty in some form. it is through seeing the beauty of the faithfulness of those who have gathered, sunday after sunday over several decades, that we come to love tradition as beautiful. when listening to people’s emotions and narratives connected to the church community or its rituals, we may sense a glimpse of this depth of richness and experience. this is often where the conversation begins, in celebrating the beauty of what is, as well as mourning the beauty of what is now only in the past. recognizing the beauty of the present can help communities to explore new ways in which this beauty might spill over and bless the context in new forms. being given a space and time to mourn the beauty of what used to be can set people on a journey towards travelling with a lighter rucksack, becoming open to that which may be coming toward them as potential new life. this is the eschatological aspect of creativity. 100 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18541 innovation, so understood, calls us to repent of our tendency to objectify the other, turning them into a tool for our success or survival, either through sustaining the well-known or inventing the new. and, like jesus calling out “repent and believe”, innovation also requires a posture of surrender to god, coupled with an openness to the community, the stranger, and that which might be surprising or unexpected. there might even be a call to look for the beauty in the process, approaching each formal meeting or each spontaneous conversation with a stranger as a place where the beauty of god is reflected in all its brokenness. one could argue that this calls for a movement of surrender to god when we realize we have fallen short in imagination and hopefulness, in sensitivity to the beauty of the existing, in welcoming the stranger in courage, or in responding to the movement of the spirit. but what types of places are people free for creativity and the embrace of beauty? what types of contexts are more likely to cultivate such practices? faithful innovation as an ecological challenge as mentioned above, the proceedings of icef developed a view toward faithful innovation deeply connected to the locale in which the church or denomination operates. faithful innovation exercises fidelity to the christian gospel as well as those to whom god sends the church. such a dynamic cultivates creativity and the possibility of beauty, if the congregation can remain open to the new, the surprising, the unexpected, the possibility of guns melting into a sign of peace. faithful innovation, then, considers the local wisdom of a place and seeks to support the people of faith. faithful innovation requires and helps sustain a particular kind of social ecology, as demonstrated in the work of hagley, rohrer and gehrling (2020), james (2017) and benac (2020). it perhaps goes without saying, but it is within the thick web of connections shaped over time by individual relationships and institutional partnerships that new possibilities emerge. faithful innovation both reflects an ecology of attentive discernment to the movement of god in our midst and also cultivates a social space within which such discernment can take place. given the fact that neither new experiments in missional church nor existing establishment congregations have a monopoly on either term – neither faithful nor innovation – we must imagine faithful innovation as an ecological orientation. we describe this as an orientation or capacity for drawing attention to the contemporary challenges that are present in existing ecclesial ecologies in ways that help the organization learn how the reordering and renegotiation of relationships creates opportunities for new possibilities. it is not up to heroic and visionary missionaries or social entrepreneurs to show the way for our congregations, but rather the task of the whole church to create hospitable space for theological discernment and social innovation. to this end, we explored during the consultation three aspects of this 101 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18541 ecological orientation: the conditions for faithful innovation in an ecclesial ecology, the challenges before faithful innovation in an ecclesial ecology, and the cultivation of faithful innovation in an ecclesial ecology. this section will briefly detail each of these aspects. conditions throughout the icef gathering, we observe five different conditions for an innovative ecosystem: connection, context, creativity, convening and contrast. connection describes the need for thick bonds and healthy communication between individuals within faithful communities, existing and emerging experiments in the community or the larger denominational system, those who interpret and interrogate the tradition (the theological and practical resources from the past), and the triune god. the relational properties of connection are equally important. for example, connection requires trust and often takes time. in so far as connection is condition for faithful innovation, it cannot always be measured on fixed timelines and predetermined outputs. second, context is an essential condition for faithful innovation. while the people of god have always been rooted in particular contexts, many of the most hopeful signs of faithful innovation are (re)turning to place and a more local faith. this is reflected in studies like chris james’s (2017) exploration of new faith communities in seattle, where “neighbourhood incarnation” communities offered vital and timely reimagining of church life and ministry. so also, doret niemandt, in a paper presented at the consultation, studied online church ministries in south africa during the covid lockdowns. she offers a rich description of multi-layered contextual ministry, where both online worlds and embodied practices cultivate intertwined and contingent contexts within which innovative experiments in christian community must take place. third, faithful innovation requires a culture that cultivates and gives permission for creativity. creative ecosystems are not only restless with the status quo, but open to surprise and expectant of beauty in their life together. as mentioned in the previous section, the form of creativity that nourishes faithful innovation within an ecclesial ecology is sustained by hope; amid the many contemporary challenges that confront faith communities and faith leaders, hope stirs a form of creativity that innovates not from fear or anxiety, but from an orientation of offering. ecosystems that innovate are characterized by this restlessness, hope, and openness to beauty, such that the work of faithful innovation simply bears witness to god’s ongoing generosity by seeking to offer creative and compelling work, words, and wonder into the world. fourth, innovative ecosystems convene individuals and community for the sake of reflection, worship, and collective discernment. representing more than a practice of gathering, convening is a form of individual and collective inquiry that orients 102 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18541 a collective in worship of god. to this end, the gathering of the icef purposefully convened scholars, practitioners and judicatory leaders through worship and across the silos and geographic divisions that can inhibit faithful innovation. too often church systems fail to convene groups across difference for the sort of reflection, worship and discernment that deepens connection and fosters creativity. fifth, innovative ecosystems tolerate and learn from unexpected and contrasting experiences. too often, innovation is sacrificed at the altar of assimilation and sameness. we sacrifice innovation for a narrow understanding of faithful. as a condition for an innovative ecosystem, contrast – understood as space for difference – names the need for a holding environment in which various forms of contrast can become generative for faithful innovation rather than inhibiting it. in many contexts present at this the icef gathering, the seeds of faithful innovation emerged from the existence or experience of contrasting realities in some way. scholars of leadership and innovation have described this phenomena in various ways (e.g., “liminality” [carson, fairhurst and rooms 2021]; or “boundary zones” [gunderson 2004]). our description here draws attention to how polarized realities or experience have the capacity to draw into sharper contrast the particular work faithful innovation requires. for example, faithful innovation may require discerning how to curate new expressions while also discerning the role and legacy of what is inherited. faithful innovation may require navigating the contexts between the need for organizational structure and the forms of transcendence that draws this work forward. it requires tending to the need for boundary-crossing connection as well as the forms of belonging that often emerge from separate communities. and faithful innovation requires cultivating a dynamic of sharing learning through the contrast of “ressourcement” and “aggiornamento” in the spirit of vatican ii. while the precise combination of conditions may vary, our work together drew attention to these five conditions for faithful innovation. challenges nevertheless, barriers to faithful innovation exist. even as an ecological orientation for faithful innovation draws attention to the abundance of resources and opportunities that exist, it also requires a somber assessment of the living system that surrounds existing and emerging experiments. our work together drew attention to a constellation of related challenges. first, there is a need for space where existing ecclesial expression and new churches invite individuals and communities to explore faithful innovation. amid the contemporary demands on religious leaders’ time, there may be a desire to explore faithful innovation, but there is a limited amount of time and creative energy. moreover, existing educational pipelines do not always equip religious leaders with the skills and imagination to consider the process of 103 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18541 faithful innovation beyond a pragmatic calculus of survival. second, faithful innovation requires a risk and willingness to step into the unknown, and many contemporary institutions, churches, governing bodies, and christian communities simply lack what they need to take the first step. for participants drawn from the united states, competition leads to loneliness for pastors as well as congregations. further, amid the generational transitions in wealth and giving practice, some communities may face financial challenges that can make the possibility of trying (and funding) something new a risk that is too much to take. in europe, the parish structures suffers in its own way. while it helpfully indexes religious life to a particular locality, parishes are not always resourced with the personnel and capital faithful innovation requires. third, relational, structural and institutional barriers can inhibit gathering and exploring across traditional and new expressions. while an ecological orientation toward faithful innovation invites individuals and communities to see the possibility that comes from these forms of encounters, seen and unseen barriers persist that discourage the process and can leave innovators isolated and working against formidable challenges. cultivation finally, we want to conclude by exploring ways we may cultivate an ecological orientation for faithful innovation. just as living ecologies require care in order to flourish, faithful innovation in and for the flourishing of our ecclesial ecologies requires purposeful cultivation. we identified three areas of work. first, there is a need for new meeting spaces that center the wisdom of local congregations and provide opportunities to collaborate and foster the resources (financial as well as relational) that nourish an orientation for faithful innovation. in so far as the work of the icef provides a test case, the work of this group over two decades has served as an incubator for experiments, a space to form new connections, and meeting place for friendships that span geographies. second, the inevitable tensions and contrasts evoked by innovation are both vital to the ecclesial ecology but also require management. without pressing the ecological metaphor too far, we will simply note that the flourishing environmental ecology includes members who do not always get along. while our work together wants to envision and anticipate the “kin-dom of god”, as isasi-diaz notes (2004), we also do not want to heedlessly diminish polarization. rather, when differences are affirmed and connections strong, polarities can move groups toward discernment and offer surprising forms of community. finally, there is a need for processes where insights, best practices, and learnings from one part of an ecclesial ecology can find their way back to members in other parts of the ecclesial community. as one participant noted, this can be represented by a figure eight movement that gives space for the best insights from two “poles” to migrate toward 104 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18541 common ground in a way that minimizes the contrasts that might come from two approaches. when cultivated and maintained over time, this cycle of information sharing creates an environment where we think faithful innovation can continue to form and flourish. an invitation finally, in the spirit of our work together, we want to extend a humble invitation. the kind of imagination that resources and nourishes faithful innovation in and for an ecclesial ecology is carried forth by stories. story is and has been one of the dominant genres of christian faith and practice, and we anticipate that the work of faithful innovation – in so far as it seeks to retain connection to patterns of christian thought – will be nourished by stories of the living people and communities or are labouring to do this holy-yet-ordinary work well. and even when the work is unfinished or it doesn’t fulfil conventional models of success, telling the story has the power to give witness to god’s ongoing work in and through our creaturely creations. we offer these words in a similar spirit and hope, giving our creaturely testimony to a broader ecclesial ecology where we hope faithful innovation will find a home. about the authors scott j. hagley is the w. don mcclure associate professor of world mission and evangelism at pittsburgh theological seminary in the united states. he is the author of eat what is set before you: a missiology of the congregation in context. contact: shagley@ pts.edu dorte kappelgaard, sociologist and phd in practical theology, is associate professor of practical theology at mf school of theology, religion and society in norway. she also publishes poetry in danish. contact: dorte.kappelgaard@mf.no dustin d. benac is an educator, practical theologian and organizational futurist. he teaches at baylor university’s george w. truett theological seminary (us), where he serves as director and co-founder for the program for the future church. he is the author of adaptive church: collaboration and community in a changing world, co editor of crisis and care: meditations on faith and philanthropy and editor of practical theology. contact: dustin_benac@baylor.edu scot sherman is an episcopal priest and executive director of the center for church innovation in san francisco. contact: scot@churchinnovation.org mailto:shagley@pts.edu mailto:shagley@pts.edu mailto:dorte.kappelgaard@mf.no mailto:dustin_benac@baylor.edu mailto:scot@churchinnovation.org 105 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18541 references benac, dustin d. 2022. adaptive church: collaboration and community in a changing world. waco, tx: baylor university press. carson, t. l., r. fairhurst, n. rooms and l. r. withrow. 2021. crossing thresholds: a practical theology of liminality. isd llc. fuhrmann, simon christoffer, 2011. participation: om forholdet mellem energeia og logoi i maximos bekenderens kristocentriske kosmologi. specialeafhandling. det teologiske fakultet, københavns universitet. gunderson, g., 2004. boundary leaders: leadership skills for people of faith. minneapolis: fortress press. hagley, s., k. roher and m. gerhling (eds). 2020. sustaining grace: innovative ecosystems for new faith communities. cascade. eugene, or: wipf and stock. isasi-díaz, a. m. 2004. en la lucha/in the struggle: elaborating a mujerista theology (english and spanish edition). minneapolis: fortress press. james, c. b. 2017. church planting in post-christian soil: theology and practice. new york: oxford university press. newbigin, lesslie. 1989. the gospel in a pluralist society. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. root, andrew. 2022, the church after innovation: questioning our obsession with work, creativity, and entrepreneurship. grand rapids, mi: baker academic. rosa, hartmut. 2016. resonanz: eine soziologie der weltbeziehung. berlin: suhrkamp. scruton, roger. 2009. beauty. oxford: oxford university press. von balthasar, hans urs. 1982. the glory of the lord: a theological aesthetics. new york: crossroad publications. walls, andrew. 1996. the missionary movement in christian history: studies in the transmission of faith. maryknoll, ny: orbis books. winner, lauren f. 2018. the dangers of christian practice: on wayward gifts, characteristic damage, and sin. new haven, ct: yale university press. ecclesial futures 2025 – volume 6 – issue 1 53 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22491 a r t i c l e doi: 10.54195/ef22491 how do new forms of church emerge in mainline churches and what does it tell about patterns, dynamics and competition? thomas schlegel abstract this article deals with the conditions for the emergence of new forms of church, especially in the perspective of top-down dynamics: how do bottom and top relate to each other in the development of new churches? to do research in this realm can help church leaders in inititating new churches: is it possible to control it in a more direct way – not only by establishing the right conditions? i focus in this paper on data collected from the “erprobungsräume” (church start-ups) in the evangelical church of central germany. the results contradict in a way the powerful narrative that new churches emerge at the grassroots level far away from traditional institutions. there are basically four ways top and bottom interactt. it would be interesting to validate the results in other areas/churches. keywords: new forms of church, church innovation, pioneering, church institutions, movements, top-down or bottom-up church change? 1 a german question this article deals with the conditions for the emergence of new forms of church, especially in the perspective of top-down dynamics: where does leadership foster what is growing at grassroots level? where are initiatives thwarted (or initiated) – from above? how do bottom and top relate to each other in the development of new churches? “above” and “below” are understood in very german, very traditional terms. “above” coincides here with the volkskirche institution and its administration, jurisdiction and long history. and “below” should be understood here – a bit simplified – as movement, referring to the fluid and dynamic aspects that can be found in churches mostly between people, during gatherings, in relationships and networks. 54 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22491 54 my paper is therefore about the interplay of actors within the volkskirche – and the logics for which they stand. my contribution refers to a concept of church theory that i would like to briefly outline for our international friends: a concept of church theory was introduced by eberhard hauschildt, an emeritus practical theologian from bonn. he compared our “volkskirche” with a hybrid at an ekd synod in 2007. different social forms and logics can be found everywhere and always effective. and instead of playing one off against the other or devaluing it as “not the real church”, he advises that all three social forms should always be taken into account in church activities (hauschildt 2007). he adopted this idea of a hybrid from sociologists who observed the hybrid nature of organizations (see evers, rauch and stitz 2002). according to hauschildt and many others like him this can also be observed in the german “volkskirche”. since then, this has been a popular heuristic tool for reflecting on processes in the protestant church and understanding its actions. an actual issue of practical theology is dedicated to new forms of church within the ekd context (schlegel 2024). i was asked to look at the intereplay between innstitution and movement in the emergence of new churches. despite the german background, i think this question is also interesting from an international perspective. there is a powerful narrative circulating that new churches emerge at the grassroots level amongst people with a missionary enthusiasm, far away from traditional institutions. the journey to a fresh x illustrates this widespread image (moynagh 2012 195–212). but is it the whole truth? is it right that the institution does not play an active role in the emergence except in the qualification (befähigung) of christians? could the institution promote new forms of church in a more direct way – through authorization (bevollmächtigung) for example? i try to answer this question by looking back at the developments here in central germany. a church innovation programme in one of the 20 ekd churches has tried since 2015 to organize financial support and stimulate new plantings – “erprobungsräume” (experimental spaces). the evangelical church of central germany (ekm) was thus the first to introduce the idea of church planting or fresh expressions in the german context. 2 when church emerges so how do new forms of church emerge? “new” forms of church emerge in the same way as “old” ones. the church is first and foremost the description of a calling and sending process: where “little sheep … hear the voice of their shepherd” (dingel 2014: 459, 22), where the holy spirit awakens faith through the word and gathers people. wherever the church of jesus christ is to be found, it is an event, a process (cf. barth 1953: 727–8), and in this sense the church is always new and innovative, 55 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22491 55 quite independently of the concrete social forms. this is obvious, but by no means banal: it makes sense of the invisible work of the spirit making church to be church amidst fixed plans, formats and structures. the second insight might be also obvious but by no means banal: “no man builds the church, but christ alone” (bonhoeffer 1984: 375–6). the subject of new forms of church is therefore neither the leaders “above” nor the basis “below”; it is jesus christ, as with all forms of church. in a way, this is comparable with innovative processes. they are unavailable and contingent. they cannot simply be created. if you want something new to happen, you can create favourable framework conditions that make the occurrence more likely, but innovations cannot be guaranteed.1 such framework conditions for innovation have been described again and again. the pioneers, entrepreneurs or heroes are of the greatest importance: people want to change something and infect people with their energy; teams and networks are formed; a sense of unity is created and a collective subject emerges. soft factors, corresponding attitudes and mindsets make change tangible, but also fun for those involved: agility, openness, error-friendliness and perseverance are just a few examples. tapping into resources, public relations work, good process and planning management are also among the factors without which it (usually) does not work. a certain amount of pressure to change, which creates a sense of urgency – and scope for playful experimentation – are also among the ingredients for getting a new project started (schlegel 2016). 3 new congregations in the constitutional church: the structural interplay so how do new congregations emerge in the german regional churches? there are basically four different ways. first, there are the initiatives that come from christians. charismatic individuals or groups get things moving with their concerns: charitable activities in a neighbourhood, games for children, opportunities for bereaved people to meet or spiritual life at the train station. sooner or later, structures are formed from these initiatives, they become associations, can raise funds and conclude agreements with the church. the christians involved are, to a greater or lesser extent, part of a congregation, but their joint initiative is not as such part of a church activity. it grows, metaphorically speaking, on a “greenfield site”. such grassroots start-ups represent the 1 “it is impossible to plan real innovation. . . . so, how does innovation take place? only by not concentrating on results, but in the arrangement of stimulating processes.” (paas 2012: 2). 56 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22491 56 bottom-up type of innovation, which can be found in various forms and is often regarded as a model for new forms of church. of the 65 erprobungsräume in the ekm, around 16 initiatives (25%) can be categorized as this type of development.2 but there are also such initiatives within church organizations. the approach is similar to that just described, but they are formed within their organizational unit or act as its representatives in public. a church community wants to develop an unused car park into a meeting centre. in a village, a parish council resists merging with its neighbours, expands the vicarage and starts a series of events. or the teaching staff at a protestant primary school form a group to establish a school church in a deprived area. in contrast to the previous type, a legal entity forms the umbrella under which this initiative can grow bottom-up. however, the initiative itself does not come about through a formal decision by the responsible committees; instead, it emerges based on the charisma and concerns of individuals. of the 65 erprobungsräume in the ekm, around 24 initiatives (37%) are of this type. and finally, there is the other way round: parishes, church districts or congregations pass resolutions in the relevant committees, release suitable personnel and provide the necessary resources so that people can come together and a community dynamic emerges. a church district rents a shop in a pedestrianized area, hires a pastor and offers him professional support. in order to rebuild churches in rural areas, a pastor – equipped with a bus, coffee and chairs – offers mobile pastoral care. an association which emerged from a grassroots movement, may go on to rent suitable rooms in socially deprived areas, sending staff and starting the same programme as in twelve other places in germany. this approach, which reminds me of strategic church planting (paas 2016: 31–49), is an indirect procedure because it gathers together the supposed ingredients of church innovations, but cannot ensure the actual emergence of a new church. this is true in social and theological terms: it remains uncertain whether movements will grow and whether the holy spirit will call people. what is certain, however, is the framework: legal clarity, financial resources and full-time support characterize the work right from the start. of the 65 erprobungsräume in the ekm, 16 projects (25%) can be attributed to this third type. another variation is when the framework conditions are not created locally or for a specific project, but rather the aim is to bring about innovation through structural measures, educational initiatives or special incentives. pastors in a region are relieved of administrative tasks so that they can initiate small missionary initiatives in congregations. in one church district, a start-up coaching programme is being established; in another, an employee is specifically looking for christians in the villages who can be called to take responsibility in local grassroots teams. institutions are 2 according to the “masterliste erprobungsräume (stand november 2023)” and the application forms. 57 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22491 57 changing their culture and rules. in the ekm, nine programmes belong to this fourth type (14%), and the “erprobungsräume” programme can also be categorized here. 4 “above” and “below”: how they work together institution and movement are intertwined. only the first type does not actually require the mainline volkskirche. it only comes into play later, but does not have to. in types 3 and 4, the movement only comes into play later, but the whole thing does not work without it. simply creating favourable conditions for new forms of being church does not guarantee that they will emerge. nevertheless, the indirect path of types 3 and 4 is interesting for institutional players: their own control logic, which functions via committee work and financial allocations, hardly allows for any other path than the formal one. legally binding resolutions and procedural certainty offer emerging movements a level of security that should not be underestimated; they can offer reliable support in co-operation and exploratory travel. the institutional framework means that employment relationships are less precarious, cash flows are regulated, spaces can be utilized and external communication simplified: as a partner or part of a church body, you generally enjoy trust in society. however, there is a fine line: security requirements, standards in administration and collective labour agreements can also be stifling. new forms of being church are quickly overwhelmed by the church’s regulatory system; they need it “lighter”. if an institution wants to promote movement, it will not be able to ignore its own rules or interpret them liberally, possibly on a local and temporary basis. emerging new churches require a willingness on the institutional side to engage and follow their logic. conflicts are inevitable here, because the degree of acceptance cannot be formally determined, but must be negotiated individually. communication and trust are essential.3 where there is a lack of trust, even the weakest parish can slow down or prevent the strongest experimental space – because it has legal stability, is integrated into the church system and enjoys local trust. to summarize: from an institutional point of view, there is less to do than to let things go: spaces must be kept open for inititiatives to arise. “the best approach we have been able to develop has removed obstacles rather than creating new templates or strategies.”4 these can be open spaces that have already been created 3 “the biggest challenge for the fresh expressions in the uk came from not talking carefully enough” (croft 2016: 19). 4 essential was the “careful relaxation of structures to give the new churches space and time to grow”, because “we need facilitation and creativity rather than regulation and risk exclusion.” (croft 2016: 19). 58 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22491 58 by the withdrawal of infrastructure or that exist alongside the institution, or institutional niches that are utilized by initiatives, through to the deliberate defining of a framework to establish a climate in which the emergence of new types of church is more likely. this means that innovations will only occur where institutions consciously relinquish their control and allow, and in the best case even promote, other patterns. these are the critical edges from which renewal comes. as such, they are essential for inflexible, bureaucratic large institutions – all the more so in view of the current dynamics of change. but do the incubators need the shelter of church institutions? they can develop their projects according to their own rules, so why do they need church habitats? it is important to differentiate here: if initiatives grow within church congregations or are initiated by church districts, they are already located in the church body and are usually dependent on a “top” in terms of legal or financial independence. so the questions do not arise here: they only enjoy the freedom that is granted to them. in return, they are offered a reliable level of security. the situation is different for those that arise independently of church structures or are affiliated with other organizations. they exist outside the church hierarchy and are not structurally or legally dependent. nevertheless, they seek contact with church representatives or are open to it. an ecumenical initiative at the railway station in erfurt would like a visit from the regional bishop and a project of a private foundation would like to be considered an erprobungsraum of the ekm. why? they did not apply for financial support. is it because of the close ties of persons that have developed in the past? but free-church initiatives are usually also interested in the protestant church. they like to be an erprobungsraum. they might gain trust in society if they belong to the established church. it might be that their common desire to communicate the gospel in a secular context is a binding element. we need more research here. the innovation programmes of the churches offer attractive financial support and an innovation network with inspiring educational opportunities and exchange between colleagues. nevertheless, the connection usually remains loose and is organized on an equal footing as partners. although they are bottom-up initiatives, they do not want to be seen as innovations somewhere down there. attempts to integrate them structurally into the system regularly fail. this may be sobering for the protestant church because the new forms of church are not officially part of the organized church. their visitors do not become members, either in the project or in the protestant church. the connection to others can be described as a network based on shared content rather than formal ties. however, this may 59 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22491 59 be precisely the innovation that is expected from these marginalized groups: they represent a form of church that belongs to the future.5 5 institution versus movement? there it tension between traditional parishes and other forms of church. there will be different patterns and values, different styles of piety, appropriate forms of communication and other self-presentations. both vie for attention, resources and the authority to interpret how church really is. such competition can be seen in the innovation programmes of german churches (pohl-patalong 2022: 462) – as well as in the uk since the emergence of fresh expressions. however, a careful analysis was able to dispel the concerns there: “fears that the overflowing of parish boundaries was a creeping wave, rendering these markers meaningless and spreading unprincipled competition, have no more fuel for that view than before. fears for the parish look exaggerated” (church army’s research unit 2013: 68). in germany, new congregations often emerge within the church structure and, where they grow independently, they are generally interested in a fruitful relationship with the established church. they benefit from each other in terms of content, spirituality, style etc. and being together is usually attractive for both sides. “the pioneers need the church leaders to stay connected and to be supported in realising new possibilities. the church leaders need the loyal radicals to keep engaged, challenged and refreshed by those at the very edges of the life of the church” (croft 2016: 20 (see fn. 9)). institution can handle movement and movement can handle institution. however, the intertwining also implies moving away from the preferred pattern. for church leaders, for example, there is a great temptation to “build a large internal church structure, a programme full of activities . . . or detailed guidelines”. but what is needed instead is “simplicity, open eyes, listening ears, time, prayer and openness to the holy spirit” (croft 2016: 19 (see fn. 9)). to get to the projects and listen to the pioneers fosters more innovation in the church than new laws or mission committees. something similar, but vice versa, could be said about pioneers who start working in church committees or get involved in the synod. this kind of activity changes their own operating mode and points to a “special form of ‘hybrid figure’“ in church innovation programmes (pohl-patalong 2022: 458 (see fn. 14)). of course, 5 richard passmore (diocese of carlisle) appreciates especially those on the edge for the established system when he writes: “these were set up to be pathfinders, to constructively disrupt, to be innovative, to playfully push the boundaries of orthodoxy and to embrace the heretical imperative of challenging the status quo” (passmore 2018: 25). 60 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22491 60 intercultural competence is needed for both actors. at best, this deviation is a contribution to their own future and thus increases adaptability and stability. then the tense relationship should lead to fruitful cooperation. about the author thomas schlegel, b. 1973 in weimar, received his phd with a dissertation on karl barth at jena university and princeton theological seminary. after a time as pastor in munich and biberschlag (thür) he was associate at the research institute for evangelism and church development at the greifswald university (2009–14) and later at the centre for empowerment studies at the university of halle (2023–25). church innovation, secularity in eastern germany and the mechanisms of shrinking were his research interests. he was one of the designers and head of the “erprobungsräume” (experimental spaces) – a process to foster new forms of being church. since 2025 he has been director of “midi” – the think tank of the evangelical church of germany in berlin. contact: thomas.schlegel@theologie.uni-halle references barth, karl. 1953. die kirchliche dogmatik: die lehre von der versöhnung, band iv, 1. zollikon-zürich: evangelischer verlag ag. bonhoeffer, dietrich. 1984. predigten – auslegungen – meditationen: vol. 1: 1925–1945 (ed. by otto dudzus). münchen: christian kaiser verlag. church army’s research unit. 2013. church growth research project: report on strand 3b: an analysis of fresh expressions of church and church plants begun in the period 1992–2012. available at https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2019-06/church_growth_research_ fresh_expressions_-_strand_3b_oct13_-_the_report.pdf (14.05.2025). croft, steven. 2016. “nine lessons for a mixed economy church” in pompe, hans-hermann and todjeras, patrick and witt, carla (eds). 2016. fresh x – frisch.neu.innovativ: und es ist kirche. neukirchen-vluyn: neukirchener verlag: 13–20. dingel, irene (ed.). 2014. die bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen kirche. quellen und materialien. göttingen: vandenhoeck & ruprecht. evers, adalbert, ulrich rauch and uta stitz, 2002. von öffentlichen einrichtungen zu sozialen unternehmen hybride organisationsformen im bereich sozialer dienstleistungen. baden-baden: nomos. hauschildt, eberhard. 2007. “hybrid evangelische großkirche vor einem schub an organisationswerdung: anmerkungen zum impulspapier »kirche der freiheit« des rates der ekd und zur zukunft der evangelischen kirche zwischen kongregationalisierung, filialisierung und regionalisierung, pastoraltheologie 96 (1): 56–66. moynagh, michael. 2012. church for every context: an introduction to theology and practice. london: scm press. paas, stefan. 2012. “church planting and church renewal”, journal of missional practice autumn 2012: 2–11. ———. 2016. church planting in the secular west: learning from the european experience. grand rapids, mi: william b. eerdmans publishing company. passmore, richard. 2018. “transparent operations: real relationships and constructive disruption”, anvil: journal of theology and mission 34 (3): 24–8. mailto:thomas.schlegel@theologie.uni-halle https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2019-06/church_growth_research_fresh_expressions_-_strand_3b_oct13_-_the_report.pdf https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2019-06/church_growth_research_fresh_expressions_-_strand_3b_oct13_-_the_report.pdf 61 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22491 61 pohl-patalong, uta. 2022. “kirche in neuen formen: ein kirchentheoretischer kommentar zu den erprobungsräumen”, in schlegel, thomas and kleemann, juliane (eds). 2022. erprobungsräume: andere gemeindeformen in der landeskirche,leipzig: evangelische verlagsanstalt, 2nd ed.: 450–67. schlegel, thomas. 2024. “wie entstehen neue formen von kirche – im wechselspiel der ebenen und logiken?” praktische theologie 59 (1): 146–52. ——— et al. 2016. “die anfangsphase sozial-missionarischer innovationen oder: wie hat alles begonnen?” in kirchenamt der ekd (ed.). 2016. freiraum und innovationsdruck: der beitrag ländlicher kirchenentwicklung in „peripheren räumen“ zur zukunft der evangelischen kirche. leipzig: evangelische verlagsanstalt: 316–41. thomas schlegel how do new forms of church emerge in mainline churches and what does it tell about patterns, dynamics and competition? ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 2 86 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19656 b o o k r e v i e w antonio-del castillo, fides, and raymund b. habaradas. 2024. basic ecclesial communities in the philippines: histories and stories of a pilgrim church manila: catholic bishops’ conference of the philippines isbn: 978-971-8915-71-4 reviewed by lemuel a. asuncion this is the first locally published compendium of historical narratives of basic ecclesial communities (becs) at a national scale and is a fruit of the 2021 local history writing workshop for lay volunteers in luzon, visayas, and mindanao to prepare diocesan accounts for becs. it is the outcome of several years of collaborative research undertaken by de la salle university (dlsu) and the catholic bishops’ conference of the philippines (cbcp) committee on basic ecclesial communities, through the support of the national commission for culture and the arts (ncca) and the lumina foundation for integral and human development. this landmark work compiles stories of the beginnings and ongoing journeys of 32 dioceses across the archipelago as told by local bec leaders and representatives in english and different philippine languages (cebuano, ilocano and tagalog). it is significant not only as the first publication of its kind after 50 years of bec existence in the philippines, but also for engendering a culture of scholarship in this particular ecclesiology which is very much needed at present. aimed at “provid[ing] the communities with a better understanding of the unique experiences of becs”, the book begins with an introductory chapter by monsignor manuel g. gabriel, the executive secretary of the cbp commission on basic ecclesial communities. to set the tone of the entire book, he recognizes the local bec leaders as “storytellers” and points out how each narrative “unveils the message of the kerygma”. he then proceeds to give an extensive history of bec from the biblical period until the fourth cbcp-bec national pastoral assembly in 2019, the same year when five decades of bec presence in the philippines were celebrated. the subsections that follow highlight the challenges that bec faced, a listing of the theological doi: 10.54195/ef19656 87 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19656 87 reflections, write-ups, research, studies, and theological inputs by prominent clergy and lay scholars, and the four thrusts of the ecclesial communities toward the future. following the introduction is a summary at national level provided by jonathan james o. cañete. this section reiterates what fr amado picardal identified as the origins of bec, placing emphasis on how it started at the grassroots as a response to the call of the second vatican council for the renewal of the church rather than developing from liberation theology itself. it also lays, as a foundation for the succeeding sections, the seven pillars of bec culture (awareness as renewed christians, communion or koinonia, word of god or kerygma and catechesis, prayer and the eucharist or leitourgia, social action or diakonia, option for the poor, and participative membership and servant leadership) as a guiding framework for assessing the implementation of these ecclesial communities. the section further introduces the regional summaries wherein readers will be able to grasp the identities of the becs in the local language; munting sambayanang kristiyano (msk) for luzon, gagmayang kristohanong katilingban (gkk) for visayas, and kristohanong kasilingan (kriska) for mindanao. the book is then divided into three sections representing luzon, visayas and mindanao, the main island groups of the country which are loosely referred to as “regions”. regional summaries serve as introductions for each of these sections. these were written by jonathan james o. cañete, samantha julia v. ubiadas and leonardo o. quimson, jr. there is more extensive coverage of the regional history not only of the becs but also of the catholic church itself, followed by a summary of the narratives according to the seven pillars. although the three regional summaries are similar, their conclusions were written differently. the narratives, titled according to the name of the diocese, succeed the regional summaries. there are fourteen narratives from luzon, ten from visayas and eight from mindanao. the presentation of each narrative varies from one diocese to another. most begin with the history of the diocese and its geographic description, followed by a list (and/or sometimes a directory) of its vicariates and parishes. several dioceses would further present the organizational structure of their bec through a list of its ministries under the diocesan, parish and chapel community levels. this is usually followed by the enumeration of the religious formation, human formation, and socio-economic or social development activities which are implemented, with some narratives even reporting the rate of participation. several dioceses also detailed their recruitment processes. some narratives include a brief background of pertinent social issues or historical events such as martial law, which had a major impact on the becs. one narrative includes frequency tables of survey data, while 88 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19656 88 another describes its system for recognizing outstanding becs, parishes, chapels and clusters. many of the dioceses dedicate a section of their narrative to the issues and challenges that they encountered or continue to face as well as the responses, solutions and interventions they implemented in the past or plan to undertake in the future. while only a few narratives include a concluding section, these also vary in content. some present a synthesis of their narrative while others share their realizations and future directions, not only of the bec but also of the diocese itself. one diocese ended with a list of its parishes, detailing its year of establishment, titular and feast day. considering all these, each narrative is therefore a witnessing of the continuous renewal of the church at the grassroots. although not meant as a reference text, the book substantially presents the concept of bec from a historical point of view while providing numerous examples of how it is today. the strength of the book lies in the culturally rich storytelling of the bec founders and local organizers. the diverse narratives offer a glimpse into the landscapes in which the ecclesial communities sprang to life and provide the readers with firsthand accounts of how the lay communities, with the guidance and support of the local clergy, responded to the calls and subsequent challenges of the church, highlighting the interplay between tradition and innovation, and flavoured by each diocese’s ecclesial and political culture. to a certain extent, there are also some challenges with regard to not having a uniform approach in storytelling. a number of narratives, for example, are written in philippine languages that may not be comprehensible to some readers, especially when translations are not provided. furthermore, the lack of a basic content outline across the narratives makes it difficult to compare information depending on one’s need. considering that the local becs trace their beginnings in mindanao, it would be good to have more narratives from this region to provide more historical and sociocultural depth. as a lasallian educator myself, i believe in the intrinsic value of community as a privileged space to encounter god in and through others. becs are described as “primary classrooms” where children learn socialization, emotional regulation and other necessary life skills. hence, these ecclesial communities provide a natural context for children to learn these essential human skills in preparation for participation in school and their other relevant environments. becs, are able to gather not only individuals but also families, which is a strength of philippine dioceses that must be continued, nurtured and supported. furthermore, becs are regarded as “homes of synodality” because these promote the participation of the people through dialogue and collaboration. synodality basically entails the people of god gathering and journeying together. this also applies to how religious education is carried out in classrooms. if a class is reimagined as an ecclesial community, then religious education 89 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19656 89 becomes more than just a subject; it is now a gathering in the name of god and an opportunity to build church. the existence and continuous propagation of becs in the country is an embodiment of the flourishing collective faith of filipinos. this book, which is a testimony to the vitality of becs in the past 50 years, is a very timely resource that recognizes and immortalizes these stories of beginnings, struggles, successes and visions. as a religious educator, i highly recommend this book to teachers, catechists, clergy and religious women and men, and the lay faithful in the local church communities; it is an indispensable reference for bec, helping us to learn from the past, be grounded in the present and plan for the future of this “new way of being church”. about the reviewer br. lemuel a. asuncion fsc is a member of the institute of the brothers of the christian schools, also known as the de la salle brothers. he teaches at the de la salle university senior high school in manila and has a background in occupational therapy and health professions education. contact: lemuel.asuncion@dlsu.edu.ph ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 1 97 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13747 a r t i c l e s doi: 10.54195/ef13747 small missional church as an alternative in the period of church decline in korea an-wei tan abstract this article examines the causes and circumstances of the decline of korean churches since the 2000s. after briefly sketching the history and critical events of the growth of the korean church, it pays attention to one of the leading reasons people leave the church and a reason that the korean church has lost its reliability in the view of much of korean society. after that, the author introduces two phenomena in the process of the slow growth and decline of the korean church: the phenomenon of “believing without belonging” and the increase in numbers of bi-vocational ministers. this is a time when the missional church has begun to emerge as a new type of church, different from the traditional church, and at the same time non-institutional churches have emerged as a missional approach to believing without belonging. furthermore, the author argues that the small missional church is a helpful alternative and required paradigm in the context of the decline of the korean church by using several case studies, including shared worship space, bi-vocational ministry, and local missional church. keywords: korean church; decline; missional ecclesiology; small missional church; shared worship space introduction it is well-known that the korean church experienced revival and growth in a short period of time in the mid to late twentieth century. however, it is not well known that korean church attendance has since declined due to low growth. the korean church began showing a trend of decline in the 2000s, and this trend is still in progress. this paper briefly describes the history of the growth of the korean church and then discusses the new direction that is now being demanded. it explores the causes and circumstances of the decline of korean churches since the 2000s. it pays particular attention to two issues: the phenomenon of believing without belonging and the 98 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13747 mass production of bi-vocational ministers. in addition, this article proposes that the small missional church is a newly required paradigm in the context of the decline of the korean church. the author speaks of a “small” missional church because he agrees with deuk-hoon park that it is time to de-large it. park says that the goal of enlarging the church was influenced by capitalism, and he highlights small churches because he views the ‘aspiration to be big’ and greed are the main culprits in destroying churches (park 2017: 167–68). in addition to park’s claim, megachurches as bound to have pastoral limitations. the megachurch pastor cannot know all the members’ names, the spiritual care through the pastor cannot be performed appropriately and the reality of the community as a body in which members communicate with each other is inevitably lacking. on the other hand, a small church can be preferred not simply for its small size but as a church that more ably emphasizes the role of community in the church. therefore, the author will share an example of a small church that seeks communality, communicates with and serves the local community and is performing a ministry that is unique in a korean context. the context of the korean church from rise to slow growth and decline after the korean war (1950–53), korea became one of the poorest countries in the world. but through industrialization in the 1970s and 1980s it developed to achieve what has come to be known as the “miracle of the han river”. the 1970s and 1980s were an era of industrialization and urbanization, but also a time of population explosion. the explosive growth of the korean church can be viewed as a matter of course given the population growth rate in korea. this period was also a time of reconstruction after the war. people flocked to the city for a better life, and it was a time when the evangelism movement was active, including on university campuses. when someone planted a church, people started to flock to it. there was a time when you could rely on gathering a number of believers if you planted a church in an urbanized area, for example, in a place where apartments were built. rev. david young-gi cho’s full gospel church, which is known worldwide, has also grown by delivering healing and hope for success, such as the threefold blessing, fivefold gospel and fourth dimension spirituality (lee 2022). in 1993, 23 of the world’s 50 largest churches were situated in korea (kungminilbo 1993). among the causes of growth during this period, the church growth movement of each denomination played an important part. for example, gapck (the general assembly of the presbyterian church of korea, or “hapdong”) launched the 99 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13747 “10,000 church planting movement” as a 10-year plan in 1975, and after five years the number of churches had increased by 13.2% and the number of members by 17.4% (kim 2002: 131). this period was also a time when the inter-denominational evangelism movement and evangelical campus mission developed. these ministries include campus crusade for christ and the inter-varsity christian fellowship (a member of the international fellowship of evangelical students). during this time of church growth, large-scale evangelism rallies took place. as a representative example, 2.6 million people participated in the billy graham evangelism rally that was held for four days in 1973. 37,000 people were converted. in explo74, which was hosted by ccc in 1974, 6.65 million people participated, and 272,000 people were converted (s.-h. lee 1995: 34–35). however, the growth of the korean church began to slow as industrialization and urbanization were completed. the decline is also related to the small growth in population and the phenomenon of de-religiosity that is evident more broadly in society. hee-song yang presents five events that occurred in 2007 as indicators of slower growth of the korean church (yang 2012: 41–53). among these, the dismissal of irregular workers in e-land, the abduction of the afghan mission team, and making an elder president are the three major events in the early 2000s when korean society in general grew increasingly negative in their perception of the korean church. in the case of e-land’s layoff of non-regular workers, a company that emphasized its identity as a christian company could not differentiate itself from other companies. in 2007, new legislation was passed to protect non-regular workers. the content was that workers who had worked as non-regular workers for two years should be converted to regular workers. however, e-land, which claimed to be a christian company, fired most of its non-regular workers before the law was enforced. this did not match people’s general expectations of christian companies, and it was an event that became a big social issue. it was thought that if a christian became president, politics would be different from before, or at least politics would not be hostile to christianity. as a result, president lee myung-bak, an elder of the presbyterian church, was elected. however, socially, it seemed that the church was openly engaged in political activities to pursue its own interests. among these events, the most prominent event was the abduction of a korean short-term mission team in afghanistan. the incident shocked the whole nation as the mission team was kidnapped during an outreach in afghanistan while ignoring the government’s travel ban notice. due to this incident, korean society began to recognize that there was a problem with the aggressive mission of the korean church, and the korean church became a target of criticism. 100 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13747 the korean church led the independence movement during the japanese colonial period (1910–45), participated in democratization (1960–87), and continues today to work for the poor. citizens had a positive impression of christianity because there were many people in the korean church who acted in socially responsible ways. however, due to several incidents, the social perception of the korean church has turned increasingly negative. the media has begun to cover other adverse events within the church. as various issues with pastors’ non-transparent financial dealings, sexual immorality and the privatization of church as family inheritance have come to light, society has tended to view the church in an increasingly negative light. changes in the korean church ecosystem in the early 2000s the increase of “believing without belonging” the phenomenon of believing without belonging began to appear more prominently in the context of the events mentioned above. believing without belonging refers to a christian who claims to be a christian but does not attend services on sunday and does not belong to a christian community. this phenomenon has led to the rise of the so-called “canaan saints” in korea. the word “canaan” is a wordplay that reverses the korean word ga-na-an (canaan) to an-na-ga (not going). according to a survey by the korean national association of christian pastors and ji&com research conducted in 2017, the population of believing without belonging was already 23%. this more than doubled from 10.5% in 2012 (lim 2017). at one time during the covid-19 period, almost all christians were unable to attend church and worship due to the government’s ban on gatherings. however, even after the restrictions were loosened, offline attendance was only about 50% of what it was prior to the pandemic. currently, korean churches are interested in how many will return. many pastors judge that they have reached a situation where they have no choice but to continue the online ministry that started during the covid-19 period. according to the survey mentioned above, 42.8% of the respondents left the church for personal reasons such as a life of faith that is not bound by norms (30.3%) and lack of time (5.7%). church-related problems like dissatisfaction with the pastor (24.3%) and dissatisfaction with church members (19.1%) made up 43.4% (korean national association of christian pastors). these de-churched individuals maintain personal religiosity but do not belong to an institutional church. instead, they mainly practice their faith in their personal life. however, non-institutional churches were also established by the pastors with a missional heart toward them. jaeyoung jung has found three things such nearby established, non-institutional churches have in common. first, there is often a small number of people gathered to have personal fellowship and share leadership in a communal environment. second, there is a tendency to 101 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13747 gather in a relaxing and comfortable environment on sunday afternoons and hold worship services. there is no other meeting besides sunday worship. third, there is typically time to talk about the sermon after worship ( jung 2015: 17–18). as a result of a series of events, the credibility of the korean church has declined sharply. in the most recent example during the covid-19 pandemic, society has criticized some church gatherings as superspreading events. korean society has been questioning the public function of the christian religion, while christianity has become more privatized as some churches acted against the social climate when they should have fulfilled their citizenship duties. during the time of covid-19 that started at the end of 2019, this kind of appearance was shown to the public without filtering. since the beginning of 2020, there have been cases in which covid-19 spreads through people who gather at church on sundays to practise their faith. the government restricted gatherings, but some churches with fundamentalist tendencies strongly resisted this, and even continued offline worship despite community protests. according to a survey by ji&com research conducted in march 2022, 31.8% of korean society saw the korean church as credible in 2020, 20.9% in 2021, and 18.1% in 2022 (kangjuhwua, changch’angil and ch’oegiyŏng, 2022). rapid increase in bi-vocational ministers: imbalance in the supply and demand of pastors there are a limited number of churches, and the number of church members is decreasing. yet the number of pastors is increasing, which means that pastors who cannot find a ministry site must start planting churches. this is because the supply and demand have not been properly controlled. the reason is that the korean church did not take the reduction in personnel seriously, and another is related to the financial resources for running seminaries. as of 2015, the number of pastors in korea’s protestant churches reached 98,305 (ministry of culture, sports, and tourism 2018: 108–16). there are nearly 400 seminaries in korea – 57 seminaries accredited by the ministry of education and 300 unaccredited – and 7,000 pastoral candidates are produced from these seminaries every year. in cases where existing churches provide support for new church planting, the new church may grow to become stable. however, a more common way to plant is for pastors or a few households to start a church on their own. in this case, the pastor earns a living through means other than pastoral work. in korea, many are in bi-vocational ministry not because of a double calling but to sustain their livelihood. in a survey of 904 pastors in 2016, 66.7% of respondents were living below the minimum cost of living for a family of four, and 73.9% responded positively when asked about bi-vocational ministry. they answered that they were employed bi-vocationally 102 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13747 because they had to take responsibility for their livelihood, while only 20.4% offered theological reasons for their bi-vocational lifestyle (cho 2016: 245–48). rise of the missional church missional church alongside the events in the early 2000s that impacted the church’s social standing, korean missiologists also started to hold active discussions about the missional church at the same period. according to kanghee han, it has been 20 years since the discourse of missional church was introduced to domestic missiology discourse and to the field of ministry (k. h. han 2022: 6). for local church pastors, the missional church idea became a breakthrough alternative in church ministry. the missional church discussion also provided a tool to interpret the model of missional churches in korea that pre-existed these discussions. when discussions about missional church took place, the idea of café church was one of the first that arose. in 2016, the kukminilbo, a newspaper with a christian background, published a special article titled “an alternative to small churches: talking about 10 years of café churches.” from this, it can be inferred that café churches were established in korea before 2006 (kim ayeong 2016). a café can be a point of contact that allows the church to meet nearby residents, and it can also function as a space for various events like worship services and cultural events. other forms have emerged, including library churches, concert hall churches and bookstore churches. pastors have taken on the roles of baristas, librarians and bookstore owners, naturally taking on dual roles. non-institutional churches as mentioned earlier, the category of believing without belonging includes people who have been disappointed by the institutional church. new churches are now being formed for them. sociologist jae-young jung refers to these churches as “non-institutional churches” and names the growing number of non-institutional churches as “continuous challenges” ( jung, 2022). in a survey of 227 non-institutional church members, 124 (54.6%) said they belonged to a church with pastors, and 103 (45.4%) said they attended a church consisting only of lay people without pastors ( jung 2022: 42). the survey data suggests that believers who are disappointed with pastors prefer a horizontal church without pastors. in terms of thinking about the church, members of institutional churches and members of non-institutional churches had very different thoughts. members of non-institutional churches do not place much importance on matters that have traditionally been considered important elements of the church’s composition (e.g., 103 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13747 pastors, sermons, sacraments, service on sundays, chapel), taking an especially passive stance on the role of pastors ( jung 2022: 75). jung suggests that the korean church must overcome these problems by moving in the following directions ( jung 2022: 174–245): – restoration of the essence of faith: as the church becomes institutionalized, it tends to move away from its essence and weakens its original spirit. – towards a community: the church should ideally emphasize discipleship and community together. in the meantime, however, discipleship has been more emphasized, so community needs to be restored. – improvement of communication structure: the current church needs to improve its structure because many people cannot have their voices heard due to vertical communication. – improvement of the fiscal structure: this step emphasizes transparency in fiscal management and should be used where necessary. – restoration of church publicity: the church must take on a public role without becoming private. – social participation based on publicity: the public nature of the church should eventually lead to social participation. – ministries through small group communities: when gathered as small communities, each community has different characteristics and can work in different areas. – village community movement as an expansion of the community: social participation changes the community to which the church belongs. – preparation for change: this is to grasp and prepare for the flow of society and the church. jae-young jung’s detailed proposal is appropriate in the context of the korean church. jung’s proposal is not directed at non-institutional churches, but at institutional churches. he expects churches to break away from the current negative aspect and show a more ideal pattern in the practice of faith. small missional churches as an alternative in the period of decline thus far, this paper has examined the growth of korean churches, the loss of social trust, factors such as believing without belonging, and the active discussion and practice of missional churches during this time. the author argues that the current situation of the korean church demands a paradigm shift. the church must break 104 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13747 away from the growth and enlargement of the past. therefore, i would like to argue that the small missional church provides a viable alternative in the current korean context. what is a small missional church? the idea that a larger church must have received greater blessings is not biblical but based on materialism. the church needs to remember the teaching that “each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function” (rom. 12:4, niv). members can be interpreted as individuals, but if we look at the whole korean church as one large body, we can see that different sized churches can play different roles. a human body has two arms and ten fingers and toes, and each serves a different function. as one body in christ, the church has the same mission. but different sizes of churches can be understood to have different functions. there are many examples of large churches that have grown through a revival. however, many churches become unhealthy if their only goal is quantitative growth. in addition, as mentioned above, the korean church is declining. the church needs to recognize the need for degrowth and focus instead on the essence of ministry. in addition, this paradigm shift is not a choice but a requirement of the times, society and the environment. a small missional church results in several reorientations in the organizational aspect of the church. first, a small missional church does not intend to be large. ideally, the size of a church should be given as the result of practicing faith rather than intentionally through marketing. many evils arise when the intention to increase the number of members is the first and only goal of a church. when the church grows naturally, it can also choose to split and maintain its scale in smaller units. second, a small missional church focuses on the essence of the gospel. a missional church recognizes and practises mission as the essence of the church. the questions that fellow pastors often ask in the field of ministry are “does the church revive if you do that?” and “does the church grow if you change to that system?” whether a small church or a large church, if growth is the criterion for judging ministry, it will eventually be buried in growthism. for this reason, small missional churches must break away from growthism and practise the gospel in response to the bible and the needs of the times. third, a small missional church avoids complex structures and has a simple system. complex structures slow movement, and a simple decision-making structure can enable quick response. fourth, a small missional church cooperates with other missional churches. these churches are challenged by a shortage of human resources. in many cases the pastor is the sole leader or two or three people work 105 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13747 in a team. therefore, churches with the same orientation can form partnerships to help each other. advantages of a small missional church characterization a small missional church can respond directly to specific community issues such as caring for those who believe without belonging, participating in social issues like creation care, environmental efforts, peace activities, and human rights. flexibility due to globalization, pandemics are likely to occur again in the future. the likelihood of future pandemics increases the need for small communities with organizational flexibility. a small missional church has a relatively simple crisis management structure. it can be flexible about on-offline conversion and is relatively free of government restrictions on the number of people gathering in a pandemic. it also has the advantage of providing individualized spiritual care online. toward maturity although the korean church has a history of more than 100 years, it can remain in some ways immature due to its egocentrism, conformism, secularism and historical irresponsibility (o-k. lee 2020: 103–32). the korean church is being asked to mature from the inside out. a small missional church is an alternative form of church community that is suitable to move the korean church toward maturity as expected and required by society. mission in partnership fourth, the small missional church is a church that works together with other communities. small churches, where a single pastor or a few pastors work in a team, are inevitably short of human resources. churches with the same orientation can thus come together and cooperate to coexist. examples of small missional churches in korea, many such small missional churches are currently emerging. one new form is through sharing worship space. space sharing is becoming common place in the general society, and worship space is also being shared by more churches. the following are cases of sharing worship spaces in the korean church. café underwood (missional church & shared worship space) café underwood is located adjacent to the campus of yonsei university with all the attendant cultural and economic entities that go into supporting a large university. 106 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13747 this café was started and operated by campus crusade for christ with the support of an entrepreneur. then, in february 2020, two pastors planning a chinese student-immigrant ministry were commissioned to manage the café. as a missional café church, café underwood operates a free counselling room for international students and immigrants from chinese-speaking countries. a pastor who majored in psychology and pastoral counselling conducts the counseling. counselling is professional and does not evangelize during counseling, but it can lead to evangelical conversation outside of counselling through relationships. in addition, a pastor with a professional barista licence is making use of the café’s characteristics to open a chinese coffee class and contact people in a situation where there are few opportunities to learn about coffee in chinese. while running a café and doing campus mission, they considered ways to use the café space in missional ways. they saw that newly planted churches have difficulty finding space for worship and often do not have enough money to pay rent. the pastors therefore networked to provide gathering spaces for four churches that meet during different time slots. the churches are free to use the video and sound equipment in the café. they also share items such as a pulpit, a piano and a donation box. furthermore, they are considering ways in which they can collaborate. it is worth mentioning that the one-year-old church planted in this space recently decided to rent their own space and start a shared worship space to serve other churches. this church became the first fruit of café underwood’s pioneering church incubation work. co-worship station (shared worship space) co-worship station is a shared church platform launched by gimpo myungsung church to help small churches. they sold the previous church building, bought a new building for a shared chapel space, and established assist mission as a missionary organization to operate the space. the co-worship station started in one location but has now grown to four. assist mission provides a location and takes responsibility for overall church administration, such as building management, video and sound equipment, and multimedia support personnel. these provisions provide a stable ministry setting. in particular, for the first year the monthly rent and management fee is only about usd100. pastors who share this space and its equipment are likewise seeking for the partnership in ministry, so they have started to hold early morning prayers in union. café underwood and assist mission’s co-worship station function as both a platform and an incubator. seoro books and seoro church (bi-vocational ministry) seoro books and seoro church started in february 2020 when covid-19 started. the pastor of this church serves simultaneously as the pastor and the head of the 107 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13747 publishing company. he chose the publishing business as a means of making a living and as his mission. so he opened a publishing house in paju bookcity, a district created for the publishing businessin paju city. as a christian publishing house, this publisher publishes alternative books for the korean church, mainly producing books on theology, history and missions. since the pastor is a phd candidate and researcher, he is also researching representative theologians of the korean church, making youtube videos of criticism, and writing articles that can promote a healthy church. moreover, they started their church in the publishing office on sundays and planned weekday services for people who work in the area. as the situation of covid-19 became severe, the government issued an administrative order to ban church gatherings. this church soon switched to an online church and started worshipping via zoom. the congregation has existed longer as an online church than it has as an offline church. this church is interested in social issues. members visit places that have become known for social problems, most being where tragic events have occurred. for example, they went to gangjeong village, where the seashore was destroyed to build a naval base. they observed the site and tried to understand god’s heart there. they also went to the de-militarized zone (dmz), the site of the split between south and north korea, and prayed into the pain of division and hopes for reunification. they also occasionally worship in solidarity with other small missional churches and encourage each other. they are now planning to have united worship for the families of the itaewon halloween crush victims in order to comfort the bereaved and also to participate in social pain. gongmyong church (local missional church) gongmyong (resonance) church was started by two pastors who were missionaries serving in britain and china. this church runs a bookstore during the week in a small city called yangpyeong. this bookstore mainly aims to meet young couples in their 30s and 40s who have children. the parents are interested in their children’s education, but their children have nowhere to go after school. so, this bookstore is not just a place to sell books, but a platform for culture, conversation and learning. the pastors and their wives used their knowledge to start english storybook reading groups, embroidery classes, chinese character classes, photoshop lectures, and book discussion groups. they accurately grasped the cultural needs of the region and became pastors of the village by thinking of the customers they met at the bookstore as “weekday saints”. thirty or forty people connected in this way worship at the bookstore on sundays. one pastor also introduces his pastoral work and ministry academically as a steering committee member of the family, church & 108 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13747 village research institute. the pastor introduces various cases of village ministry and provides consulting for a local church willing to switch to a local missional church. shared worship space as a new trend of the korean church shared worship spaces are being recognized as a solution and a new trend for the korean church. in the presbyterian church of korea, there was a recommendation on it at the general assembly level, and presbyteries are starting to establish shared worship spaces. in other countries, it is common to share space with other churches and even other religions. however, korean churches are not used to sharing their spaces with other churches. through this, we can see that the korean church has not felt the need to borrow the space of other churches while experiencing revival and growth and that the korean church has not been accustomed to having an open attitude toward others and partnership. the individual-churchism of the korean church is very strong (yang 2003). sharing a place of worship has significant implications. in korea, there are more churches than convenience stores (chang 2020). therefore, in the general perception of korean society, the church is also a group competing for market share. the shared worship space will show society that several churches share one space and cooperate with each other, so the church will be recognized as a group characterized by sharing rather than as a selfish and competitive group. in an age of sharing rather than private ownership, sharing a place of worship is good news for small churches struggling with planting, financing and responses to the pandemic. in addition, small missional churches that share a space of worship can complement each other’s weaknesses and maximize their strengths by forming partnerships. however, it is also necessary to reflect more deeply on why the place of worship should be shared (han 2021: 166–67). conclusion the author is pastor of a local church intending to become a missional church. he author also teaches pastoral candidates at the seminary. as a local church pastor, he feels a sense of crisis as he looks at the decline of the korean church; he thinks the korean church should not continue to go with the existing paradigm but should change. bi-vocational ministers have been introduced because of declining numbers of korean churches and the imbalance in the supply and demand of pastors. the situation is not good, but the pastoral resources are plentiful. the author hopes that if a small missional church, rather than a growth-oriented church, is planted through them, the church will be able to establish itself as a new hope. 109 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13747 megachurches that have been growing for a long time continue to exist as landmarks. however, churches starting anew are no longer in an age or environment in which they can imagine growing into megachurches. in addition, the korean church must take on social responsibility both internally and externally while maturing for the benefit of the public. church membership in korea will continue to rapidly decrease alongside the population decline. furthermore, the number of the bi-vocational ministers is increasing. the small missional church is a necessary trend in this situation. the korean church must enter society and be reborn as a small missional church that goes and makes disciples. about the author an-wei nehemiah tan is an ordained minister of the presbyterian church of korea and the founder of underwood ministry. he is also a translator and a professional barista. he holds a thm in liturgics and homiletics from presbyterian university and theological seminary and has been teaching liturgics at east asia theological seminary as an adjunct faculty. contact: ora.crede.vive@gmail.com references chang yŏngnak. 2020. “more churches than convenience stores, is it possible to ‘forcefully suspend worship services’?”, e daily, https://www.edaily.co.kr/news/read?newsid=011414 46625705616&mediacodeno=257&outlnkchk=y (accessed 21 march 2023). cho seongdon. 2016. “financial situation of koream pastors and their bi-vocational ministry.” theology and praxis 49: 245–68. han kang hee. 2022. sustainable church. seoul: bookk. han kyoung gyun. 2021. “a shared society and a shared church.” in a church that embraces the village and saves the world edited by maŭlmokhoe wiwŏnhoe. seoul: pck books. jung jae-young. 2015. christian who doesn’t attend church. seoul: intervarsity press, 2015. ———. 2022. continuous challenges: an increasing number of non-institutional churches. seoul: sfc. kangjuhwua changch’angil and ch’oegiyŏng. 2022. “do you trust the church? 32%→21→18%… the falling church,” kungminilbo, https://news.kmib.co.kr/article/view.asp?arcid=0017016125 (accessed 28 apr. 2023). kim ayeong. “an alternative to small churches: talking about the 10 years of café churches-1.” kungminilbo, http://news.kmib.co.kr/article/view.asp?arcid=0923428827 (accessed 15 feb. 2016). kim sung-tae. 2002. “a study on church growth types through the growth and development history of korean churches.” theological review 272: 131. korean national association of christian pastors. “the korean national association of christian pastors 2018 research analysis 1st presentation,” korean national association of mailto:ora.crede.vive@gmail.com https://www.edaily.co.kr/news/read?newsid=01141446625705616&mediacodeno=257&outlnkchk=y https://www.edaily.co.kr/news/read?newsid=01141446625705616&mediacodeno=257&outlnkchk=y https://news.kmib.co.kr/article/view.asp?arcid=0017016125 http://news.kmib.co.kr/article/view.asp?arcid=0923428827 110 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef13747 christian pastors, http://www.kpastor.org/news/articleview.html?idxno=2036 (accessed 17 may 2023). kungminilbo. 1993. “among the world’s 50 largest churches, 23 are korean churches.” kungminilbo, http://news.kmib.co.kr/article/viewdetail.asp?newsclusterno=01100201. 199 30208000001905 (accessed 8 feb. 2023). lee jaekeun. 2022. the 20 century, world, christianity. seoul: the blessed people publishing co. lee o-kab. 2020. the korean church opens the way in theology, gyeonggi-do: handongne. lee sang-hun. 1995. “a study on the causes of the rapid growth of korean protestantism (1950–1988).” the institute of the history of christianity in korea news 20: 34–35. lim sung-kuk. 2017. “the korean national association of christian pastors announces the results of a survey on religious life and faith consciousness of koreans.” han’gukkidokkongbo. http://www.pckworld.com/article.php?aid=7577298649 (accessed 29 dec. 2022). ministry of culture, sports, and tourism. 2018. religion in korea 2018. seoul: ministry of culture, sports, and tourism. park deuk hoon. 2017. “church of the poor, church of the resistance,” in ecclesiology for small church in korean context, edited by life and peace agora. seoul: the christian literature society of korea. yang bong-sik. 2003. “individual-churchism, consequences of the absence of ecclesiology,” news & joy, http://www.newsnjoy.or.kr/news/articleview.html?idxno=5678 (accessed 25 july 2022). yang hee-song. 2012. again, protestant. seoul: the blessed people publishing co. http://www.kpastor.org/news/articleview.html?idxno=2036 http://news.kmib.co.kr/article/viewdetail.asp?newsclusterno=01100201.19930208000001905 http://news.kmib.co.kr/article/viewdetail.asp?newsclusterno=01100201.19930208000001905 http://www.pckworld.com/article.php?aid=7577298649 http://www.newsnjoy.or.kr/news/articleview.html?idxno=5678 ecclesial futures 2025 – volume 6 – issue 1 1 ecclesial futures e d i t o r i a le d i t o r i a l special issue: christian empowerment, secularity and church development in germany felix eiffler it is my pleasure to introduce this special issue of ecclesial futures, which offers some papers that have been developed from lectures given at the annual gathering of the international consultation on ecclesial futures (icef) in halle/saale in germany in june 2024. it was hosted by the centre for empowerment studies – christian empowerment in secularity,1 a research centre of the martin-luther-university halle-wittenberg. the conference was titled “christian empowerment, secularity and church development”. the conference report, written by michael herbst and patrick todjeras, gives a nuanced insight into the meeting and its different inputs, themes and discussions. the golden thread running through this special issue is the current circumstances and challenges of the evangelical church in germany. as in many western countries, the churches in germany are facing a steep decline, which has gained pace and dynamism since the covid-19 pandemic. furthermore, germany is in the special position of being still divided – at least in terms of religion, faith and church membership. since the majority of people in western germany are still members of either the evangelical or the catholic church, the large majority (76%) of people in east germany (the former gdr) are non-affiliated to any religious organization. even though the west german states are catching up in many areas there is still a distinctive difference in terms of church membership, religious affiliation and secularity between the east and the west part of germany. the latest church membership survey (2022–24) showed that 13% of the entire german population is religious with affiliation to the church (evangelical and catholic). another 25% of germans are religious-distant and the majority of 56% is secular-oriented. in east germany this is even true of 73% and in west germany this is also applicable to a majority of 53% of the population. in east 1 www.ces-halle.de (05.05.2025), http://www.ces-halle.de 2 ecclesial futures 2 germany the group of religious-distant people is 27% and in west germany 13% of the people. the people who are religious in an ecclesial way, constiutute 9% in east and 14% in west germany. these numbers show the stark differences between east and west germany in terms of religion and church membership (wunder 2024). however, society is shifting towards secularity – and this affects east and west germany equally. thus, secularity is no longer a solely east german issue. besides the fact that east and west germany are still different in terms of religious affiliation, the last memberships survey also showed that the majority of the german population (56%) is secular-orientated and only a small minority of 13% is religious in a christian and ecclesial form. this is a challenge for questions of sustainable church development and religious communication and sets the frame for this special issue. the current situation and the expected trends and perspectives are thus the reason for founding the centre for empowerment studies – christian empowerment in secularity at the university in halle. this interdisciplinary research centre combines different theological traditions and methodological approaches to research christian faith and practice as well as religious communication and church development in a strongly secularized context like east germany. one leading question is how christians can be empowered by local congregations, the wider church and academic theology to express their faith in a mature, responsible and sustainable way. another aim is to reflect theory and practice to communicate the gospel with as many people as possible, no matter if they are members of the church or not. the team of the research centre takes a multifaceted approach, which combines different theological traditions as well as scientific fields like religious education and pedagogy, practical theology, psychology and sociology. it also combines different research approaches like empirical studies, discourse analyses, participative research etc. the team of researchers is convinced that only a poly-perspective approach is able to examine and describe the situation properly and is also more likely to develop (at least some) ideas and perspectives to deal with the german ecclesial situation and its challenges in a helpful way. thereby the different discourses on empowerment prove to be inspiring dialogue partners, who offer helpful insights and impulses. by combining theological reflection with different empowermentrelated discourses, the centre for empowerment studies aims to develop forms and variants of a christian formatted empowerment. the intention is to develop a christian empowerment that serves regional churches, local congregations and individual christians in their different attempts of religious education and their various ways to communicate the gospel and express their faith in the triune god. in the first article michael domsgen introduces the idea of christian empowerment in a secular context. he outlines the genesis of this idea born out of the observation of a changed self-evidence: for a long time, christian religion functioned as the 3 ecclesial futures 3 defining medium that shaped collective perceptions of reality, but this has undergone a fundamental transformation. thus, the christian worldview, which was very influential for a very long period, has become one perspective among many – at least in the western world. east germany is a context in which one can observe these developments in a quite advanced arena. as a result, a threefold crisis can be described for the church in germany: financial decline, losing trust due to sexual abuse and a broad loss of significance, relevance and influence. domsgen identifies two major questions: how can the gospel be communicated under secular conditions and how can people have meaningful and relevant experiences with the christian faith? the situation outlined, and its challenges, lead to questions of empowerment and this perspective opens new discourses and interlocutors from different academic fields, like theory of social work, disability studies, critical pedagogy etc. the proposed translation and understanding of christian empowerment in the field of practical theology and religious education is befähigung (enablement) and bevollmächtigung (structural authorization). in the second article, michael herbst presents the idea of regio-local church development and the ecclesial challenges it addresses. the structural background for this new approach to church development is the parochial system of the regional churches in germany. its aim is the pastoral and sacramental care of all church members in a certain area. those who are members of the church are automatically listed as members of a local church when they choose their place of residence. this system is under severe pressure and proves itself as increasingly dysfunctional due to the rapid decline protestant churches in germany have been are facing for many years and which have grown in pace since the covid pandemic. one way to react to shrinking church membership is through processes of regionalization. this means that communities, parishes and places of worship are becoming increasingly united in the region. mostly it begins with cooperation and continues with joint worship service plans and united parish offices. eventually there is often a complete merger. regio-local church development tries a new approach and combines the necessity to act strategically more on a regional level with the potentials of local ecclesial life, which is more linked to the everyday life of those living in the parish. besides practical insights and arguments, michael herbst offers also a theological rationale for developing church in a regio-local manner. in the third article felix eiffler (i.e. myself) offers an introduction into the so-called erprobungsräume (spaces of trial) – an innovation programme of the evangelical church in central germany – and the research which accompanied the programme from the very beginning. the text sketches the contextual conditions and development of this programme, which started in 2015 and functioned as a role model for 4 ecclesial futures 4 similar programmes in other regional churches in germany. the article outlines the criteria for being an erprobungsraum and what forms of new ecclesial expressions grew out of this attempt so far. furthermore, the text gives some insights in the scientific evaluation, which started in 2016 and was finished in 2023. since 2022 a redesign of the research was undertaken and among other perspectives an empower mentorientated approach was influential. next to results and the redesign, the text also depicts the challenges and limits of ecclesial innovation as well as the potentials and limits to research those innovations and to learn for a wider discourse and practice of church development and communication of the gospel to people today in an increasingly secular society with its specific chances and challenges. the fourth article, by thomas schlegel, is thematically closely linked to the text about erprobungsräume, because schlegel is outlining insights about ecclesial innovation which he gained by initiating and developing erprobungsräume in central germany. his main question is how innovative expressions of church emerge in mainline churches (volkskirche). he asks about the formal and informal connections as well as the reciprocal dynamics between the different ecclesial levels that are part of this process. on the one hand is the “below” level of new expressions of church, which are mostly bottom-up grass-roots initiatives. on the other hand, is the “above” level of the institutional church and her aim to foster new initiatives without institutionalizing them. the new expressions need time (and freedom) to grow – sometimes in a different direction from that originally intended. this process is important; to engage with the surrounding (mostly secular) context of those initiatives and it often depends on the willingness of the institution to grant the needed time and space. to describe the reciprocal dynamics of levels, people and rationales, schlegel refers to the heuristic model of church being a hybrid with different paradigms (that of institution, organization and movement) existing along each other and shaping the different ways church is organized. regarding the erprobungsräume schlegel detects and describes four ways of how new expressions of church (new congregations, respectively) emerge in mainline churches. the fifth article, by hanna kauhaus, presents reflections about diversity in local congregations and how more diversity can be fostered. the ecclesial context is the evangelical church in germany (ekd) and for the aim of diversity she asks two main questions: what variety of people show up in local congregations? and how well are those present included and have the chance to participate and contribute? for this purpose, she introduces into the concept of diversity management (dim) and asks what churches and congregations can learn from it – in theoretical reflection as well as in practical implementation. to put the learning from dim into congregational practice kauhaus developed a framework with two parts. the first part is about raising 5 ecclesial futures 5 awareness that (non)accessibility and exclusion often reach further than expected. the second part explores areas of church activities where actual barriers can be found and removed. within the model, she describes four levels of accessibility and exclusion, which build on each other: basic accessibility, understanding, positive experience and belonging. besides levels of accessibility and exclusion, kauhaus also identifies and describes areas of accessibility. to structure the areas, she provides a framework of five areas of congregational activities: information and public communication, buildings and times, content and culture of events and meetings, personal contacts and networks, and opportunities for participation and contribution. this issue outlines the current socio-religious dynamics in germany and the latest ecclesial attempts to deal with these realities. it shows how extensive and rapid the processes of secularization are and how fundamental their effects for the churches. it also sketches the consequent transformations the churches in germany are undergoing currently. the perspectives might be helpful for other contexts with similar societal dynamics and ecclesial challenges. about the author dr felix eiffler is head of the research unit for missional church development at the centre for empowerment studies – christian empowerment in secularity at the martin luther-university halle-wittenberg (ger). he also works as ordained pastor in the evangelical church in central germany. contact: felix.eiffler@theologie.uni-halle.de reference wunder, edgar. 2024. “ost-west-vergleiche zu religiosität und kirchlichkeit – die unterschiede nehmen zu, nicht ab”, in si/kamp (hg.): wie hältst du’s mit der kirche? zur relevanz von religion und kirche in der pluralen gesellschaft analysen zur 6. kmu. leipzig: 192–207. mailto:felix.eiffler@theologie.uni-halle.de _hlk199325251 _hlk199325265 editorial special issue: christian empowerment, secularity and church development in germany felix eiffler ecclesial futures 2025 – volume 6 – issue 1 91 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23525 b o o k r e v i e w doi: 10.54195/ef23525 smith, jennifer r. 2023. a thematic analysis of religious identity and volunteer motivation among emerging adult members of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints mississippi state university, in: institutional repository1 grell, daniel. 2023. pursuing jesus christ until we meet him face-to-face: a biblical and theological challenge to retired baby boomers to become transformed disciples of jesus christ who faithfully serve him in the context of their local church pro-quest id: 304862952 reviewed by johannes fröh volunteers are the backbone of church life, simultaneously deepening their own spiritual formation while serving their congregation and community. however, in most western countries, volunteer rates have been steadily declining for the past half-century and are likely to continue doing so as average household working hours increase. this challenge to the church’s future is addressed in the recently published dissertations of jennifer r. smith and daniel grell. their research focuses on the volunteering potential and motivation of two underexplored age cohorts in the church: emerging adults (smith), before their time becomes predominantly occupied 1 available at: https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/td/5979/ 2 available at: https://www.proquest.com/docview/2808449826?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview= true&sourcetype=dissertations%20&%20theses https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/td/5979/ https://www.proquest.com/docview/2808449826?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true&sourcetype=dissertations & theses https://www.proquest.com/docview/2808449826?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true&sourcetype=dissertations & theses 92 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23525 92 by the job market, and baby boomers (grell), as they transition into retirement over the next decade. jennifer r. smith is an adjunct professor of family life and human development at southern utah university (suu). while earning her advanced degrees from mississippi state university, she contributed to several studies exploring the intersection of family relationships, religion and aging. her academic expertise is complemented by her firsthand experience as a religious volunteer. as an active member of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints (lds), she teaches primary, young women and relief society – church programmes for women across different age groups. additionally, smith’s perspective has been shaped by her exposure to different cultural environments. she grew up in southern utah but spent nearly a decade living in kentucky and mississippi, providing her with valuable insight into varying societal dynamics. the combination of her academic research, religious volunteer work and cross-cultural experiences led her to identify the central issue of her dissertation: volunteering among emerging adults has largely been overlooked in church contexts, particularly in relation to the cultural factors that influence engagement. smith’s research aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between religious identity and volunteer motivation among emerging adult members of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints. more specifically, she explores how religious identity shapes personal identity development and how it affects both the volunteering experience and the motivation to serve. her findings offer practical insights into improving church volunteer recruitment and retention. daniel grell is the executive director of vocm-america, a mission organization focused on church planting in southern india. his current role follows five decades of pastoral service in the evangelical free church, where he ministered in various locations across the united states – including yuba city, california; conover, wisconsin; austin, texas; boone, iowa; and illinois – as well as internationally in austria, germany and england. after retiring in 2018, grell served as an adjunct professor at moody bible institute in chicago for four years before assuming his current position at vocm-america. as a retired baby boomer who has remained actively involved in church service, he is keenly aware of the ongoing decline in church volunteerism. this awareness led him to his central research question: what would motivate baby boomers, upon reaching retirement, to continue serving jesus christ through their local church? his project seeks to explore this issue in depth and provide practical solutions for both baby boomers and church leaders. both dissertations follow the traditional structure of empirical research projects. they begin with an introductory chapter that provides a concise overview of the study – well suited for informing church leadership about the key perspectives and most significant findings. this is followed by sections covering the theoretical foundation, chosen methodology, analysis of results and a discussion of those results. 93 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23525 93 despite their shared structure and common focus on church volunteering, the two dissertations offer complementary perspectives, particularly in the context they provide. just as their focus on the beginning and end of the working adult population forms a natural complement, their insights together create a more comprehensive understanding of volunteer engagement across different life stages. smith’s literature review (chapter ii) begins by addressing the decline in volunteer rates. from this starting point, she defines the conceptual framework of volunteering, summarizes current research on volunteer motivation and introduces self-determination theory as the study’s guiding research framework. she then examines prior studies on religious volunteers, using the topic of religion as a bridge to the specific research context of the lds church. next, smith introduces the concept of identity, setting the stage for the missing pieces of the theoretical foundation. she establishes a strong temporal perspective on identity formation by focusing on erikson’s well-known lifespan development model and its adaptation by marcia. after further contextualizing this model through the lenses of cultural and religious identity, she narrows her focus to the life stage of emerging adulthood. with all key concepts now defined, smith integrates them into a holistic framework that connects emerging adulthood with religion, culture, church membership, and volunteering. grell, by contrast, takes a significantly different approach. like smith, he begins by addressing the decline in volunteer rates among his target age cohort. however, rather than defining sociological core concepts related to this issue, he lays a biblical-theological foundation that examines its root causes (chapter 2). he identifies four key factors contributing to baby boomers disengaging from christlike service: 1. he contrasts disengagement theory with a biblical analysis of aging and retirement, concluding that god’s view of seniors challenges disengagement theory. 2. he argues that while god has a special calling for seniors, many fail to recognize it. 3. this lack of understanding is shaped by cultural influences that conflict with the theological concept of lifelong discipleship, a perspective he primarily explores through wilkin’s discipleship model. 4. fully embracing discipleship, in turn, leads to spiritual transformation, as described in romans 12.2 and matthew 16.24. after establishing this biblical-theological foundation, grell shifts to a review of empirical research on baby boomers’ perspectives on these issues (chapter 3). he examines theories of aging – contrasting chronological and agency-based approaches – as well as discussions on retirement, vocation, volunteerism, church life and spiritual formation. in each case, he evaluates these topics against the theological framework he previously outlined. 94 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23525 94 in their respective methodology chapters – smith (chapter iii) and grell (chapter  iv) – both researchers take a fairly similar approach to their topic. they employ a qualitative research methodology, conducting semi-structured interviews that align with their overall goal of exploring motivational factors in depth for their respective age cohorts. for data analysis, smith uses thematic analysis, while grell adopts a phenomenological approach with thematic clustering. to ensure transparency and rigor in their analytical perspectives, both researchers supplement their methodology with a section on self-reflexivity and positionality in their data interpretation. both dissertations proceed with the analysis and presentation of results. for smith, this is by far the most extensive chapter of her work (chapter iv), structured into five sections, each corresponding to one of her research questions. the first section examines key experiences that shaped participants’ views on volunteering. emerging themes include: 1. family influence and role models. 2. feelings of comfort, guidance, or peace in church settings, often rooted in childhood. 3. a phase of careful reexamination of the belief system they were raised with. 4. a personal decision to follow church teachings. 5. the experience of community within the congregation. 6. volunteering role models in church leadership. the second section explores the connection between church membership and self-perception. smith finds that participants overwhelmingly see themselves as children of god, a belief that profoundly influences their sense of purpose, confidence, belonging, happiness and self-worth. she concludes that their understanding of god’s plan and their relationship with him serves as the foundation for their self-perception. the third section focuses on prior volunteering experiences, revealing that participants engaged in a broad range of volunteer activities from early youth through college, spanning both secular and church-related initiatives. the fourth section analyzes the data through the lens of self-determination theory (sdt). contrary to prior research, smith finds it striking that while participants reported experiences reflecting all three psychological needs related to service participation and motivation, relatedness was the most frequently mentioned, cited by all 24 participants. the final section examines the influence of religious identity on volunteering behavior. smith identifies three primary motivators for volunteering: 1. a desire to follow christ’s example. 2. the belief that all people are children of god. 3. adherence to specific scriptural teachings on service. 95 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23525 95 smith concludes her dissertation with a brief discussion of the results (chapter v), mirroring the structure of her literature review by integrating various theoretical perspectives into a cohesive understanding of emerging adults’ volunteer motivation. she then outlines practical implications for both church leadership and nonprofit organizations seeking to improve volunteer recruitment and retention. unlike smith, grell’s presentation of results (chapter v) is comparatively brief, yet it remains concise and insightful. he structures his findings into two main sections. in the first section, grell presents the results of his semi-structured interviews with retired baby boomers, focusing on their perspectives on church volunteering. based on his data, he concludes that the primary post-retirement goals for baby boomers serious about pursuing discipleship to christ include: 1. ending well and serving god for the remainder of their lives. 2. having a meaningful influence on their families and others. 3. fulfilling god’s unique calling for them. 4. sharing what god has done in their lives, for them, and through them. these findings suggest that professionals working with christian baby boomers should recognize their strong interest in spiritual growth and development through volunteering. grell further notes that his interviewees view discipleship – understood as a personal relationship with jesus – as an ongoing journey. this includes intentionally dedicating more time after retirement to spiritual disciplines, such as prayer and scripture reading, while also identifying areas of personal struggle and surrendering them to christ. however, grell identifies two key barriers to baby boomer engagement in church service: 1. a reluctance to step outside their comfort zones. 2. a perception that their contributions are no longer valued by the congregation, which discourages them from taking on new or challenging roles. in the second section, grell shares insights from five additional semi-structured interviews with church staff who work with baby boomer volunteers. their responses echo the baby boomers’ strong commitment to scripture and acknowledge their ability to offer wisdom shaped by a lifetime of experience. however, church staff also highlight key challenges in managing baby boomer volunteers, including: – a tendency toward comfort and routine. – eclining physical health. – the need for transparent communication about evolving church culture to prevent feelings of disconnect. grell concludes his analysis with an overview of further remarks from church staff on how to support baby boomers in their spiritual transformation, encourage their 96 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23525 96 service within the church, address the effects of retirement, and explore mentoring as a potential avenue for engagement. like smith, grell synthesizes the various aspects of his in-depth analysis to form a holistic understanding of what motivates baby boomers to continue volunteering after retirement. after summarizing his findings at the end of chapter v, he concludes his dissertation with a final chapter (chapter vi), offering a brief project summary and practical implications for church leadership and staff working with baby boomers. overall, both dissertations address an increasingly critical issue for church leadership and management, focusing on two key age cohorts – one transitioning into full-time work and the other concluding their careers and entering retirement. both researchers provide a thoughtful reflection on their own connection to their research context, offering transparency regarding their positionality while leveraging their unique contextual knowledge for in-depth qualitative analysis. smith’s work excels in its nuanced exploration of emerging adults, grounded in the research frameworks she establishes in her literature review. these frameworks allow her to rigorously analyse her data from multiple perspectives, revealing the complex interplay between religious convictions, biographical experiences, cultural influences and interactions with the lds church. additionally, her deep familiarity with lds teachings enables her to skillfully analyse the religious connotations in her participants’ responses, highlighting the central role their belief system plays in their motivation to volunteer. however, a notable weakness of her study is the somewhat associative application of the self-determination theory (sdt) framework. after only briefly introducing the theoretical perspective, neither her interview questions nor her analytical process fully engage with the abstract meta-concepts of sdt in a way that meets the necessary level of rigour. grell’s study stands out for its practical applicability to church leadership. one of its key strengths is the solid and extensive biblical-theological foundation he establishes, offering a scripture-based, multifaceted perspective on aging and discipleship. his work is particularly well-suited for church teaching preparation, as it presents theological insights in an accessible and applicable manner. another major strength is his inclusion of interviews with church staff, which not only contextualizes the perspectives of baby boomer participants but also provides valuable insights into the challenges of leading this generation within a church setting. however, grell’s study is less rigorous in its engagement with existing research and theoretical frameworks. his biblical-theological foundation lacks engagement with exegetical and systematic theological scholarship, and his methodological approach is not presented with the same depth and clarity as smith’s. this limits the study’s academic integration and theoretical robustness. 97 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23525 97 overall, despite their respective weaknesses, i recommend both dissertations. smith’s work is valuable for both church practitioners and academics. not only does it offer important insights into her target age cohort, but it also provides a strong theoretical foundation that invites further academic inquiry into an sdt-based perspective on emerging adults’ motivation – potentially even challenging the framework itself. grell’s work, on the other hand, is particularly useful for church practitioners from non-liberal theological backgrounds. his pastoral intent, shaped by decades of experience, is compelling throughout the text, and he offers solid, practical recommendations for engaging baby boomers in church service. about the reviewer johannes fröh, research associate, university of bonn, germany. contact: johannes. froeh@uni-bonn.de mailto:johannes.froeh@uni-bonn.de mailto:johannes.froeh@uni-bonn.de reviewed by johannes fröh grell, daniel. 2023. pursuing jesus christ until we meet him face-to-face: a biblical and theological challenge to retired baby boomers to become transformed disciples of jesus christ who faithfully serve him in the context of their local church smith, jennifer r. 2023. a thematic analysis of religious identity and volunteer motivation among emerging adult members of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 1 67 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18529 a r t i c l e doi: 10.54195/ef18529 digital worship as fostering or inhibiting social inclusion and social cohesion geneva blackmer abstract this paper seeks to address the ways and extent to which participation in digital worship might be seen as fostering or inhibiting social inclusion and social cohesion, and to assess the current state of research on this important topic from both a sociological and theological perspective. it aims to broaden digital theological understanding beyond sacramental and ecclesiological concerns towards more wholistic concerns of participation and belonging, intersecting with the digital divide and theology of disability. drawing on the work of martha nussbaum and the capabilities approach, this paper proposes consideration of digital participations with respect to their significance for cultivating participation in community by conducting a literature review of various studies. further, it addresses ambivalences which arise out of these studies, as digital access seems to enhance certain forms of connectedness while rendering other forms less stable. observation of these ambivalences is framed into research desiderata for future study on the interrelationship of digital participation in religious community and the facilitation of community and social resilience. with the intention of building upon this recent research to address the more specific question of what kinds of digital participation foster social inclusion with a focus on religious communities, it identifies concrete pathways for further academic inquiry, and suggests a framework for new practical theological questions centring justice and inclusion. keywords: digital worship, theology of disability, social inclusion, digital inequity, digital theology, capability approach while scholars have investigated the subject of online religion for over 25 years (campbell 2005), the theological discourse has largely remained concerned with questions pertaining to ecclesiology and the overall legitimacy and authenticity of the digital church. surprisingly less prevalent are theological concerns surrounding the impact of the digital church in areas of access and social inclusion, including the actualization of liberation theologies like the theology of disability. if one expands 68 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18529 considerations beyond systematic theological questions to encompass both practical theology and social theory, this creates space for reflection regarding how bonded groups relate to one another by way of systems and structures. in the context of the digital church, it is hard to consider these questions without drawing one’s attention to the problem of the digital divide and digital inequity. conversations around the “digital divide” are frequently framed in a limited capacity which narrowly considers access as the only precondition for achieving digital equity. evidence suggests that improving access to digital technologies does not necessarily predict social inclusion and improved societal participation. drawing on the work of martha nussbaum, amartya sen and their capabilities approach, a more nuanced analysis must be pursued regarding what people are actually able to do and achieve in community and how digital technologies foster or inhibit these capabilities. according to nussbaum (2011), just societies inherently promote a substantial number of opportunities and freedoms by which individuals possess equal autonomy to exercise their choice. social inclusion and cohesion closely relate to nussbaum’s central capability of “affiliation”, which involves the right to engagement in various forms of social interaction. nussbaum notes that this capability pervades all other capabilities, in the sense that affiliation encompasses respect for each person as a dignified, social being; this precondition must be met for any capability to be actualized (nussbaum 2011: 34–40). many studies have assessed the significance of digital participation in supporting mental well-being and social inclusion in a variety of forms, including for example, studies on digital participation among the elderly (delello and mcwhorter 2017; friemel 2016), among indigenous communities (walker et al. 2021), and among refugee communities (andrade and doolin 2016). others have considered the relationship between digital religious communication and social and community resilience (fröh and robinson 2023). however, additional research is required regarding the more specific role of digital participation in facilitating social inclusion within religious communities. a recent study from mora and martínez (2022) explores digital diasporic spiritual consciousness among venezuelan evangelicals through the digital worship collective, adorando en casa (aec). their findings suggest that the incorporation of social media into regular church worship channels has fostered improved sense of community and belonging among diaspora communities who have been able to reconnect with churches in their home countries through digital worship projects. further consideration is required regarding the correlation between the type of social inclusion fostered by digital religion and the concerns of other justice issues, including the theology of disability, and the extent to which these interests overlap. 69 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18529 theological framework there is a great deal of concern and hesitation among church leaders regarding the legitimacy of the digital church, and a strong desire to preserve the physicality of communal, sacramental, and liturgical embodiment. further, there is increasing anxiety that the digital church will serve as a substitution or replacement for historical modes of worship (chow and kurlberg 2020). introduction of a new perspective to digital church that is less theological, and more ecumenical, does not intend to invalidate these concerns, nor to suggest that digital religious spaces can unequivocally replicate or replace the physical presence of embodiment which occurs during in-person worship services, nor to take a position regarding its role in sacramental life. rather, it simply offers greater weight of importance to social issues than theological ones, particularly digital equity, and social inclusion. in a post-pandemic context, willingness to give new ecclesiological consideration for digital religious spaces is inherently interdependent to maintaining relevance in the contemporary world. demonstration of how digital worship can positively foster religious community in online spaces should not be viewed as a threat, but a supplementary asset and enhancement of existing church worship structures which occur in physical spaces. the existence of a new, growing, digital spiritual community does not diminish the fundamental importance of physical, in-person communion. however, to dismiss religious experience in digital spaces as invalid, based on digital hesitancy alone, challenges even the most traditional ecclesiology. in colossians 1.18, the church is understood as the body of christ, the essence of which is a divine and spiritual reality, not an inherently physical one. a christological ecclesiology is one which fundamentally challenges this notion of church as a purely social, historical human institution (chia 2020). this is not to dismiss the role of “place” in the context of worship. afterall, in exodus 26, god commands the israelites to build the tabernacle, describing its specifications in great detail. place of worship, symbol and ritual are all elements of great importance which provide a strong foundation and direction for the praise of god. although god will “meet” the israelites at the tabernacle, it is important to note that it is not anchored to one location. this suggests that the place of worship is synonymous with encountering god’s presence (musa 2020). in effect, space facilitates a relationship between god and the worshipper and the worshipper and themselves. the nature of space helps to facilitate the experience of worship as both transcendent and immanent. certain attributes of space cultivate this feeling of transcendence, including scale and volume, light, art/architecture, and organization. all these elements should be considered when facilitating worship in digital spaces (schiefelbein-guerrero 2023) in 1 corinthians 3.16-17, the church is described as the temple of the holy spirit. the spirit indwells in the church through both the individual and the community. this theologically informed understanding inherently challenges the notion that the church’s identity is dependent or 70 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18529 bound by historically contingent forms, or that the character of the church is diminished or altered by external circumstances that shape her model of worship. the digital church cannot be exempt from this spiritual reality of communion with god, composed of the members of christ’s body, made possible through faith and the power of the spirit (chia 2020). beyond the ecclesiology of the digital church, consideration must also be given to how christian worship is defined. worship, like church, is characterized by human activity, yet it also transcends human experience. christian worship is made possible only through the grace of god and the power of the spirit; a doxological response cannot be actualized externally from this context. it is the spirit that gathers the church and cultivates unity among its individual members, fostering spiritual community. it is only by the agency of the spirit that christians can participate in worship and therefore this participation in worship as a spiritual reality cannot be diminished regardless of whether the gathering engages a traditional space or a digital one (chia 2020). it seems the dilemma is less related to the authenticity of digital worship and more a resistance to the deconstruction of traditional hierarchical worship and communal structures. digital worship challenges conventional models of community in favor of a worship space that is more dynamic, adaptable and organic. the digital church transcends its historical geographic network of community towards a fellowship which is united more by way of relationship (koinonia) than by affiliation (ekklesia) (campbell 2022: 71–2; o’lynn 2022). if fellowship (koinonia) is cultivated through christ alone, then surely this cannot be eliminated by the limitation of virtual gatherings (chia 2020). if god’s presence exists at all times and in all places, this affirms the sacred throughout all things, places and history. digital church offers a unique opportunity to bridge the gap between the secular and the sacred, the traditional and the contemporary. as digital spaces continue to become more prominent in public spheres, the church must bring the gospel to its audience. this is a natural trajectory, and if approached with the intentionality of keeping god at the centre of worship, it can draw believers closer to god and cultivate a heightened sense of community (musa 2020). the very heart and essence of the digital rests in the cultural reality of communication; it is this very concept which presents a theological invitation into the mystery of the triune god, and the communication of god’s existence by way of revelation throughout the course of human history. in the ultimate revelation found through jesus christ, as the word incarnate, salvation is communicated through his life, death and resurrection. illuminated by the spirit, the church becomes the vessel which spreads the good news of the gospel throughout the world. as modes of communication continue to evolve in the wake of technological progress, digital religious communication may be understood as an advantageous new strategy for fulfilling this mission (zsupan-jerome 2014: 2). further, the adoption of polymodal forms of worship, which allow for full 71 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18529 participation both in person and online, are inherently more inclusive of those who are unable to return to physical in-person worship spaces due to medical vulnerability and disability (schiefelbein-guerrero 2023). literature review while digital spaces are inherently value-neutral until their applied application, recent studies suggest a strong correlation between participation in digital access and an enhanced sense of community belonging among a diversity of populations. a case study conducted by andrade and doolin (2016) involving 50 resettled refugees and the use of icts (information and communication technologies) focused specifically on measuring its potential to foster increased social inclusion and societal participation. in the study, these new zealand refugees were provided with 30 hours of basic computer training, a refurbished desktop computer, and internet access, as part of a government-funded initiative. after a series of interviews with participants from eight different countries, the authors noted that the pervasiveness of icts in society, or simply providing access to the necessary tools, did not automatically promote social inclusion. with an interest in what individuals are actually able to do and achieve with icts, andrade and doolin identified five capabilities improved during the study with the incorporated usage of icts: participation in digital society; effective communication; improved understanding of new society; social connectivity; and expression of cultural identity (andrade and doolin 2016). a comprehensive review of recent literature, policy responses and case studies, conducted by walker et al. (2021) regarding indigenous youth in australia, demonstrated the correlation between access to digital technology, improved mental health and wellbeing, and increased societal participation and social inclusion. their findings determined that due to inequities in affordable access to digital technologies, only 63% of indigenous australians have access to the internet at home. concurrently, their research also concluded that when access to digital technology and social media is achieved, it strengthens cultural identity, improves mental health, and reduces isolation from community and country (walker et al. 2021). note that access in this case presupposes participation, or one’s ability to effectively use the technology provided. other studies, such as delello and mcwhorter (2017), focus on technology usage as a mechanism for counteracting social isolation and an overall decline in health among older adults. the researchers conducted a case study at a senior living centre in the southwestern united states involving access to and usage of ipad technology. in addition to providing access to these devices, the study offered small group training sessions which included information about content sharing and social media usage. upon conclusion of the study, it was determined that access to ipad technology 72 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18529 and improved digital literacy resulted in increased social connection with friends and family members and enhanced societal participation (delello and mcwhorter 2017). a second study related to technology usage among seniors was conducted by thomas friemel (2016), in which a random representative sample of 1,103 seniors in switzerland over the age of 65 were interviewed. the interviews conducted revealed that only a quarter of seniors in switzerland engage in regular internet use. friemel found that barriers to usage disproportionately affect seniors over the age of 70. in all cases, the existence of a social context in which encouragement from friends and family is prevalent, coupled with opportunities for learning in private environments, were strong predictors for technological engagement (friemel 2016). collectively, in the case of refugees, indigenous youth and the elderly, these studies unanimously affirm that technological access does not necessarily predict social inclusion or societal participation. they also conjointly suggest that when certain preliminary conditions are met regarding equitable access, tailored digital literacy training to improve user ability, and a social context which fosters encouragement and support from friends and family, all three groups experience a heightened potential for digital engagement. further, strong evidence suggests that when the culmination of these conditions is achieved, resulting in increased digital engagement, it has the potential to foster improved sense of community belonging, social inclusion, and societal participation. ambivalences despite the obvious potential for benefit presented in these studies, certain ambivalences undoubtedly arise, as digital access seems to enhance certain forms of connectedness while rendering other forms less stable. as andrade and doolin (2016) suggest, access to technology is helpful, but it is not always adequate in actualizing capability and fostering participation. further consideration must be given to what schejter (2021) calls the “right to communication”, or the ability to communicate, in the context of the digital religious community. utilizing the framework of amartya sen’s capabilities approach, schejter makes the argument that communication should be understood as a fundamental right and capability. schejter’s theory on the “right to communicate” asserts that free expression is a universal right that is interdependent with communication and therefore technological characteristics for communication should be made universally available in a digital age. in a digital society and participatory culture, the author views communication as a required function for participating in political, cultural, social, educational, and commercial spheres of life, making it a necessity for community belonging. in this context, participation extends far beyond the right to own or have access to digital media, and 73 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18529 communication is a basic requirement for humanity’s well-being and their ability to function within any society or social institution (schejter 2021). while technology can be useful in facilitating the navigation of new contexts, further consideration is required to determine if the social or cultural cohesion cultivated through technological connection bonds participants more to their localized communities, their communities of origin, or some other facet of the global community. this raises important questions surrounding the nature of the type of “cultural cohesion” or “social cohesion” produced by digital religious engagement. in the case of andrade and doolin (2016), refugee participants reported the use of icts to make sense of new zealand society and to become familiar with the new culture and way of life. many participants said they felt more comfortable communicating in an unfamiliar language with the use of icts rather than face-to-face or in-person interactions. regarding social connectivity, many refugees reported the use of digital communication, such as social media, to connect with other members of their particular ethnocultural group in new zealand and in other parts of the world. it also afforded them the opportunity to connect with friends and family in their home countries and maintain certain expressions of their cultural identity, such as accessing resources in their native language (andrade and doolin 2016). in walker et al. (2021), similar findings suggest that participation in digital technologies and social media by indigenous youth enhance cultural identity, and connections to both community and culture. the authors emphasize the importance of access to indigenous culture, connection with elders, family members, and community as an underlying facet of aboriginal social and emotional wellbeing (walker et al. 2021). in both cases, social and cultural cohesion often manifests within the local community but is informed by connections with unique ethnocultural identities that do not necessarily fit the dominant social discourse. in the case of mora and martínez (2022), the digital worship collective adorando en casa  (aec) was specifically designed to facilitate religious experience among venezuelan evangelical diasporic communities on a global scale, with membership spread across south america, the united states of america, canada, mexico, costa rica and spain. the study demonstrates the effectiveness of digital religious communication as a mechanism to affirm and strengthen religious cultural identity and sense of community, inspire collaboration, and provide emotional and spiritual support in digital spaces (mora and martínez 2022). while the intentionality of this initiative was to inspire global community among diaspora communities with a shared religious identity, evidence from andrade and doolin (2016) and walker et al. (2021) suggest digital religious communication has the potential to foster social and cultural cohesion across a diversity of religious traditions and ethnocultural communities on a local, national and global level. 74 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18529 theology of disability historically, theology of disability often centered the perception of what able-bodied people believe is in the best interest of persons with disabilities. disability is often viewed as a flawed human condition, inherently representing a disadvantage or a problem to be corrected. this perception of disability as human flaw is unfortunately reinforced within biblical representation as new testament authors draw parallels between healing and forgiveness of sin (lk. 5.18-26; jn 5.14) or lack of faith (mk 5.34; 10.52; lk. 17.19). this model inherently perpetuates disempowerment, exclusion and isolation. thankfully, contemporary discourse surrounding disability has shifted its perspective to consider disability as more of a social problem, rather than a specific medical problem impacting individuals. with this understanding, a person becomes “disabled” only when barriers to access exist. in this way, impairment becomes socially transformed, not only as disability, but as an obstacle to full societal participation (reynolds 2008). theology can wrongly equate disability with questions of theodicy and the problem of suffering because it falsely presumes that all persons with disabilities suffer. if disability is understood as an affliction sourced from god in parallel with prosperity, it is quite natural to fall into the trappings of “otherness” rather than to acknowledge one’s limited understanding of god’s compassion. recognition of humanity’s limited capacity for divine knowledge should undoubtedly lead to humility rather than judgement (morgan 2021). a more accurate understanding is that persons with disabilities suffer not from their impairment but rather the failure of society to practice radical inclusion, and consequently, the perpetual dehumanization of their circumstances by able-bodied people (michalko 2002). it follows that any theology of disability must be liberatory, centring the voices of persons with disabilities, and granting stigma only to the institutions and social attitudes whose barriers construct disability, rather than misdirecting this stigma towards non-conventional bodies ( eiesland 1998). when discussing the capability of “affiliation”, nussbaum highlights the social reality that all aspects of society and public policy must be understood in the context of relationships. she discusses the insufficiency of making options available without proper consideration of this interdependence (e.g., employment options and workplace relations or privacy boundaries within healthcare). these considerations, which fundamentally centre human worth and dignity as social beings, is an important lens by which both theology of disability and the digital church can be practically understood and applied (nussbaum 2011: 39–40). nussbaum’s framework points to the interrelationship between digital theology and theology of disability, recognizing the inefficacy which inevitably occurs when responses are done in insolation rather than affiliation (e.g., addressing digital access in separation from literacy). 75 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18529 this intersection can perhaps best be understood within the framework of theology of access, which considers the realities of how persons with disabilities are able to exhibit presence and participation in all aspects of church life and society. this scope expands well beyond the right to physical access of houses of worship to encompass a wide range of barriers that prevent persons with disabilities from full participation in ecclesial life. this includes concepts of worship and sacrament that intrinsically include language, sight, hearing and other elements that could potentially create barriers for “authentic” participation (mclachlan 2021). these components which inherently exclude many persons due to lack of consideration for diversity of bodies are quite synonymous with critiques of digital worship and its ability to cultivate full embodied presence. this suggests that current digital ecclesiology might require radical deconstruction of bias towards non-conventional bodies. if the task, or concern, of theology of disability is rooted in the liberation of persons with disabilities from the limitations imposed by institutions, social structures and human perception, does it not offer the same considerations as a sociological perspective of the digital church? digital worship offers a valuable space for social inclusion in many of the same ways that theology of disability challenges us to consider. further, it serves as a readily available means for church bodies to mitigate barriers to access related to theology of disability, socially transforming the church in a way that upholds equal value and participation of all its members. the incorporation of theology of disability into digital theology proactively corrects many of its inherent limitations by fundamentally broadening its spectrum of accommodations. reflection on the capability of “affiliation” fosters consideration for the interrelationship between the accessibility of digital church and barriers faced by persons with disabilities. for example, offering church services online is advantageous for those with differing levels of mobility or those who suffer from compromised immune systems resulting in higher risk at in-person communal gatherings. by centering one’s understanding of the digital church and digital worship within the framework of justice and radical inclusion, one’s theological questioning moves beyond the sacramental and ecclesiological towards more wholistic concerns of participation, belonging and salvation. conclusion a more serious pursuit of theological questions related to justice, inclusion, and its intersection with the digital divide calls for the following types of considerations. the presence of ambivalences suggests much potential opportunity for the future of research on the interrelationship of digital participation in religious community and the facilitation of community and social resilience. first, in consideration of schejter’s (2021) “right to communication” and the case study presented by andrade 76 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18529 and doolin (2016), it can be deduced that simply providing access and opportunity to engage in digital worship and other forms of digital religious communication does not necessitate community participation, nor does it necessarily facilitate social cohesion in the way of shared religious experience and enhancement of collective religious identity. evidence suggests that to truly alleviate digital inequities requires movement beyond bridging the gaps between the “haves’“ and “have nots” to ensure that members of faith communities are actually able to achieve the full potential of their capabilities required to engage in the type of full digital participation that can bring about radical social cohesion. all the studies presented here (andrade and doolin 2016; walker et al. 2021; delello and mcwhorter 2017; friemel 2016) suggest that when certain preliminary conditions are met (e.g., equitable access to icts, customized digital literacy training, and social/community support), digital engagement offers the potential to produce improved sense of community belonging, social inclusion, and societal participation. this observation raises important questions regarding whether faith communities can effectively aid in the facilitation of meeting these necessary preconditions within their congregations. further, what kinds of digital participation in religious communities foster social inclusion and thereby promote social cohesion? plüss (2020) has already identified the occurrence of interchurch cooperation in which congregations in rural areas were successful in adopting new technologies by receiving help with digital material from more technologically advanced congregations. additionally, he identifies the increased implementation of analog methods of communication across various congregations during the global pandemic, to help parishioners mitigate access barriers or lack of digital literacy (plüss 2020). further research is required to consider, does ecumenical cooperation have the potential to help alleviate digital inequities which impact religious institutions and their members, so that all parties can actualize their capability for full digital participation? the second gap brought about by observation of these ambivalences is the lack of case studies specifically related to digital religious communities necessary to address more specialized facets of research, e.g., do any observable digital participations exist specifically in religious settings/communities that foster inclusion and cohesion in those religious communities? do any observable digital participations specific to religious communities/settings that foster inclusion and cohesion exist in the wider community (e.g., beyond the religious setting)? this article reviews a sample of ethnoculturally diverse, non-religious studies by which inferences can be made regarding their relationship with online religious communities, but only the mora and martínez (2022) study deals with this question directly. the findings of andrade and doolin 2016; walker et al. 2021; delello and mcwhorter 2017; friemel 2016 suggest that, when appropriate conditions are met, digital communication has the potential to improve mental and emotional well-being, enhance sense of community belonging, 77 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18529 and foster social and cultural inclusion and societal participation. the study by mora and martínez (2022) demonstrates evidence that these attributes are transferable in a digital religious setting, with the potential for additional benefits, including facilitation of collective digital religious experience, direct worship collaboration, emotional and spiritual support through digital prayer spaces, improved sense of belonging and connection with home countries among diaspora communities, and a strengthening of a more specific religious identity and sense of religious community. further studies like mora/ martínez are required to draw stronger conclusions regarding the transfer of benefits found within non-religious digital communities to online religious spaces, and to produce stronger determination of the unique benefits that only digital religious communication can provide. finally, further consideration must be given regarding the extent to which addressing digital inequality inadvertently addresses the concerns of theology of disability and how an interdisciplinary approach to these two disciplines can collaboratively foster justice, social inclusion, and social cohesion. about the author geneva blackmer earned a master of ecumenical studies from the university of bonn and a master of arts in religious studies from athens state university. she developed this article as a research assistant (wissenschaftliche hilfskraft) for the university of bonn’s faculty of protestant theology in the department of intercultural theology and part of the gnet (@gnet_bonn) research team. contact: gblackme@uni-bonn.de references andrade, antonio díaz, and bill doolin. 2016. “information and communication technology and the social inclusion of refugees.” mis quarterly 40 (2): 405–16. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/26628912. campbell, heidi. 2005. exploring religious community online we are one in the network. new york: lang. campbell, heidi a. 2022. “understandings of the church as revealed in quarantine: reimaging the people of god.” in ecclesiology for a digital church: theological reflections on a new normal edited by heidi 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https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565211022512 https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18042141 https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18042141 ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 2 55 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19793 a r t i c l e doi: 10.54195/ef19793 an assessment of contemporary british new monasticism framed by the missional spirituality of the celtic peregrini peter ruxton abstract from the sixth century, celtic peregrini (wandering scholars) emerged from britain and ireland to establish monastic centres for mission and evangelism. british new monastic expression would no doubt benefit from increased adoption of their distinctive monastic practices. these practices include the celtic understanding of the sacramental universe – all creation steeped in the presence of god – all pointing towards the ultimate glory of his kingdom. in risky living they undertook both physical and inner spiritual journeys. they emerged from monastic schools and long periods of seasonal formation. they embraced rhythms of ebb and flow, searching for silence and solitude, to first breathe in the holy spirit, before enthusiastically embarking on evangelism. they drew boundaries – encircling the sacred core, whilst keeping out distractions. they developed frameworks of daily prayer and scripture reading, based on the psalmody, intentionally building scaffolding – rules of life and vows, constantly refocussing themselves on their ultimate goal of prayer without ceasing. keywords: celtic, spirituality, peregrini, monasticism, mission 1 introduction ray simpson, in a short but significant book, defined five modern waves of new monastic innovation and experiment: an initial wave in the 1930s and 1940s following the horror of the world wars; a second wave, in response to “the moral permissiveness and material prosperity” of the swinging 1960s and 1970s; the third and fourth waves in the 1990s; and a fresh wave in the 2000s (simpson 2009a: 11–40). within these episodes, four new monastic expressions were formed in britain which claim at least partial missional roots in the spirituality of the celtic saints and peregrini, 56 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19793 56 namely: the iona community, the community of aidan and hilda, the northumbria community and the 24-7 prayer movement. yet what was the spirituality of the original celtic saints and peregrini and how authentic are these modern missional claims to be celtic? 2 spirituality of the celtic peregrini the 1980–90s resurgence and euphoria around celtic spirituality has led to a number of authors questioning the authenticity of celtic christianity (see hughes 1981, simms-williams 1998). yet this research and the work of others (see bradley 2018) has identified a distinctive grouping of spiritual attributes which typify the early celtic christians. their spirituality was essentially monastic, rooted in the experiments in solitude and silence of the desert fathers and mothers. they focused on the contemplative – grounded in the gospel of st john and the beatitudes; they prioritised the “heart” over the intellect; to the celt the universe was sacramental – creation infused with the presence of god; and they emphasized the faith of the individual rather than institutionalized corporate worship – all aspects which appear to be resonating with an increasing audience today. these changes of emphasis, although not defining a distinct religious grouping, were the product of two hundred years of geographic isolation on the fringe of the former roman empire. as the roman cohorts retreated from britain and warring pagan tribes filled the vacuum in the early fifth century, some latin scholars and teachers fled to northern fringes of the empire, taking with them precious manuscripts of st jerome’s latin translation of the bible (the vulgate), john cassian’s conferences and institutes, athanasius’s life of st antony and sulpicius severus’s life of st martin of tours. these monastic teachings struck a chord with the rural celtic societies with their túaths and clan-based structures, much more so than the town-focused, authoritarian diocesan “bishop-priest” system of the roman church (finney 1996: 28). in geographic isolation from rome between the early sixth and eighth centuries, large celtic monastic schools developed, from which the celtic peregrini emerged, leaving their homes and native lands, seeking their “places of resurrection”, setting up new monastic centres in the heart of essentially pagan lands, from which to conduct mission and evangelism. most prominent were st columba, of irish aristocracy, who founded a celtic monastic centre on iona in 563, and st columbanus who undertook his peregrinatio journey across europe from c.590, establishing celtic monastic schools at luxeuil in france, and later bobbio in northern italy. in great britain it was largely the monks of iona – and from 635, those of st aidan from lindisfarne – who initiated the evangelism of most of northern and central britain, even as st augustine of the roman church arrived in kent in 597 (finney 1996: 21–33). 57 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19793 57 but what was the spirituality of the celtic peregrini, and what can we learn from them about mission and evangelism for today? before it’s possible to address this question, it’s important to acknowledge that the study of celtic christianity is problematic – there are a number of issues to consider. first, the spirituality of the celtic christians was diverse, linked to strong inspirational leaders, rather than a centralized co-ordinated tradition. secondly, few original manuscripts have survived – not only was there a scarcity of original material, but many documents were destroyed during the viking raids, and no doubt by the roman church following their “victory” at the synod of whitby in 664. thirdly, many of the manuscripts written about the celtic saints were in the form of vitae or lives of the saints – a genre that was not necessarily historically accurate (gougaud 1992: 52–6). this hagiographic literature was largely written in the high medieval period, between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, more than four to six hundred years after the individual saints lived (sellner 2006: 23). most of these documents were compiled by eager clerics with the agenda of promoting their chosen patron saints to give authority to their diocese, to justify prominence and to attract lucrative pilgrims. fourthly, in a more recent phenomenon, the spirituality of the celtic saints has often been romanticized and even highjacked by contemporary agendas: those of the new age movement, by elements promoting mindfulness and well-being, and the eco-bandwagon (bradley 2018: 3–26). in order to uncover authentic aspects of celtic spirituality it is necessary to “look through” these distortions, by focusing on the original texts (see bradley 2018: 25–39) and attempting to minimize the medieval hagiographic and later embellishments. thus, this study has focused on three celtic saints: st columbanus for whom there are a number of documents written in his own hand, as well as a life penned by the bobbio monk jonas, one or two years after his death (munro 1993); st columba whose poems and a rule survived, but most of what we know about him comes from the life of st columba by adomnán, the ninth abbot of iona (sharpe 1995), using material compiled shortly after columba’s death; st aidan whose only source is the venerable bede in his classic ecclesiastical history of the english people, published in 731 (mcclure and collins 1994). this study also seeks to see beyond the counter-cultural aspects of the celtic christianity itself: the over-emphasis on martyrdom, their sometimes harsh asceticism and their penchant for penance. although these aspects undoubtedly helped shape celtic spirituality, they were largely a product of their times. 58 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19793 58 the more helpful spiritual attributes of the celtic peregrini fall into two broad groups: those which were more distinctively celtic, and practices held in common with other monastic movements. 2.1 spiritual attributes of the celtic peregrini 2.1.1 sacramental universe and the presence of god distinctive to the celtic peregrini was an intense sense of god’s omnipresence. for the celts, humankind lives in a sacramental universe. according to arthur allchin, the celts believed, “the world is the place of god’s presence … without him there is no world” (allchin 1997: 11). the celtic peregrini saw god as incarnate in the world: god ever-present amongst them: god sustaining and caring for his creation (bradley 2018: 90–4). as bishop tírechán put it, in his collectanea, in c.690: god is above the heavens; and he is in the heavens; and he is beneath the heavens … he inspires all things, he gives life to all things, he stands above all things, and he stands beneath all things. (bieler 1979: 122–67) the celts saw creation as a sacrament, “a mechanism of imparting the divine grace of god” (o’loughlin 2000: 46–7). the beauty and order of creation to the celt was an invitation to “a pilgrimage of discovering the love that god has implanted in creation, and which beckons us beyond it”, each flower and each creature being “the music of many tiny whispering instruments woven into the harmony of a divine orchestra”, each element with its part to play, all treasured and all valued (o’loughlin 2000: 152–3). although we are sometimes aware of the presence of god in our contemporary world, the main difference was the intensity of belief shown by the celtic peregrini. perhaps in recapturing some of this intensity today, a renewed sense of the presence of god will bring increased accountability towards our neighbour, and a greater sense of ownership of our fragile planet? 2.1.2 risky living – peregrinatio the celtic peregrini took this invitation of pilgrimage to discover god’s love, very seriously. more than pilgrimage, they left their homes, totally abandoning their kith and kin, with no intention of returning, seeking their “places of resurrection” – their eternal resting places (lehane 2005: 111). following god’s call, they pushed off in their coracles into the unknown. on the eve of his epic – perhaps allegorical – voyage from ireland into the atlantic ocean as a celtic peregrinus, st brendan the navigator questioned: 59 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19793 59 shall i abandon, o king of mysteries, the soft comforts of home? shall i turn my back on my native land, and my face towards the sea? shall i put myself wholly at the mercy of god, without silver, without a horse, without fame and honour? shall i throw myself wholly on the king of kings, without sword and shield, without food and drink, without bed to lie on? shall i say farewell to my beautiful land, placing myself under christ’s yoke? shall i pour out my heart to him, confessing my manifold sins and begging forgiveness, tears streaming down my cheeks? shall i leave the prints of my knees on the sandy beach, a record of my final prayer in my native land? shall i then suffer every kind of wound that the sea can inflict? shall i take my tiny coracle across the wide, sparkling ocean? o king of the glorious heaven, shall i go of my own choice upon the sea? o christ, will you help me on the wild waves? (navigatio sancti brendani, trans. van de weyer 1990: 57–8) the celts believed that this call to risky living entailed both a physical and an internal journey. the inner spiritual path also requiring us to leave the familiar and comfortable behind as they followed god’s call: the path i walk, christ walks it. may the land in which i am be without sorrow. may the trinity protect me wherever i stay, father, son and holy spirit … may every path before me be smooth, man, woman and child welcome me. a truly good journey! well does the fair lord show us a course, a path. (attributed to st columba, translation in davies and bowie 1995: 37–8) 2.1.3 seasonal formation one of the most remarkable features of celtic christianity, often understated, was the seismic cultural shift in the early sixth century, from the entirely oral celtic tradition to a culture that embraced the written word and classical learning (graham 2020: 15–29). focusing on ireland, “not only was latin brought to a land that had never been occupied by the romans, but also greek and classic scholarship” (meyer, 1913, p1). according to john healy: the monastic schools of ireland had their roots in the life and works of john cassian who set-up the first monastic schools in europe [at lérins and marseille] between the years 415 and 420. (healy 1912: 190) 60 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19793 60 perhaps the most successful celtic monastic school of the period was located at clonard on the banks of the boyne, on the busy boundary road between leinster and meath. it was here that st finnian of clonard, nicknamed the “tutor of the saints of erin”, trained the “twelve apostles of ireland” including st columba and st brendan: “before three thousand scholars he, their humble master, meekly stood; his mind a mighty stream that poured for all, its fertilising flood” (healy 1912: 204). it was at these great monastic schools that the celtic peregrini undertook their spiritual seasonal formation before dispersing on their missional journeys of evangelism (hale 1976: 177). 2.1.4 ebb and flow following the example of jesus (mk. 1.12-13; mk. 6.46), the celtic peregrini retreated regularly during their ministry, mirroring the metronomic rhythm of the seasons, and the ebb and flow of the tides – to find silence and solitude – a quiet place to pray. as st columba taught, they linked “sacrament with service, altar with hearth, and worship with work” (simpson 2004: 82). st columbanus frequently retired to a secluded cave in the densely forested vosges mountains (munro 1993: 30; lack 2000: 64–7). st aidan, and later st cuthbert, retreated to the remote farne islands, south of lindisfarne (mcclure and collins 1994: 135), seeking solitude to be alone and refreshed by god, “before launching back to preach, or to organise”. escape for silence and solitude were regular parts of the celtic peregrini ’s spiritual diet, to enable them to repeatedly breathe in god’s holy spirit of power through prayer and contemplation, before breathing out god’s love in evangelism, hospitality and service (freeman and greig 2007: 97–8). 2.1.5 boundaries – vallum celtic monastic centres were traditionally surrounded by a ditch or vallum, designed practically, to keep wild animals out and domestic animals in, but spiritually, to delineate the boundaries of a sacred space (dunn 2003: 177). the columban tradition saw the vallum as enclosing “places of spiritual experience – glimpses of paradise on earth” (walker 1957: 144–7). places where the values of the kingdom of heaven were daily reinforced; places of sanctuary for those fleeing from violence and aggression; places of earthly community but with “radically other-worldly values” (bradley 2000: 18–19). as philip sheldrake put it, the vallum surrounded the celtic monastery where “the privileges of adam and eve in the garden of eden, received from god but lost in the fall, were reclaimed” (sheldrake 1995: 39). 61 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19793 61 2.2 common monastic spiritual practices 2.2.1 frameworks – daily rhythms of prayer and scripture to constantly remind themselves of their heavenly orientation and of the ways of god, maintaining a daily framework of regular prayer and scriptural reading was vitally important (stokes 2007 (1877): 123). a life of simplicity and self-control (mcclure and collins 1994: 116–18), with balance and rhythm in life and worship, were central – “leaving room for both awe and intimacy, silence and celebration, relevance and transcendence, order and spontaneity” (bradley 2000: 152). mirroring the desert tradition before them, the majority of monastics, including the celts, used psalmody as the bedrock of their daily devotion (bradley 2000: 138). alongside daily worship, the celtic peregrini learnt the psalms as well as the gospels by heart (mcclure and collins 1994: 117), with constant recital of the “three fifties” (bradley 2021: 74), as they journeyed in their persistent endeavour to “pray without ceasing” (1 thess. 5.17). worship and prayer were balanced with the discipline of hard manual labour and sacred reading. long before the printing press, the celts developed scriptoria, becoming renowned for their knowledge of latin and the creation of the great illuminated manuscripts such as the book of kells and priceless renditions of the vulgate bible ( james 1996: 70; herbert 1996). 2.2.2 scaffolding – shared values, vows and rules of life the celtic peregrini were bound by shared values, life-long vows and rules of life – important scaffolding of monastic cohesion and unity (bradley 2000: 54). for the first ten to twenty years of their lives, the celtic saints lived in static cenobitic settings, studying under obedience in a balanced rhythm of sustainable prayer, observing their rule and obeying their abbot. but some, following their call to peregrinatio, ventured forth into the unknown, seeking to maintain this same rhythm and scaffolding of vow and rule, as they sought to walk more deeply with god. despite their journeying, they were continually drawn back to their interior space of prayer and sanctuary. 3 new monastic expressions in great britain today, ordinary people are seeking more holistic expressions of culture and spirituality outside established church structures, is well documented (heelas and woodhead 2005). the prevailing “institutional church” has largely been side-lined – viewed as “a bureaucratic, outdated culture” (simpson 2004: 37–41). in the typical pithy summary of dr george macleod, “the trouble with the church these days is that no one any longer thinks it’s worth persecuting” (shanks 1999: 31). yet interest in spirituality is on the increase, with contemporary spiritual searchers 62 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19793 62 looking for anchors outside today’s church and moving towards new expressions of spirituality. the great lutheran pastor dietrich bonhoeffer predicted such interest in a letter to his brother karl-friedrich bonhoeffer in 1935: the restoration of the church will surely come from a sort of new monasticism which has in common with the old only the uncompromising attitude of a life lived according to the sermon on the mount (mt. 5–7) in the following of christ. i believe it is now time to call people to this. (kelly and burton-nelson 1995: 424) as scottish, celtic academic ian bradley comments: how do we begin to keep in time with the deep pulsations of eternity and establish “colonies of heaven” in a society that is profoundly earthborn, materialistic and secular? one way is by establishing communities which embrace many of the disciplines of monasticism…a spirituality found in the celtic and anglo-saxon monasteries. (bradley 2000: 44–5) a number of these new monastic-oriented experiments claiming to be celtic have emerged, but how true are they to the spirituality of the early celts? 3.1 the iona community the small rocky island of iona in the scottish hebrides – described by george macleod as a “thin place” – is the spiritual home of the iona community (ferguson 1998). from the first christian community established on iona by the irish peregrinus st columba in 563, the island has been a spiritual magnet (marshall 2014: 27). yet according to norman shanks, the iona community was not explicitly initiated to reflect “the patterns and priorities of the celtic church” (shanks 1999: 150). the iona cathedral trust, set up by george campbell, eighth duke of argyll, in 1899, had a choice to make in 1935. against a fully-funded offer to restore the iona abbey ruins and establish a celtic college – from a group of highland emigrants of the american iona society – the trust chose the initially unfunded, local option proposed by glasgow church of scotland presbyterian minister dr george macleod (marshall 2014: 135–43). macleod’s vision was to restore the abbey ruins as “a retreat centre for worship, meditation, study, and instruction”, by conducting a social experiment of combining equal numbers of unemployed working-class tradesmen with young largely middle-class church of scotland ministers and ordinands (marshall 2014: 140). macleod’s proposal won the day because of his distinguished scottish military and aristocratic lineage, and because the experiment was essentially a repeat of what macleod had already achieved a few years earlier in a similar social endeavour at fingleton mill, near glasgow (ferguson 1998: 50–2). thus, the iona community, 63 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19793 63 founded by macleod, commenced rebuilding activities in 1938 and largely completed the abbey restoration by 1967 (shanks 1999: 44; morton 1977; muir 2011). macleod, an ex-world war i war-hero turned pacifist, ran an autocratic, quasi-military all male group on iona, but had remarkable success in returning more experienced and empathetic church of scotland ministers to rejuvenate the slums of glasgow and the church in scotland more broadly. with the abbey restored and his elevation to the peerage in 1967, the very revd lord macleod of fuinary stepped down from his leadership role of the community (ferguson 1998: 100). some saw macleod as a latter-day reincarnation of st columba; each was am aristocratic individual with connections to royalty; each had commanding charisma and was hugely autocratic; both personalities combined stubborn pride with deep humility and an almost childlike simplicity and enthusiasm; and both were hugely successful in their undertakings (bradley 2000: 45–6). unlike the celtic peregrinus in st columba, mac leod’s motives were almost entirely aimed at social justice and the advancement of the presbyterian church of scotland (shanks 1999: 154–77). some critics, perhaps rather unfairly, referred to macleod’s achievement as “i own a community”, instead of as founder of the community (ferguson 1998: 63). under the new leadership of ian reid, the iona community rapidly became ecumenical and more diverse (marshall 2014: 162). the first female community member, dr nancy brash, was accepted in 1969, and the first roman catholic in 1976 (ferguson 1998: 112, 117). with the community’s main centre in glasgow and a further youth camp at camas on the isle of mull, the key spiritual focus remains iona abbey, with a small transient core of devotees, committing to a true celtic-style rhythm of daily scriptural reading and prayer (shanks 1999: 66–70). as the community expanded and the majority of adherents dispersed, the need for statements of common values and shared beliefs became acute (galloway 2010: 19–21). rather than follow the format of their celtic forebears, a new five-principled community rule of life was developed. to the vows of a regular practice of devotion and meetings, were added accountability for time and money, and later, social and political advocacy, environmental justice and peace (galloway 2010: 18–19; marshall 2014: 162–3). the community’s focus on the incarnation and the presence of god in the world is captured in macleod’s view of the birth of jesus christ as “an inherent explosion [of god] into matter, setting up a chain reaction of igniting love”. the importance of the incarnation to the community is reflected in the dramatic statue positioned at the centre of the iona abbey cloister, the descent of the spirit by jacob lipchitz, compatible with celtic belief – christ born with energy and mystery (shanks 1999: 2–3). 64 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19793 64 rather than fully embodying celtic christianity, the present-day iona community, with its distinctly inclusive and liberal theology (bradley 2000: 51), is regarded more as a social justice movement, in keeping with its slogan: “spirituality is where prayer and politics meet” (shanks 1999: 154; ferguson 1998: 183). the typical iona community member has a strong sense of advocacy and justice, with “a placard in every corner” in readiness to join demonstrations for world peace, social justice, and to demand action on climate change (shanks 1999: 156). 3.2 the community of aidan and hilda the community of aidan and hilda began as an attempt at a holistic renewal of the religious life of the church, combining god-given strands of christianity to heal the land and renew the earth. as new monastics they aimed “to stay close to the divine inner compass while navigating the flux of modern life” based on the monastic principles of simplicity, purity and obedience, elaborated in the beatitudes (mt. 5). the movement is charismatic, with its emphasis on spirituality and mission, focusing on how the characteristically celtic themes of monastic discipline and soul friendship can be applied to enrich the life and mission of the contemporary church (bradley 2000: 51–2). the focus is ecumenical, and like the celtic peregrini, they espouse a regular rhythm of prayer and study: a simple lifestyle, concern for creation-care, mission and justice, and seeking “to weave together the separate strands of christianity to bring healing to fragmented people, communities and lands”. the community seeks to “research the first celtic mission”, combining the depth of the ancient monastic traditions of the desert fathers and mothers and the celts with today’s culture (simpson 2009a: 25). the aim is to restore the memory and experience of this past, with a view to resourcing its members and churches with new “celtic” worship materials, and to conduct study programmes and retreats. the target of their worship is “to bridge the gap between formal church liturgies and creationist practices inspired by nature … to rediscover our christian roots” in a worship-style that reflects the “rhythm of creation” and the “flow of human life” (simpson 2004: 30–3). from its launch by six individuals, including ray simpson, russ parker and michael mitton in 1994, a small community group has followed a regular rhythm of morning and evening prayer at retreat centres on lindisfarne (simpson 2014: 45-8). the community’s rule – the “way of life” – contains “three life-giving principles” and “ten elements of the way” – the waymarks – all broadly compatible with the spiritual principles of the celtic peregrini (simpson 2014: 19–27; simpson 2009b). the ten waymarks are based on the broad monastic principles of poverty, chastity and obedience, to which they add lifelong learning, particularly focused on the celtic traditions; following a spiritual journey with a soul friend; a rhythm of prayer, work and rest; spiritual protection; simplicity of lifestyle; creation care; healing ministry; openness to god’s spirit; unity and community; and mission (bradley 2000: 51). the 65 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19793 65 importance of a soul friend to the community has a strong biblical endorsement (ecclesiasticus 6.14-17; prov. 18.24), inherited from the desert tradition (ramfos 2000: 215–17), is a prominent celtic theme (mcclure and collins 1994: 211; duke 1932: 130) and is one of the more popular practices in the current revival of enthusiasm for celtic christianity (bradley 2000: 108–10; simpson 1999; sellner 2002). 3.3 the northumbria community the northumbria community’s spirituality is predominantly contemplative, focusing on the inner life, silently listening for god’s call to action – and is therefore the closest modern expression of authentic celtic christianity. the community emerged from an exploration of a new inner monasticism of the heart, drawing on ancient monastic forms. its roots lie in the history and heritage of celtic northumbria, the saints and scholars of ireland and the wisdom tradition of the desert fathers and mothers, all played out in the context of daily life. the community does not call itself “celtic”, mainly because, in their view, the word “celtic” has become “so misunderstood, misrepresented and misused by popularism”, as trevor miller, a former leader of the northumbria community put it – the community is not a “trendy fad”, nor does it sign up to the “disneyland celtic spirituality” that “romanticises the saints with ridiculous nostalgia” (miller, n.d.). following the celtic peregrini as they wandered and wondered for the love of christ, the community originated with a call to “risky living” (miller 2004: 15), a commitment “to be willing to walk in the paradox of life’s uncertainties,” not knowing where this journey may lead. the specific call was to live three questions: “how then shall we live?” (ezek. 33.10b), “who is it that we seek?” ( jn 18.7), and “how shall we sing the lord’s song in a foreign land?” (ps. 137.4; miller 2003: 3–4). praying through these three questions led to the development of the northumbria community’s rule of life, focusing on availability and vulnerability, providing “an external spiritual scaffolding for an interior journey, both as ‘sign posts’ and as ‘banister railings,’ both marker and guideline on our way to god” (miller 2004: 6–7). the rule emphasizes being available to god, to each other and to mission, whilst remaining vulnerable to being taught; accountable; to asking the hard questions; making relationships the priority; and living in “a church without walls” (lings 2006: 21). the concepts of availability, being available to follow god’s call, and vulnerability to risky exposure, were very much components of the celtic peregrini’s call in their search for god. following the natural rhythm of the ebb and flood tides on the island of lindisfarne, the community are happy both “when the tide is in and when the tide is out” (miller, n.d.), either “at home in the cell” on the inner journey of seeking god in the heart, or “abroad in the coracle” in their availability to others by serving god through mission and evangelism. the community is best known for its prayer book, now a double tome of daily devotion and worship liturgy, based mainly on the celtic tradition (northumbria community 2015a&b). 66 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19793 66 3.4 24-7 prayer and boiler rooms regarding the more recent “24-7 prayer”, “boiler room” and order of the mustard seed movements, although claiming to be “inspired by the ancient celtic christian communities that combined prayer and mission” and in “looking to the celtic saints for ideas and a framework for doing mission and ministry in our time” (freeman and greig 2007: 16–18; greig and roberts 2015; greig 2004; anderson 2020), they are essentially monastic and not overtly celtic. they certainly include the monastic principles of a framework of daily prayer and scriptural reading and have developed their own scaffolding of shared values and vows. they also embrace the ebb and flow of ministry, ensuring focused times of prayer interspersed with the upward and outward practices of creativity, hospitality, learning, mission and justice. 4 conclusions the enormous challenge for the dispersed expressions of the modern new monastics is how to maintain and enhance spiritual discipline amongst the many distractions of today’s world. over history, most forms of monasticism have evolved from solitary eremitic and semi-eremitic forms, towards communities of enclosed cenobitic monks and nuns – for good reason. if the dispersed new monastic experiments are to be sustainable, they would do well not only to embrace the more usual monastic practices, but also to adopt some of the distinctive spiritual tools of the celtic peregrini. set against the defined spiritual attributes of the celtic peregrini, the four most “celtic-like” movements – the iona community, the community of aidan and hilda, the northumbria community and 24-7 prayer – show variable take-up. all four have sensibly minimized the “dated” attributes of celtic spirituality (martyrdom, asceticism and penance) and emphasized the more positive aspects. although all four communities recognize the importance of the presence of god in their devotion and worship, it is the contemplative northumbria community which is more closely aligned to the celtic monastic way. the concern for creation-care in both the community of aidan and hilda and the iona community has its roots in the celtic view of creation as a forebear of the glory of god to come. however, all new monastic forms would benefit from the increased intensity of the celtic expression, their emphasis on god’s daily blessings in ordinary life, as well as their strong belief in the sacramental universe. the recognition of god within all aspects of creation today will no doubt bring much needed enhanced accountability for the global environment. 67 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19793 67 the risky living of the celtic peregrini is best captured by the northumbria community’s rule of availability and vulnerability, implying a readiness to spring forth into travel and action in response to god’s call. the move to mission and lifelong adventure and discovery in god has been adopted by the iona community, as evidenced by their commitment to go overseas to address the poverty gap in the developing world; for example, the inequality of wealth and lifestyle between africa and the west, with their concern and mission in malawi (then nyasaland) in the 1950s and 1960s (ferguson 1998: 83–6). as followers of the son of man we, like the celtic saints, should hold a strengthening compassion for our neighbour, as we journey as “strangers” through this world (lk. 9.58). the seasonal formation of regular, extended periods of spiritual formation and learning are implied by most new monastic forms, often expressed in the need for continual lifelong learning and openness to listen for god’s call. the need for ebb and flow, balancing silence and solitude with activity, is promoted particularly by the northumbria community and the 24-7 prayer movement. yet, finding time for silence and solitude is becoming increasingly difficult in our impatient, digital world. we should follow the example of jesus in his constant search for quiet places to be with his father (mt. 6.6), to recharge our spiritual batteries. the tendency in new monasticism towards minimizing boundaries provides a challenge for maintaining regular spiritual discipline in an increasingly contrarian world. following more general monastic practices, the importance of regular, personal and corporate frameworks of daily prayer and scriptural reading are enthusiastically emphasized by all, with most publishing extensive liturgies both in the use of words and (particularly from the iona community) in song, poetry and creativity. although the scaffolding of shared beliefs, vows and rules of life are still considered important today, for the dispersed new monastic expressions, the trend is towards loosening these formalities, with less demanding rules and a drift away from lifelong commitments, towards annual reassurances and accountability. and yet, god sees our motives and blesses our intentions, suggesting that deep inner commitment is necessary. the importance of soul friendship – the celtic practice of aram cara (o’donohue 1997: 35) – as emphasized by the community of aidan and hilda, is closely aligned with the increasing popular practice of spiritual direction, or spiritual accompaniment – another effective way of encouraging spiritual discipline. 68 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19793 68 for the contemporary expressions of new monasticism to regain the genuine intensity of the celtic saints and peregrini, perhaps increased focus is needed on the original spiritual attributes of our forebears, the celtic christians. about the author the author presents these findings from a dissertation submitted to complete an ma in christian spirituality at sarum college, salisbury – accredited by the university of winchester. the thesis was entitled: “critically assess the impact of the spirituality of the celtic peregrini on expressions of contemporary christian practice” and was submitted in december 2022, by peter ruxton. contact: peter.ruxton@gmail.com references allchin, a. m. 1997. god’s presence makes the world: the celtic vision through the centuries in wales. london: darton, longman & todd. anderson, phil. 2020. the lord of the ring: a journey in search of count zinzendorf. edinburgh: muddy pearl. bieler, l. (ed. and trans.). 1979. the patrician documents in the book of armagh. dublin: dublin institute for advanced studies. bradley, ian. 2000. colonies of heaven: celtic models for today’s church. london: darton, longman & todd. ———. 2018. following the celtic way: a new assessment of celtic christianity. london: darton, longman & todd. ———. 2021. columba: politician, penitent, and pilgrim. glaasgow: wild goose publications. davies, oliver, and fiona bowie. 1995. celtic christian spirituality: an anthology of medieval and modern sources. london: spck. duke, john a. 1932. the columban church. oxford: oxford university press. dunn, marilyn. 2003. the emergence of monasticism: from the desert fathers to the early middle ages. oxford: blackwell. ferguson, ronald. 1998. chasing the wild goose: the story of the iona community. glasgow: wild goose publications. finney, john. 1996. recovering the past: celtic and roman mission. london: darton, longman & todd. freeman, andy, and pete greig. 2007. punk monk: new monasticism and the ancient art of breathing. ventura, ca: regal books. galloway, kathy. 2010. living by the rule: the rule of the iona community. glasgow: wild goose publications. gougaud, louis. 1992. christianity in celtic lands: a history of the churches of the celts, their origin, their development, influence and mutual relations. dublin: four courts press. graham, hugh. 2020. the early irish monastic schools: a study of ireland’s contribution to medieval culture. minnville, tn: st clair publications. greig, pete. 2004. the vision and the vow: re-discovering life and grace. eastbourne: relevant books. 69 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19793 69 greig, pete, and dave roberts. 2015. red moon rising: rediscovering the power of prayer – the story of 24-7 prayer. colorado springs: david c. cook. hale, reginald b. 1976. the magnificent gael: st columba. brandon, manitoba: world media productions. healy, john. 1912. ireland’s ancient monastic schools: insula sanctorum et doctrum. london: burns & oates. heelas, paul, and linda woodhead. 2005. the spiritual revolution: why religion is giving way to spirituality. oxford: blackwell publishing: oxford. herbert, maire. 1996. iona, kells and derry: the history and hagiography of the monastic familia of columba. dublin: four courts press. hughes, kathleen. 1981. “the celtic church: is this a valid concept?”, cambridge medieval celtic studies, 1: 1–20. james, chalwyn. 1996. an age of saints: its relevance for us today felinfach: llanerch publishers. kelly, geffrey b., and f. burton-nelson (eds.). 1995. a testament to freedom: the essential writings of dietrich bonhoeffer. (new york: harperone). lack, katherine. 2000. the eagle and the dove: the spirituality of celtic saint columbanus. london: spck. lehane, brendan. 2005. early celtic christianity. london: continuum. lings, george. 2006. northumbria community: matching monastery and mission. sheffield: church army. marshall, rosalind k. 2014. columba’s iona: a new history. dingwall: sandstone press. mcclure, judith, and roger collins (eds.). 1994. bede: the ecclesiastical history of the english people: the greater chronicle: bede’s letter to egbert. oxford: oxford university press. meyer, kuno. 1913. learning in ireland in the fifth century and a transmission of letters: a lecture delivered before the school of irish learning in dublin on september 18th, 1912. dublin: cornell university library (digital collections). miller, trevor. n.d. “celtic spirituality – a beginner’s guide”, https://www.northumbriacommunity.org/articles/celtic-spirituality-a-beginners-guide/ (accessed 7 nov. 2022). miller, trevor (ed.). 2003. the heretical imperative. felton, northumberland: northumbria community. ———. 2004. a way of living: introducing the rule of the northumbria community. felton, northumberland: northumbria community. morton, ralph t. 1977. the iona community: personal impressions of the early years. edinburgh: saint andrew press. muir, anne. 2011. outside the safe place: an oral history of the early years of the iona community. glasgow: wild goose publications. munro, dana c. (ed.). 1993. life of st columban: by the monk jonas. felinfach: llanerch publishers. northumbria community. 2015a. celtic daily prayer: book one – the journey begins. london: william collins. ———. 2015b. celtic daily prayer: book two – further up and farther in. london: william collins. o’donohue, john. 1997. anam cara: spiritual wisdom from the celtic world. london: bantam books. o’loughlin, thomas. 2000. journeys on the edges: the celtic tradition. london: darton, longman & todd. ramfos, stelios. 2000. like a pelican in the wilderness: reflections on the sayings of the desert fathers. brookline, ma: holy cross orthodox press. 70 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19793 70 sellner, edward c. 2002. the celtic soul friend: a trusted guide for today. notre dame, il: ave maria press. ———. 2006. wisdom of the celtic saints. st paul, ms: bog walk press. shanks, norman. 1999. iona – god’s energy: the spirituality and vision of the iona community. london: hodder & stoughton. sharpe, richard (trans.). 1995. life of st columba: by adomnan of iona. london: penguin. sheldrake, philip. 1995. living between worlds: place and journey in celtic spirituality. london: darton, longman & todd. simms-williams, p. 1998. “celtomania and celtoscepticism”, cambridge medieval celtic studies, 36: 1–35. simpson, ray. 1999. soul friendship: celtic insights into spiritual mentoring. london: hodder & stoughton. ———. 2004. exploring celtic spirituality. stowmarket, suffolk: kevin mayhew. ———. 2009a. high street monasteries: fresh expressions of committed christianity. stowmarket, suffolk: kevin mayhew. ———. 2009b. waymarks for the journey: daily prayer to change our world. stowmarket: kevin mayhew. ———. 2014. new celtic monasticism for everyday people. stowmarket: kevin mayhew. stokes, whitley (trans.). 2007. “bertha choluim chille: on the life of saint columba.” in whitley stokes (ed.), three middle-irish homilies on the lives of saints patrick, brigit and columba (1877). calcutta: kessinger’s rare reprints. van de weyer, robert (ed.). 1990. celtic fire: the passionate religious vision of ancient britain and ireland. new york: doubleday. walker, g. s. m. (ed. & trans.). 1957. sancti columbani opera. dublin: dublin institute of advanced studies. websites 24-7 prayer: https://www.24-7prayer.com/ community of aidan and hilda: https://www.aidanandhilda.org.uk/ iona community: https://iona.org.uk/ northumbria community: https://www.northumbriacommunity.org/ https://www.24-7prayer.com/ https://www.aidanandhilda.org.uk/ https://iona.org.uk/ https://www.northumbriacommunity.org/ ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 2 98 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20160 b o o k r e v i e w doi: 10.54195/ef20160 cray, graham. 2024. on mission with jesus: changing the default setting of the church norwich: canterbury press isbn: 978-1-78622-541-2 reviewed by michael herbst what is the context of this book? twenty years ago, the church of england published a report entitled mission-shaped church: church planting and fresh expressions of church in a changing context (london: church house publishing, 2004). unlike many other church reports, this document received significant response. by 2024 some 21,000 copies had been sold, and the reception of the missional theological theses continues to this day – not only in england, but also in mainland europe. in essence, the report was about understanding and appropriating the missional mandate of the church anew in the face of major social changes (and thus the decline in church life), admittedly not primarily in order to stabilize the church. no “church-shaped mission” was propagated, in which one would immediately sense the church’s own interests. rather, the church is depicted as an instrument of divine mission, sent to the people so that as many people as possible can share in the gospel. the report’s central suggestion as to how this should be achieved seems almost counter-intuitive: even in the decline of church life, we do not need fewer churches, but more churches, above all new churches, admittedly not copies of the existing local churches, but missionally vital churches that are deeply contextualized in the diverse social environments. not one specific type, but many different types of church: for young people, in cafés, in socially deprived areas, at schools, in companies, for target groups that have been difficult to reach, not least for families who want to explore the christian faith together. these “fresh expressions of church” should not only be tolerated, but encouraged and supported. the working group responsible for the report was chaired by graham cray, then bishop of maidstone, and later the “archbishop’s missioner and team leader of fresh expressions” (2009 to 2014), i.e. the holder of a high-ranking staff position 99 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20160 99 that accompanied and promoted these new forms of christian church formation in england. now, 20 years after mission-shaped church, the retired anglican theologian has published a theological foundation for the report. this book is not a practical-theological study of old and new forms of church, but a very fundamental attempt to gain a basis for a missional self-understanding of the christian church from the bible. his starting point is sober: he begins by attesting to a kind of ecclesial arthritis in his church, a lack of flexibility in the face of the missional challenges it has been facing for some time (12). its “operating system” is geared towards self-preservation and not mission. in contrast, cray wants to remind the church of its fundamental purpose of being an instrument of the missio dei. he recalls the fundamental convictions of missio dei – which has now become the mainstream of mission theology – albeit in such a way that he attests that the church has at best understood in theory that god is a missional god who involves the church in his work for the healing and renewal of the world and humanity (35). this critical analysis is followed by one of the core theses of the book: at the centre of the missional challenge is the task of calling people to follow christ and to encourage them to live as disciples in lifelong fellowship with christ or to practise it with them. discipleship is always lived in community with others and leads the individual directly into participation in mission. this explains the title that graham cray gave his book: on mission with jesus. so far, however, the topic of “discipleship” (53, with a bonmot from dallas willard) has been the great “omission” with regard to jesus’ “commission”. this is fatal, because mission can be summed up as follows: “mission is replicated discipleship” (56). the following chapters are biblical reflections on mission: using the acts of the apostles, for example, cray shows how christ drives his mission forward through the holy spirit, and how he repeatedly surprises, challenges and sends the emerging christian community beyond previously existing boundaries. it is particularly impressive how he retells the story of the conversion of cornelius (acts 10) and portrays the holy spirit as the driving force behind this crossing of the boundaries of the gospel, which was surprising for all sides. it is important to him that for the first christians, the christologically interpreted scriptures contextualized by the holy spirit (79) play a central role. this thought is stressed in the entire book: if the church wants to follow the spirit of god and recognize and discern his actions and guidance (i.e. practise “discernment”), then it needs to engage intensively with the bible again and again. this is how the church takes shape: “mission-shaped”. here, the author uses 1 corinthians 9 (among others) to demonstrate what this means for the church to establish 100 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20160 100 itself in changing contexts and becoming accessible. for this place, the church must then follow jesus anew and “incarnate” itself. such incarnation is not simply adaptation, it also includes the call to repentance. and jesus is “the given”; the church cannot let go of this. in everything else, however, it must die like the grain of wheat in john 12 in order to bear fruit. this also means renouncing one’s own traditions and preferences in order to help people in this given place to grasp and embrace the gospel. this fifth chapter in particular breathes the spirit of the anglican movement of “fresh expressions of church”. such “incarnated” churches could be a foretaste – no more and no less – of the kingdom of god. graham cray then takes up another biblical track by illuminating the minority status of the christian community biblically – similar to stefan paas in pilgrims and priests (2019) – primarily through references to the epistle to the hebrews and 1  peter. perhaps christians today hear this with a deeper understanding: although the church of jesus is a foretaste of the kingdom of god, it is often a minority and suffers opposition. christians are pilgrims, “resident aliens” in a world alienated from god. a nice punchline is cray’s reference to christians being paroikoi, resident aliens, in 1 peter. this is quite far removed from our understanding of parochia (153). however, being foreign and resistant should not lead to withdrawal from the world. with the terms “subversive engagement” and “involved distinctiveness”, cray shows the tension under which congregations stand as minorities, as the pilgrim people of god: committed to the common good, but characterized by strikingly different values and attitudes. towards the end, cray asks how the church can succeed in making jesus “visible” in its environment and not making him “disappear” (166–7). to this end, christians must embark on a journey towards more “christlikeness”. according to romans 8.29, this is our direction in life: to be transformed into the image of christ. in this way, the bishop can once again get to the heart of his intention. he has repeatedly emphasized worship and mission as the two fixed points for the congregation formed from disciples who are “on mission” with jesus. now, towards the end, he makes it clear once again: “my purpose is not to demean worship compared to mission, but to relocate our primary instincts about the church from meetings (for whatever purpose) to a movement in mission” (173). and this movement will produce diverse church forms that are highly contextualized and yet share one goal: that people become disciples (179–83). each of these churches combines a high degree of resilience (with deep roots in christ) with an equally high degree of flexibility or agility when contexts change and the mode of how the church is on a missional journey with jesus has to change again. 101 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20160 101 thus cray’s reflections culminate in a practical-theological conclusion, which also explains the specific, biblical retelling style of this book: “so if the missionary spirit is both the illuminator of scripture and the leader of the local mission, then the attentive reading of scripture, as a corporate discipline, is vital for the local church’s participation in that mission” (191). this is then essentially part of listening, with which the specific missional approach of the “fresh expressions of church” always begins (and which is its inner centre throughout): listening (to god and the context), serving, building community, inviting people to follow jesus, developing a form of church appropriate for that place – and starting again from the beginning (195–6). certain “habits” will then characterize the disciples on mission with jesus: they will be good news bearers, boundary breakers, grateful guests and generous hosts, cross bearers, disciple makers and jesus dwellers (199–204). the church that will emerge will be defined by its centre and not by its boundaries (210, following paul hiebert: a “centered set” and not a “bounded set”), because the movement of the disciples towards the centre, towards christ, is its essential characteristic – and the church “on mission with jesus” invites everyone to this movement. in the long series of books on mission and the church, graham cray’s well readable volume does not stand out for its original new insights into church development. nor does it offer readers an academic debate with many pros and cons (and lots of footnotes). instead, the anglican bishop once again presents a plea worth reading for a self-critical examination of the church’s and congregations’ own operating system and a missional readjustment. and reading the chapters slowly and being exposed to the biblical narratives about the cross-border mission of jesus, this rereading can transfer the dynamics of the missio dei anew into the reader’s own operating system. about the reviewer michael herbst, professor for practical theology (university of greifswald), writer, researcher on evangelism and church development. contact: herbst@uni-greifs wald.de mailto:herbst@uni-greifswald.de ecclesial futures 2025 – volume 6 – issue 1 6 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22222 c o n f e r e n c e r e p o r t doi: 10.54195/ef22222 christian empowerment, secularity and church development michael herbst and patrick todjeras 1 introduction the annual international meeting of the international consultation on ecclesial futures (icef) took place this year at the martin luther university halle-wittenberg in halle/saale (germany) with the title “christian empowerment, secularity and church development” on 10–14 june 2024. the host institution was the recently founded centre for empowerment studies (ces).1 the aim of the annual meetings is to exchange research findings, promote critical dialogue and develop and discuss suggestions for missional, sustainable and context-sensitive church development. the guiding questions of the icef are: what are the specific conditions of our own context? how does god’s mission manifest itself in our environment? where do we discover traces of the work of the holy spirit and how does church life develop in our contexts? what theological questions arise from this and need to be reflected upon in greater depth? what can we learn from each other? what can be empirically ascertained and how can it be interpreted theologically? the topics of the conference centred in particular on secularity and empowerment. the east german context and the development of a missional church were the specific local resonance space for this. the term “empowerment” was intended to enrich the question of the future of the churches through critical reflection.2 1 key questions of the ces include: how can the communication of the gospel succeed under the current conditions of secularity? how can people experience the gospel as enabling and empowering for their lives? the ces conducts research with different focal points on christian empowerment in religious education and practical theological contexts. https://ces-halle.de/forschung/ (22 november 2024). 2 on the ces homepage, empowerment is understood as aiming to “provide life support that enables people to trust their own strengths and shape their lives independently. this requires certain skills and competences on the one hand and strength, power and courage on the other. anyone who addresses empowerment looks at both the resources of the individual, i.e. the personal space of opportunity, and the resources that are available for this, i.e. the structural space of opportunity. ultimately, the aim is to explore in more detail how, from a christian perspective, the possibilities can be expanded so that people can live their lives in a self-determined way.” https://ces-halle.de/forschung/ (22 november 2024). https://ces-halle.de/forschung/ https://ces-halle.de/forschung/ 7 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22222 7 didactically, there were lectures and discussions, spiritual impulses, field trips and visits to church plantings and missional and innovative communities and congregations in the local context (evangelical church of central germany, evangelical lutheran church of saxony, halle free church). the public day, this time at the halle-wittenberg faculty of theology, addressed local and national theological issues in a special way, including the current german membership studies (michael herbst, hanna kauhaus), the approaches to empowerment in a hereditary-secular context (michael domsgen) and international perspectives, such as the missional potential of interculturality (harvey kwiyani, nigel rooms, ariane schneider), as well as methodological impulses (dorte kappelgaard, marten van der meulen, thomas schlegel). 2 personal reflections what do we remember after five days of thinking, discerning and “walking together”? some personal reflections: 2.1 academic discourse and spirituality the special character of the meetings of the icef network is the combination of academic reflection, exchange of experiences, reading the bible together (“dwelling in the word”), and consistently one text for each of the five days: lk. 10.1-12. one can recognize the integrative approach of the consortium’s work in this: theological reflection and academic discourse are always combined with spiritual fellowship. however, one can also find the particular theological impulse that had a formative and determining effect throughout all the lectures and debates: that god not only “is”, but also works and can be experienced – and his work is first and foremost the impetus for missionary work in the church and through the church. the question repeatedly asked is therefore: “where is god already at work here?” and only then: “what should we do about it?” it has always been clear in the background that this attitude after the enlightenment is certainly controversial, but nonetheless necessary. 2.2 mission it is therefore a special characteristic of this community of academic theologians and church practitioners that they share a distinctive understanding of mission, which is based on god’s presence and his reconciling, healing and faith-creating work – and understands the church as a messenger who perceives where god is at work and then makes itself available to serve and celebrate god’s salvation. andrew root’s theological work has therefore been quoted in halle repeatedly, including by edwin van driel: root’s “project aims to empower churches in this new missional era by helping 8 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22222 8 them focus ministry on the presence and work of god”.3 in contrast to a “functional atheism” that no longer knows how to speak of god’s presence and action and therefore places the entire burden of mission on human shoulders, spiritual discernment is called for here, which – taught by the holy scriptures – seeks to perceive god’s existence and action in the world. 2.3 god’s preferred future beyond what is “already now” and can be perceived, however, the church needs an eschatological mindset (the “not yet”). those who follow christ do not live in the perpetual repetition of the old, but rather seek “god’s preferred future” (frederick marais) and strive to embody something of it now. here, social science theories about the diffusion of innovation (everett rogers) or the creation of prototypes and the “presencing” of the emerging new (otto scharmer) can support the spiritual insights and practical steps of the church. 2.4 local congregations not only the meetings between theological and church leaders were in focus, but also the local congregations themselves. if an important task is for congregations to be independent actors in god’s mission (and not just “care cases”), then the task of spiritual formation is on the churches’ agenda. this was discussed using the example of a south african model (south african partnership for missional church, tom smith), which introduces congregations (and not just their pastors) to a mission oriented “rhythm of life” with spiritual disciplines and missionary explorations. 2.5 secularization local churches develop in a very specific context, which also influences their mission. that’s why the subject of secularization was a recurring topic of debate in halle, not least with reference to charles taylor’s insights into the “secular age”. but the east german context, with the experience of 40 years of state discrimination and marginalization of church life, illustrated taylor’s insights in a highly impressive way. 2.6 abundance at the same time, this context should not put local churches in a depressive mood:  there is abundance in places of scarcity. the conference did not just coincidentally take place in east germany, one of the most secularized regions in the world (felix eiffler). the model of the “volkskirche” (folk church) as the church of the majority 3 e. v. driel refers to several publications by root (2017; 2019; 2021; 2022a; 2022b; 2023). the books are presented as volumes of a series entitled “ministry in a secular age”. 9 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22222 9 is obviously coming to an end here. the church finds itself in the diaspora: smaller, poorer and older. this became apparent, for example, at the presentation of the latest church membership study (michael herbst, hanna kauhaus). what was remarkable, however, was the less depressive mood that was conveyed, e.g. in the field trips, but also in the theological reflections on the diaspora. without glossing over the situation, it became clear that there is abundance in places of scarcity. an east german pastor told of small new beginnings, e.g. of a church children’s choir led by an atheist – and some of the children were then baptized. equally revealing was the report of a pastor (martin golz, halle) whose congregation has a presence in the middle of a socially deprived area with a construction trailer and has become a contact point for people from the neighbourhood – for fellowship, counselling and church services. they are not a church for others, but with others, and they experience in their ostensibly deficient situation: the resources can be found in the context. at first, secularity seems to be primarily a problem, but it is precisely when congregations seek god’s presence and work anew that it becomes clear that this challenging starting position can also be a gift. can one even say that the church in east germany could be something like the “forefront of the church” (dorte kappelgaard)? 2.7 crisis another danger was addressed in the discussions in halle: the crisis of the western churches could lead them to only concern themselves with themselves and to see the actual mission of the church as “fixing” the church. marten van der meulen distinguished between crisis 1 (the decline of the church) and crisis 2 (the forgetting of god’s mission). although crisis 1 cannot simply be ignored, it is precisely in crisis 1 that it is important not to lose sight of the right order of things and to recognize god’s work. signs of abundance can then be found in completely normal people, and shalom can be experienced in poor communities as in the feeding of the people in the desert (with enormous leftovers!) according to mt. 14. 2.8 resonance in addition to charles taylor, hartmut rosa’s reflections on resonance were repeatedly referred to. in a certain context, resonance also became a criterion for congregational development. knut tvetereit used case studies on various communities to show that resonance is contextual: “what resonates in one place, might not resonate in another place.” 2.9 experiencing faith however, according to edwin van driel, resonance arises through being with and not only through being for. the first experience of resonance is that people experience faith: there is someone who hears us. faith carries with it a promise of resonance. 10 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22222 10 that is why joy is its characteristic. god not only wants to remedy our needs (being for), but also to be with us and on our way (being with). “the church is the community in which god’s gift of being with is already experienced.” the fact that it exists, that people gather to listen and pray, is in itself a sign of god’s goodness. 2.10 unanswered questions of course, there are still unanswered questions regarding the willingness to learn new things, especially in times of uncertainty. the question was raised several times (and quite emotionally) as to whether the european church is finally ready to take the experiences of the african churches seriously and learn from them. the question arises not only with regard to global contacts, but also on their own doorstep: to what extent are the ministry and insights of the migrant churches (especially in central and western european cities) being taken seriously by the long-established majority churches? in the end, we are left with gratitude for the special opportunity to reflect on the church and god’s mission with theologically and ecclesiastically active leaders from four continents, but also the challenge of continually entering into an intercultural dialogue on an equal footing. 3 conclusion to sum it up: there is a unique character of the icef network, which integrates academic theological discourse with spiritual fellowship, particularly through practices like bible study. it emphasizes a theology rooted in recognizing and responding to god’s active presence in the world, shaping a mission-oriented approach where the church discerns where god is at work and participates in it. this mission focuses on celebrating god’s reconciling and transformative action, avoiding a purely human-centric view of ministry. additionally, the church is called to adopt an eschatological perspective, seeking “god’s preferred future” by embodying innovation and spiritual discernment to navigate the present and future challenges of faith and practice. the local congregation is an active participant in god’s mission, focusing on spiritual formation and contextual engagement. using models like the south african partnership for missional church, churches are encouraged to adopt a mission oriented lifestyle. the challenges of secularization, illustrated by east germany’s history, highlight the potential for abundance in scarcity. stories of small beginnings and community-focused ministries reveal that even in declining or marginalized contexts, god’s presence and resources emerge in meaningful ways. the discussions also warn against inward-focused “crisis management” that neglects god’s mission. instead, the church should prioritize recognizing god’s work, as exemplified by moments of unexpected abundance (e.g., feeding the multitude). concepts like “resonance” (rosa) highlight the importance of contextual responses and the 11 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22222 11 promise of faith as relational joy, grounded in god’s being with” people rather than merely “being for” them. the church itself embodies this divine presence, offering hope and purpose through shared worship and prayer. about the authors professor dr michael herbst is professor of practical theology (till 2022 at the university of greifswald, germany). he is researching and teaching on church development, pastoral theology and mission. contact: michael.herbst@i-m-k.org reverend dr patrick todjeras has been a theological consultant at the lutheran church of austria and is the director of the institute for the study of mission and church (www.i-m-k.org). contact: patrick.todjeras@i-m-k.org references root, a. 2017. faith formation in a secular age. grand rapids: baker academic. ———. 2019. the pastor in a secular age: ministry to people who no longer need a god. grand rapids: baker academic. ———. 2021. the congregation in a secular age: keeping sacred time against the speed of modern life. grand rapids: baker academic. ———. 2022a. churches and the crisis of decline: a hopeful, practical ecclesiology for a secular age. grand rapids: baker academic. ———. 2022b. the church after innovation: questioning our obsession with work, creativity, and entrepreneurship. grand rapids: baker academic. ———. 2023. the church in an age of secular mysticisms: why spiritualities without god fail to transform us. grand rapids: baker academic. mailto:michael.herbst@i-m-k.org http://www.i-m-k.org mailto:patrick.todjeras@i-m-k.org editorial christian empowerment, secularity and church development michael herbst and patrick todjeras ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 2 a r t i c l e 111 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef14831 doi: 10.54195/ef14831 learning to love: pastoral care as mission at church-based, intercultural initiatives sue holdsworth abstract this article speaks to the relationship between social action and mission. it argues that mission at church-based, intercultural initiatives is better understood and enabled when principles and practices of pastoral care are applied. a study of four churchbased intercultural initiatives in melbourne demonstrated that the development of intercultural pastoral care practices offers a way to understand mission that is relevant for local-church-based community initiatives. pastoral care and mission have a confused relationship in the literature and are brought into conversation with these four case studies, demonstrating that pastoral theology has insights to offer mission. in particular, this article explores themes of compassion and empathy, formation for hospitality, and the need for deeper spiritual formation in local, church-based, intercultural community initiatives. this is an important understanding at a time when many western christians seem at a loss to know how to effectively engage with others in a rapidly changing and often indifferent society. it is suggested that mission is framed as pastoral care at similar church-based initiatives. pastoral formational practices of reflective practice, spiritual engagement and supervision are recommended for all engaged in church-based, intercultural mission and this has broader relevance to all engaged in mission. keywords: pastoral care, mission, church, community, intercultural 1 introduction for several years during the 2010s, i worked with a mission agency in melbourne, helping congregations relate interculturally, both internally and within their wider community. during my time in this role, i founded an initiative in a highly intercultural locality in melbourne, providing a welcome and support for newly arrived asylum seekers. i recruited some missionaries operating in the locality and several local church leaders to help run this initiative. many of our guests were muslim, had made 112 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef14831 the hazardous journey to australia by boat and now awaited news as to whether they could stay. the first day we opened people streamed through the doors, confirming my sense of a need that could be met by local churches. i soon regretted my open invitation to churches and agencies, as it transpired that we had very different ideas as to what we should be doing. i simply wanted to provide a safe space, offering hospitality to people who were largely traumatized, with an offer of english lessons if wanted. i was in a minority, however, in believing the initiative should not be a tool for evangelistic practices. many guests had lost everything other than their islamic faith. they needed stability at that point in their lives. other volunteers insisted on bible studies during english classes. this insistence overlooked emotional needs in favour of the purely practical and set conditions for receiving care. one church leader wanted to demonstrate to the local council that christians cared for asylum seekers by inviting media and local counsellors to visit for photo opportunities. i was horrified, believing the last thing the migrants needed was official visits, many having been tracked down and watched by authorities in their country of origin. some were not emotionally ready for english lessons. the volunteers were largely untrained, but resisted the idea of training, and i was left wondering what they wanted to achieve, what was really taking place, and what motivated them. i regretfully resigned, being unable to influence the running of the initiative in what i believed was a non-invasive, nurturing manner. as a result of this experience, i decided to conduct research into what takes place at church-based intercultural initiatives. four intercultural initiatives, all based at evangelical churches in melbourne, were studied to find how love of god and neighbour was expressed and what might enhance this.1 while such initiatives might be assumed to be missional, i discovered that in contrast to the joint church initiative described above, motivations and practice often aligned more closely with practices of pastoral care. this understanding may be key to effective mission and the following article will explore these connections. 1 the full study can be accessed at https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13057/5116 113 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef14831 2 interpathy for pastoral care and mission interpathy is a term used to describe a deeply pastoral and spiritual mode of care with great relevance to mission. definitions of mission have broadened over past decades. newbigin defines mission as a collaborative partnership in which we share in god’s mission, personified in jesus’ love demonstrated towards humankind (newbigin 1978). bosch proposed that the church is missionary by its very nature (bosch 1992: 372). together with flett and based on the work of newbigin, bosch describes mission as participation in the missio dei (flett 2010: chapter 4; newbigin 1992: 372). mission is thus an encompassing term, covering many modes. this review argues for pastoral care practices to underwrite christian practices of empathy and compassion, hospitality and spirituality. these are additionally missional practices in the context of the four initiatives studied. the motivations of most volunteers were to provide care through the provision of a service. this fits with the aims of pastoral care as mission. st nicholas2 was the exception, where the overriding aim was evangelistic, with the sewing club being an entry point for evangelistic conversation and interaction. the following review demonstrates that practices of pastoral care are applicable to mission. augsburger defines interpathy by clarifying the boundaries between sympathy, empathy and what he terms interpathy. he argues that interpathy supports cross-cultural counselling or care. it requires a willingness and ability to bracket out or suspend one’s own beliefs and worldview, to be fully present to the worldview and consequent lived experience of someone who is culturally (or religiously) different (augsburger 1986: 26). most participants in the study did not demonstrate interpathy appearing more interested in talking than listening or guiding conversation onto topics of their choice. the absence of this deeply pastoral and spiritual mode of care was a loss for mission. doehring complements augsburger’s discussion by describing empathy and compassion as central to pastoral care, a theme that resonates in the field of spiritual care (pembroke 2019: 133–46). she explores the practice of empathy and compassion in intercultural contexts where “empathy involves imaginatively stepping into another person’s emotional experience while remaining aware of and anchored in one’s own emotional state.” she describes compassion as empathy with a desire to help (doehring 2015: 39–40). for the purposes of safe practice and boundary awareness it is clear emotional regulation is important when expressing empathic concern 2 pseudonyms are used for all study locations. 114 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef14831 as it allows the caregiver to remain involved, rather than withdraw and, therefore, allows for ongoing compassionate care (doehring 2015: 40). there is a clear implication that training and supervision are required to enhance compassionate care while moderating any damaging effects. these skills are routinely taught to chaplains and spiritual care practitioners in australian healthcare settings. for instance, spiritual care australia highlights empathetic engagement with clients as a fundamental quality of spiritual care professionals at all levels (spiritual care australia 2021). while this study concerns volunteers rather than professionals, these standards should influence volunteer practice. unlike pastoral texts, recent missions texts from evangelical and catholic traditions are noticeably quiet on the specific importance of empathy or interpathy. although the cape town commitment addresses the necessity for mission to be rooted in love (lausanne movement, 2011), there is nothing like the detailed articulation, description and learning opportunity afforded by pastoral literature.3 in a section entitled “taking the first step, being involved and supportive, bearing fruit and rejoicing,” evangelii gaudium refers to a theologically-oriented expression of empathy: “an evangelizing community gets involved by word and deed in people’s daily lives; it embraces human life, touching the suffering flesh of christ in others.” (francis 2013: 124). to better explore the meaning and application of such an embrace, we might ask how this works in practice and how it is evaluated. 2.1 hospitality and listening as expressions of interpathy, formed out of christ ’s mission and ministry the literature of pastoral theology and missiology reveals common themes on hospitality, in which the roles of hosts and guests are reversed (ross 2016; nouwen 1975; gittins 1989). this reversal is particularly important when our ‘guests’ have experienced trauma. this “flipped hospitality” builds trust and a sense of safety in relationships (kiser and heath 2023: 188–94). being a guest is disempowering and doehring focuses on the nature of interpersonal relationships and suggests that the “process of stepping respectfully and compassionately into another’s narrative world can be described with the metaphor of hospitality” (doehring 2015: xvii). respect and compassion require deep listening, and spiritual practices including prayer and reflection to gain discernment necessary for what bevans and ross term prophetic dialogue (bevans and ross 2015). this includes bringing hope and peace in situations of despair. we develop deep sensitivity to people in need by connecting with our own experiences of being vulnerable and dependent (pohl 2022: 65). those of us 3 for example, the spiritual care australia literature just noted. 115 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef14831 from western nations will gain insights into how hospitality and community might liberate others when we adopt what russell calls postcolonial theological perspectives. western thinking is not superior to other cultures and people should be free to define themselves and to do this as equals (russell 2009: 29–33). expressions of these aspects of spirituality display the love of god within the practices of pastoral care and mission and offer practice goals that each can aspire to. they can also be expressed through practices of hospitality that embrace all people and are earthed in an understanding of who is at the centre and who is at the margins of society. hospitality offers hope, promotes lasting friendships, considers others within a hierarchy of agendas (phil. 2.3-4), listens deeply to others, considers group as well as individual needs and celebrates diversity while offering christ’s love to all. i suggest it is that in christ there is pastoral care and mission. this is expressed in practices of hospitality and listening, which are visible expressions of interpathy. what might this look like on the ground, at church-based intercultural initiatives? 3 the research context: four intercultural, churchbased initiatives swindon baptist is a large, wealthy, suburban congregation running english conversation classes for local migrants, based in its modern, purpose-built building.4 the classes had commenced many years previously, in response to need. classes ran for one and half hours, most days a week, with different volunteers each day. volunteers did around six initial sessions of training before commencing, although no further training was offered. most did not feel confident to take classes of more than three or four students. st nicholas anglican is also a large wealthy church, in melbourne’s east. it has congregations spread over four locations, including the social housing estate where this study was conducted. the estate was inhabited by many former refugees who had arrived years earlier from south-east asia. they still wore their cultural style of dress, unavailable to buy in shops and therefore requiring home sewing. the sewing club offered equipment for this purpose and women would arrive and leave as they pleased, bringing their sewing projects with them. the club had run for around twelve years. 4 names, locations and other identifying features have been changed to preserve anonymity. 116 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef14831 govan church of christ was in a blue-collar area of the city, where many young migrant families had settled. english conversation classes had been started, out of perceived need, by a church member who wanted to help migrants settle in australia. she decided to teach english as something she knew she could do well. tutors were drawn from the congregation. all appeared to enjoy their occasional volunteering. hope international was a highly multicultural pentecostal megachurch. a training school was the focus of study, run by members, all but one of whom were migrants themselves. despite being qualified for other high-paying professions, they had chosen to retrain as childcare educators. their research of the locality had indicated a need for migrant women to be empowered to adapt to australian life. the school therefore offered a government-accredited qualification in childcare for migrant women, to help them gain employment. 4 method many hours as a participant observer were spent sequentially at each initiative, between 2015 and 2017. this allowed me to be involved in the running of the initiatives, and able to witness the minutiae of interactions between volunteers and those attending. interviews with participants and church leaders, attendance at services and other church activities, and searches through church records provided thick data. observations were coded together with interview transcripts and data from church records. reflexive comments were written during note taking and analysis to monitor my responses. grounded theory methodologies allowed theory to emerge through coding and categorizing data in an iterative manner (charmaz 2011, bryant and charmaz eds 2007). in this way, theory was built which can be further tested and expanded by future researchers. qualitative research and practical theology partner creatively when investigating projects based in ministry practice with a pastoral and theological perspective. nigel rooms and cathy ross argue for a close collaboration between practical theology and missiology, suggesting that practical theology challenges practitioners to “make connections between various disciplines, and within the context of differing global theologies” (rooms and ross 2014: 144–47). this study sought to make interdisciplinary connections by letting the data initiate discussion within a grounded theory approach. grounded theory attempts to engage and capture as much of the complex realities of a situation as possible, attempting to obtain multiple perspectives for 117 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef14831 theory generation by recognizing the wider contexts in which studied events occur, very much the context for the four projects (corbin and strauss 2008). participants were mostly volunteers, plus some church leaders. the exception was hope international where participants received a wage. this acted as a useful comparison with the first three situations, as i noted differences and similarities in motivations and skill levels resulting from wage earning. findings regarding themes of mission as pastoral care, compassion and empathy, and hospitality and spirituality will be described in the following section. this will lead into discussion of these pastoral themes for effective, caring mission. 5 “just caring” for others participant observation showed how care was provided differently between the four contexts. practices of teaching, prayer, and practical offers of help varied across the four intercultural initiatives. expressions of love were often noted at swindon where one volunteer helped students make and attend medical appointments, while another invited students to her home at christmas. the english classes at govan started after asylum seekers came to church asking for practical help. the founder of classes felt unable to offer goods at that time, but offered what she could in the form of english lessons. these participants spoke of their primary motivation for service being one of care. the training school at hope was an example of what might be achieved when church members desire to make a positive contribution to the local community, as an expression of care. they pro-actively cared for physical and emotional needs of students and were committed to enabling every student to be successful. the result was an experience for students of love, acceptance and academic success. teachers were content to offer a high level of care with no evangelistic agenda attached. for instance, meals would be provided to students in crisis and several teachers would pray regularly together for students. bonds between teachers and students were displayed through student teacher interactions and reports of students in crisis texting teachers late at night, requesting prayer. i was left in little doubt that this was a special time for both students and teachers, one which would probably stay with them for life. in contrast, volunteers at st nicholas, while faithful and hard-working, revealed a care hindered by evangelistic aims. for instance, these participants described the women as difficult (for being strong minded) and one described the “tough ground” in which they worked. this resulted in them celebrating and loving the women attending less than they might if they had aimed simply to care. 118 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef14831 spirituality was hard to discern when volunteers failed to pray or work together as a team, something resisted by volunteers at swindon and govan. while govan volunteers mentioned they prayed privately, talk about god was often absent at swindon, leading me to note, “god has gone underground!” teachers at hope and st nicholas met together weekly for prayer, and this was reflected in the sessions where informal talk about god and faith took place. this seemed forced at st nicholas, with volunteers actively seeking opportunities to lever talk about god into conversations. talk about god seemed more spontaneous at hope international. an example of this was when a teacher spoke during her class of a dream she had about the school’s manager taking up art. the manager was reportedly amazed by this, having felt god had recently been encouraging her to do just that. the volunteer, lilly, later told me this anecdote was shared spontaneously. in other words, this was not a calculated attempt at evangelism. this behaviour reflected a strong sense of god’s immanence amongst the christian teachers, an overflowing of nurtured spirituality. the following discussion will explore how pastoral care, offered through expressions of love, is an effective and appropriate framework for church-based, intercultural community initiatives, as participation in the missio dei. i will focus on the areas of empathy and compassion, hospitality and spirituality, all practices of pastoral care applicable to mission. 6 expressing love of god and neighbour if “pastoral care is an expression of human concern through activities” (lartey 1997: 25–6), essentially expressions of love, then this can include many activities, from counselling or celebrating, to simply being present with people. the four initiatives aimed to address human need through activities, ranging from learning english to assisting integration into australian life, and training childcare workers hopeful of employment. for doehring, pastoral care takes many forms and in north america often takes the form of crisis intervention, followed by supportive care. she describes this as spiritual care that comes alongside others to offer sustaining presence in either an ongoing way or through difficult seasons (doehring 2015: xxii). developing internal resilience through tough times is where lartey sees that “pastoral caregivers have a concern for what meets the eye about human persons as well as what may lie deeply buried within them.” (lartey 1997: 26). these pastoral values often resonate strongly and sometimes by implication with participants. the provision of a community service is a form of spiritual care according to lartey, bosch and kirk, but given the level of mutuality this care could also be extended through the formation and maintenance of friendships (lartey 1997: 25–6; 119 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef14831 bosch 1992: 512–18; kirk 1999: 205–25). because of this overlap between pastoral care and mission in a practical theological framework, each has a spiritual element, and the source of love is god. mission is at the heart of the church and when mission and pastoral care are undertaken, evangelism may take place, as appropriate participation in the missio dei. caregivers addressed in the pastoral care literature are often specialists, professionals or interns, so it would be unrealistic to expect the mostly volunteer participants to perform as qualified pastoral carers. however, their effectiveness as intercultural pastoral carers is assessed simply on their ability to communicate love. the following discussion is guided by the finding/insight that participants were motivated by a desire to see migrants flourish in australia. all participants, whether practicing christians or not, acted on behalf of the sponsoring church, prompting a working assumption that they therefore possessed some level of concern about the wellbeing, and perhaps the spiritual wellbeing of migrants. 6.1 empathy and compassion lartey suggests that empathy has “three characteristics … a feeling (affective) level, a thinking (cognitive) level and a tendency to action (conative) level. empathy then, is a way of being with other people, which enters into how it feels like to be who they are” (lartey 1997: 92). while it was not possible to observe and trace the feelings of participants, a cognitive level of empathy was expressed during interviews as participants spoke with understanding of the difficulties faced by new migrants and related these to their own experiences. this was then fed back into their volunteering or work. for doehring, the intercultural dimensions of “empathy and compassion play a central role in pastoral and spiritual care. empathy involves imaginatively stepping into another person’s emotional experience while remaining aware of and anchored in one’s own emotional state” (doehring 2015: 39–40). participants at northern training demonstrated such empathy through boundaried emotional involvement with students. participants at swindon spoke of a desire to help their students learn english, based on their own experience of living overseas, having to study a foreign language, and observing a family member from overseas adjust to life in australia. participants were engaged in mission, often through formation in the “disciplined exercise” of empathic listening, creating what augsburger describes as “sharing another’s feelings, not through projection but through compassionate active imagination. empathy is an intentional affective response” (augsburger 1986: 27). for pembroke, whether in the parish or healthcare context, care that is “built on a foundation of empathy and compassion is an expression of agape … a commitment to 120 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef14831 extend oneself in acting in a loving, kind, and beneficent way towards one’s neighbour” (pembroke 2019: 133–46). this is an essential factor if those attending initiatives are to experience and sensitively express god’s love. pembroke’s deceptively simple, but pastorally and vocationally complex principle becomes a highly desirable criterion for selection, training, and formation of volunteers. one participant had previously had little to do with migrants before volunteering at the english lessons, but she was, however, someone who cared deeply for others and this concern was expressed through her plans to serve and her attentive listening and responses to her students. shared experiences of migration enabled empathy with new migrants. cognitive and conative levels of empathy were apparent in the advocacy framework of one person’s provision of medical care for women who rarely received the level of care enjoyed by other australians. the affective level may have been there, but it was “acting in a loving, kind, and beneficent way” that counted. lartey describes the pastoral carer as needing to progress from sympathy (often counter-productive) to empathy and then to interpathy. augsburger’s definition captures the movement that needs to emerge across the sites, through formation and reflective practice if possible. he revisits and extends comment on interpathy by identifying the core dynamic of this shift in affect as an intentional cognitive envisioning of another’s thoughts and feelings, even though the thoughts rise from another frame of moral reasoning and the feelings spring from another basis of assumptions. “i (the culturally different person) take a foreign perspective, base my thought on a foreign assumption, and allow myself to feel the resultant feelings and their cognitive and emotive consequences in my personality as i inhabit, insofar as i am capable of inhabiting, a foreign context” (augsburger 1986: 30). lartey warns that interpathy must “rest upon the premise of human universality.” (lartey 1997: 94). interpathy was the next learning bridge to be crossed when participants described their feelings or experiences. a truly interpathic caregiver may become as close as possible to being “emic”, as described by hiebert, based on a definition by kenneth pike (hiebert 2009: 90; pike 1990). to be emic is to be a cultural insider, while a cultural outsider is classed as etic. the aim of the missionary, the anthropologist, or in the case of this study, the intercultural carer, is to move towards an emic stance, even though this is ultimately not possible for someone from a different culture. formation and training in reflective practice can still enhance this skill. few people would be naturally interpathic. for westerners raised into a worldview that often implies that western culture is superior, this may be a particular 121 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef14831 pastoral formation challenge. one participant stated that she did not need to understand the cultures of her students, as she was there to teach them english! while she was naturally empathic, embodying interpathy would have enhanced her caring skills. doehring describes compassion as empathy that results in action, or more accurately, care in action (doehring 2015: 43). by this definition, compassion was strongly in evidence at all initiatives. already open to international students because of her intercultural experience, jean, a volunteer, worried about her students because “they had real trouble getting through to others … what their needs were”.5 another responded to the needs of asylum seekers by initiating the english lessons at govan, a motivation not always the reason for engagement. some volunteers were motivated initially by their belief that, as christians, they needed to serve in the life of the church which meant that compassion was harder to discern at st nicholas. participants had a functional approach to their service and spoke of the women in a matterof-fact manner, indicating some knowledge but no empathy, and at times with some frustration with their lack of responsiveness to christianity. formation of volunteers that embraces a pastoral care view of reflective practice while engaged in cross cultural encounter would enable more honest self-awareness. empathy is easier to attain when based in shared experiences, although it is possible to learn. the progression from sympathy to empathy to interpathy is often a reflective journey of self-discovery and if interpathy is like being emic, then being a cultural insider is a goal that pastoral practitioners and anyone in mission can aspire to. empathy is harder to access when care is driven by a desire for conversions, a tension each initiative faced without effective resolution. 6.2 hospitality: a friendly and welcoming environment hospitality is a gateway to mutuality, friendship and community, and all initiatives held potential for long lasting friendships and community-building. the biblical theme of hospitality amongst christians served to identify aspects of hospitality noted at each project.6 for lartey, loving one’s neighbour as oneself 5 jean interview. 6 for example, isa. 58.7, tit. 1.8. these references support my arguments on the theme of hospitality. 122 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef14831 is closely linked in the teaching of jesus to that of “loving god with all one’s mind, strength and heart.” the church as the body of christ in the world manifests its theological insights most clearly by the ways it relates within itself and with the world community around it. (lartey 2006: 121). the data suggested that the practices of hospitality and friendship-building in a community context should be viewed as key elements of a model of pastoral care. deep and careful theological reflection upon this theme can inform carers as they re-assess the levels of care they are willing or able to provide, and also reframe the focus of further training. how do volunteers learn to welcome strangers? ross describes hospitality as a two-way process in which hosts (participants) have much to learn from those at the margins and indeed become guests of the migrants attending initiatives (ross 2016). this suggests, therefore, that pastoral care and all expressions of mission are two-way processes of hospitality that become a meeting point where an exchange of power teaches and empowers and holds the possibility of transformation for the carer. most participants at all locations sought to express some form of friendship with attending migrants and a cultural context of friendliness and welcome were significant findings. while for some this friendship was expressed only in the sessions, others sought to foster relationships at other times. these friendships were life-enhancing and nurturing, especially when attendees were marginalised in australia due to ethnicity, culture, and limited english. a commitment to friendship and journeying together (to varying degrees dependent on context) is a realistic expectation of christian practice in similar intercultural, church-based initiatives. hospitality is a practice to which christians are called throughout the new testament. where mutuality was observed, genuine friendships were therefore possible. gittins describes the roles and expectations of hosts and guests, noting that while guests and strangers are differentiated in the english language, they share the same term in many languages. therefore, if strangers (and all volunteers were initially strangers to their students) do not allow others to be hosts they demonstrate disrespect and cause confusion. this involves deferring to them and respecting their cultural norms. not allowing others to be hosts is to demonstrate aggression (gittins 1989). attendees may not experience aggression, but unthinking colonization or lack of awareness of power may well have the same impact. hosts, whoever they are, therefore hold a great deal of power and the task of balancing this power echoes 123 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef14831 doehring’s description of the co-creation of theological meaning in the care-giver/ care-receiver relationship (doehring 2015: 100–102). an appreciation of this can challenge participants and volunteers in similar, church-based initiatives to invite their guests to become, not a part of their culture, but to step into a space within which a third, new and shared culture can emerge – one where roles may be exchanged. i am reminded of pembroke’s application of the “relational space” within the trinity to pastoral care practice. members are unified, yet with space between them that allows for distinctiveness (pembroke 2016: 26–8), a liminal movement potentially empowering and certainly defining of identity. glimpses of friendship and sparks of compassion appeared in the findings and while a few volunteers at swindon only wanted to teach english others were concerned to care any way possible. northern training participants clearly wished to empower students in line with the school’s rationale and ethos but where on the training and development agenda were processes for developing empathy, interpathy, and reflective listening skills? where the aim of an initiative is evangelism, love-in-action may demonstrate truth claims but the tension remains of creating what nouwen describes as the sensitive but life-giving task of creating space for strangers in our lives: when hostility is converted into hospitality then fearful strangers can become guests revealing to their hosts the promise they are carrying with them. then, in fact, the distinction between host and guest proves to be artificial and evaporates in the recognition of the new-found unity. (nouwen 1975: 67) we are therefore called to invite the stranger to “a free and friendly space where he can reveal his gifts and become our friend … really honest receptivity means inviting the stranger into our world on his or her terms, not on ours” (nouwen 1975: 98). to do this in an intercultural setting, we acknowledge and contain our tendencies towards ethnocentricity and develop listening skills that take us beyond empathy into interpathy (augsburger 1986: 27–32). this necessitates education and intentional formation in growing and developing pastoral and spiritual care skills, often lacking in mission preparation and actual settings. 6.3 spirituality for pastoral care and mission christian spirituality may not be readily discernible, as observed at swindon. it is suggested that a rich inner life will express itself in outward manifestations, in commitment to living a godly life and in care for others. care for others is, however, also a societal value and where participants did not easily speak of their faith, it was not clear whether their care for migrants was rooted in the internal and transcendent 124 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef14831 movements of spirituality. this is a loss, in that mutual encouragement in fostering a spiritual life was absent and those attending the initiatives could be less likely to appreciate that the care they received was an expression of god’s love (bevans and ross 2015: xv-xvi). bevans and ross describe mission as necessarily prophetic dialogue in which deep listening to others precedes engaging in what they term prophetic dialogue as mission. deep listening is a prerequisite for discernment, a mature pastoral skill and a spiritual discipline. mission can only be done, in the final analysis, by women and men who pray regularly, who spend time in contemplation, who share their faith in theological reflection, who study and read the bible individually and in community, who understand cultural trends and current events (bevans and ross 2015: introduction). this applies equally to practices of pastoral care and mission, especially if we add opportunities for pastoral supervision. the value of being a reflective practitioner is strong and clear whether the person is a volunteer teaching sewing or leading complex international programmes. jesus teaches us to love others as we love ourselves (lk. 10.27), often a difficult concept for christians warned against selfishness or taught that if we lose our lives then we will gain them. jesus taught that loving others as much as ourselves is the greatest commandment, a benchmark that suggests that to love ourselves and practise self-compassion also provides the psychological flexibility and embracing hospitality important for loving others. when our awareness of god is rooted in a sense of god’s love for us, we may gain the sensitivity to discern how he would express god’s love for others, through us. this may involve proclamation but more often it will be by listening, celebrating others and through acts of service. 7 summary and conclusion this article has explored interactions between pastoral care and mission. i have demonstrated that effective expressions of love of god and neighbour at churchbased, intercultural initiatives depend upon pastoral care practices including expressions of empathy and compassion, hospitality and spirituality. three proposals emerge from this article. first, i propose that church-based intercultural initiatives will most effectively communicate love of god and neighbour when organisation and delivery follow the principles, practices, and functions of intercultural pastoral care. second, mission planning and practice should always be informed 125 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef14831 by the foundational elements of pastoral care. third, spirituality needs nurturing in individuals and groups for participants to better express love of god and neighbour. ongoing group prayer and reflective practice are recommended as pastoral practices for church-based groups engaged in intercultural community initiatives. supervision is also important for pastoral carers and warrants further consideration for those engaged in mission. if i was to return to the ministry i started, outlined in the introduction, i would do a number of things differently. training sessions would be run for all volunteers before they commenced. it would be taught that pastoral care was our mission, expressed through our care of asylum seekers. deep listening would be taught and the concept of interpathy. the importance of allowing our guests to take the lead in relationships would be emphasized, with the promise that they would ask questions about the christian faith, if and when they were truly interested. team sessions would take place following each session which would include reflection and prayer. about the author dr sue holdsworth is an honorary postdoctoral associate at eva burrows college, university of divinity. originally form the uk, sue has extensive experience working with diaspora communities in melbourne and south korea. she has also lived in france. her phd, stemming from these experiences, was titled “a critical, comparative analysis of four church-based, intercultural initiatives in the multicultural city of melbourne”. sue has been a member of three mission organizations and has served on the executive of the australian association of mission studies. contact: sue. holdsworth@divinity.edu.au references augsburger, david w. 1986. pastoral counselling across cultures. philadelphia, pa: westminster press. bevans, stephen, and cathy ross (eds). 2015. mission on the road to emmaus: constants, context and prophetic dialogue. london: scm press. bosch, david j. 1991. transforming mission: paradigm shifts in theology of mission. maryknoll, ny: orbis books. bryant, antony, and kathy charmaz (eds). 2007. the sage handbook of grounded theory. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. charmaz, kathy. 2014. constructing grounded theory: introducing qualitative methods. 2nd edition. london: sage publications. corbin, juliet, and anselm strauss. 2008. basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. 3rd edition. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. 126 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef14831 doehring, carrie. 2015. the practice of pastoral care: an intercultural approach. louisville, ky: westminster john knox press. flett, john g. 2010. the witness of god: the trinity, missio dei, karl barth and the nature of christian community. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. ebook. francis (pope). 2013. evangeli gaudium. strathfield, nsw: st paul’s publications australia. gittins, anthony j. 1989. gifts and strangers: meeting the challenge of inculutration. mahwah, nj: paulist press. hiebert, paul g. 2009. the gospel in human contexts: anthropological explorations for contemporary missions. grand rapids: baker academic. kirk, j. andrew. 1999. what is mission? theological explorations. london: darton, longman and todd. kiser, charles, and elaine a. heath. 2023. trauma-informed evangelism: cultivating communities of wounded healers. grand rapids: wm. b. eerdmans publishing co. lartey, emmanuel y. 1997. in living colour: an intercultural approach to pastoral care and counselling. london: cassell. lartey, emmanuel y. 2006. pastoral theology in an intercultural world. peterborough, uk: epworth. lausanne movement. 2020. “a confession of faith and a call to action.” https://www.lausanne. org/content/ctcommitment (accessed 23 dec. 2020). newbigin, lesslie. 1978. the open secret. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. nouwen, henri. 1975. reaching out. new york: doubleday. pembroke, neil. 2019. “empathic and compassionate healthcare as a christian spiritual practice.” practical theology 12, no. 2: 133–46. pike, kenneth, marvin harris and thomas n. headland. 1990. emics and etics: the insider/ outsider debate. london: sage publications, 1990. pohl, christine d. 1999. making room: recovering hospitality as a christian tradition. grand rapids: william b. eerdmans publishing co. rooms, nigel, and cathy ross. 2014. “practical theology and missiology: can they live together?” practical theology 7, no. 2: 144–47. ross, cathy. 2016. “hospitality: it’s surprising what you hear when you listen: hospitality as welcome of the stranger.” in mission in marginal places: the theory. edited by paul cloke and mike pears, chapter 6. milton keynes: authentic publishers. russell, letty m. 2009. just hospitality: god’s welcome in a world of difference. louisville, ky: westmiinster john knox press. spiritual care australia. 2021. spiritual care australia: standards of practice. spiritualcareaustralia.org.au/public/103/files/sca_standards_of_practice_document-1.pdf (accessed 15 june 2021). https://www.lausanne.org/content/ctcommitment https://www.lausanne.org/content/ctcommitment https://spiritualcareaustralia.org.au/public/103/files/sca_standards_of_practice_document-1.pdf https://spiritualcareaustralia.org.au/public/103/files/sca_standards_of_practice_document-1.pdf 1 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19163 doi: 10.54195/ef19163 a r t i c l e ecclesial futures 2024 examining filipino popular piety in the light of vatican ii’s directory of popular piety and the liturgy: principles and guidelines kevin maicom abstract celebrating popular piety in different regions reflects the vibrant, diverse, and festive culture of the philippines. the innumerable religious practices through rites and ceremonies show the intensity and vibrance of filipino catholic spirituality. it is part of the heritage and unique identity of the filipino catholic church to the extent that it also impacts the local liturgical calendar. given this distinctive characteristic of popular piety, finding its harmony with the liturgy is challenging. the focus on the ritual aspect of popular piety diverges from orthodoxy, raising conflict between its praxis and church teachings, which allows for misinterpretation and syncretism. this paper will employ a descriptive research design to assess the reception of vatican ii’s directory of popular piety and the liturgy: principles and guidelines (dppl), using the method of critical reflection. it comprehensively analyzes the reception of dppl and its profound impact on catholicism in the philippines. this study aims to establish an understanding of popular piety as a valid form of worship through analysis and evaluation of the process of inculturation to foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of these practices. it enriches theological discourse on the realm of inculturation, which leads to the preservation of cultural heritage and the understanding that popular piety is an encounter of evangelization and culture that should be treated with profound respect and mutual understanding. keywords: popular piety, liturgy, inculturation, popular religiosity, devotion 1 introduction the second vatican council (vatican ii) aggiornamento aimed to renew the church in response to the contemporary world. one of the council’s documents, the constitution on the sacred liturgy sacrosanctum concilium, called for a reform of the liturgy and necessitated the recognition of popular piety. in response, vatican ii issued the 2 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19163 2 dppl in 2001. this document offered guidance on integrating popular piety, the religious practices of people from local culture, with the liturgy. in order to enhance comprehension of the study of popular piety in the philippine setting, it is important to establish clear definitions of relevant terms. within various regions of the country, there is a tendency to conflate the concepts of popular piety, popular religiosity, and devotion, resulting in frequent interchangeability. the document with the authority to define these terms is the 2001 dppl. it defines popular piety as “diverse cultic expressions of a private or community nature … in the context of the christian faith” (dppl, 9). while popular religiosity is a “universal experience … of people, nations, and their collective expressions but does not always necessarily refer to christian revelation” (dppl, 10). on the other hand, devotion refers to “various external practices (e.g. prayers, hymns, observances attached to particular times or places, insignia, medals, habits or customs) animated by the attitude of faith” (dppl, 8). the prevalence of misconceptions regarding these terms can be attributed to a deficiency in catechesis. in this regard, the author will employ the phrase “popular piety” in this study following the official title of the magisterial document. 2 research methodology the study examines the theological foundation of popular piety as an expression of faith that finds its harmony with the liturgy, focusing on how these practices coexist and influence each other. it uses the method of critical reflection on the dppl to frame the analysis, providing principles and guidelines for evaluating the validity of popular piety. the method also integrates historical, cultural and anthropological aspects of popular piety, providing a comprehensive view of the lived experiences of the faithful and the cultural context in which these religious practices occur. the study also evaluates the process of inculturation, balancing the need for cultural expressions in worship while maintaining fidelity to catholic doctrine. it also discusses potential challenges, such as syncretism, which may arise when popular piety diverges from liturgical norms. the goal is to foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of popular piety as a valid form of worship, emphasizing respect and mutual understanding between popular piety and the liturgy. this multifaceted approach provides insights to guide future practices and pastoral strategies within the filipino catholic context. 3 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19163 3 3 significance of the study catholicism in the philippines is amplified by popular piety as a profound reservoir of sustaining faith among the filipinos. the interactions between the two separate domains challenge the complicated correlation between filipino popular piety and the liturgy. the task, therefore, involves the ability to discern how to handle this relationship and ensure that these expressions do not overshadow the fundamental principles and tenets of catholicism. this research aims to understand the reception of the dppl that encompasses not just academic growth but also personal enrichment of how faith is assimilated in the philippines. the study can also shed light on the tensions between formal liturgy and cultural expressions of faith in the catholic practices in the country, in the light of vatican ii’s liturgical reforms that intended to strike unity amid diversity among the local churches around the globe. 4 popular piety and the liturgy the liturgy is “the summit toward which the activity of the church is directed and the fount from which all her power flows” (sacrosanctum concilium, 10; henceforth sc). it requires acknowledging and valuing various expressions of popular religiosity within the christian community. it possesses an inherent predisposition to establish a connection with the divine, leading to the emergence of popular piety aimed at fulfilling the desire for active participation. popular piety is an expression of christian faith in the culture of the people. it is critical not to dismiss these types of piety and to recognize their relevance in building a sense of communion with god and within the ecclesial community. hence, the theological foundation of inculturation is the incarnation of jesus in time and space. anscar chupungco (cited by mark francis 2014b) asserts that the embodiment of christ, continued by the church as the physical representation of christ in many human cultures, forms the foundation for both the identity and the variety of the liturgy as the church’s way of expressing itself. nevertheless, due to challenges with inculturation, popular piety can lead to an inevitable distortion of christian doctrine, resulting in a negative impact on liturgical practices. it can lead to the primacy of the people’s devotion, and liturgy becomes secondary. the celebration does not centre on the paschal mystery of christ as its focal point. the prayers lack reflection of the trinitarian formula due to their spontaneous nature. additionally, the absence of scriptural text diminishes its significance, and the pneumatological dimension is disregarded. these challenges arise from disregarding the process of inculturation to address the questions faced by the encounter of evangelization and colonization. 4 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19163 4 mark francis (2014a) asserts that vatican ii emphasizes the role of culture as the heart of the liturgical renewal. however, it seems that the formalization of the liturgy is seen as a hindrance to the cultural and ritual expression of the faithful. the publication of liturgiam authenticam promulgated by the congregation for divine worship and the discipline of the sacraments in 2001 has the main objective of offering instructions for translating liturgical texts into vernacular languages. translations must adhere to precise phrasing and remain unaffected by ideological bias. the original latin text should be accurately translated into the local language. this document ended the discussions on liturgical inculturation, mandating a literal translation of the text from latin to vernacular without any omissions, additions, or paraphrases. it loses the soul of the text that touches the heart of the locals. the culture expressed in the language of the prayers hinders the intelligent participation of the faithful. popular piety, on the other hand, allows authentic and spontaneous expression of faith to be received in the culture of the people. it involves the body, heart, and mind, whereas, in comparison, the liturgy is perceived as formal, repetitive, rubricand formula-driven. this distinguishing feature of popular piety provides a divergence from the liturgy. however, popular piety serves as a channel for the people of god to engage in spiritual expression, foster a profound relationship with god and facilitate the enrichment of faith experiences and understanding, for “no one who loves god’s holy people will view these actions as the expression of a purely human search for the divine” (evangelii gaudium, 125, henceforth eg). 5 popular piety in the philippines filipinos are known for being religious and pious and are even described as spiritoriented, which denotes their active search for the divine and relating themselves to the supreme being (catechism for the filipino catholics, 469; henceforth cfc). this identity is expressed in popular piety, which includes a wide range of cultic practices within the christian faith that are driven by the assimilation of the beliefs and culture of the people and can be done alone or with a group. in the interplay between evangelization and culture, jose de mesa, cited by josefina tondo (2010), discusses whether filipinos have actually been christianized or if christianity has just been adapted to fit the filipino culture. perhaps history will provide an insightful answer to this assertion. christianity touched the philippines’ soil in the year 1521 with the arrival of ferdinand magellan. the arrival of spanish colonizers in the philippines imported the western canons and introduced the catholic faith, which has since become an integral component of the filipino identity. chupungco (2014) asserts that the missionaries introduced western spirituality to filipino culture, incorporating the 5 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19163 5 baroque style in the liturgy. hence, the pre-colonial practices in the archipelago bear a resemblance to the celebratory characteristics of the baroque period, which are characterized by opulent displays in festivals, extravagant visual elements, elaborate sacred artwork and images, expressive dances, theatrical presentations and musical performances. macaranas (2021) argues that because of the length of time that the philippines has been under spanish colonization, the native pre-colonial culture and indigenous worship have assimilated christian doctrines and teachings. in this regard, foley (2024) asserts the importance of inculturation, citing that gaining control over language, ritual, and music will direct liturgical movement as a form of decolonization. furthermore, human beings have an innate desire to relate with the supreme being. filipinos inherently gravitate towards tangible and practical manifestations of their faith and religious encounters (cfc, 1534). this faith is expressed in popular piety as the treasure of the church and a form of spirituality that reflects the experiences of the filipino people. the image of the crucified christ, the blessed virgin mary as intercessor, and the paschal mystery of christ achieved in the lives of the saints is a tangible reality that we have a god who can sympathize with our everyday problems and who is with us to celebrate our joy. this may explain why people find this form of worship fulfilling in pursuing a spiritual connection with god. tondo (2010) affirms that in decision-making, filipino cultural values and notions such as bahala na (whatever events occur are within the realm of god’s permission) are closely connected to faith. it is not an act of surrender but a manifestation of hope that god is in control of everything. in this, we can see that faith does not only interplay with culture, but their devotion also amplifies trust in the grace and mercy of god. faith exerts a substantial impact on society through the assimilation of christian doctrines into the culture, having an impact on both personal and socio-political realities. the expression of religious devotion in the philippines is commonly observed through various forms of “popular devotions, processions, altar and shrines, religious drama … and dance … these expressions of faith are festive, felt, spontaneous … expressive, immediate, communitarian, collective, joyful, symbolic, traditional, alive” (chupungco 2014: 329). it is demonstrated by the act of visiting well-known churches that are associated with specific devotions, embarking on a pilgrimage to express gratitude to god or seek blessings, touching sacred images of jesus, the blessed virgin mary, and saints, participating in religious processions, engaging in extended periods of prayer known as novenas, and undertaking long journeys to see various religious celebrations. the prevalent acceptance of religious beliefs among the general populace can be comprehended as the extensive transmission and embodiment of the religion inherited and assimilated into the cultural fabric of the philippines. 6 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19163 6 the profound prevalence of the spirituality of popular piety within the philippine setting significantly influences the local liturgical calendar. the commemoration of the nativity of jesus christ takes place on december 25. it will be presided over by a major procession in commemoration of the traslacion ng poong itim na nazareno (feast of the transfer of image of the black nazarene from its original shrine in intramuros to the quiapo church, now declared as the national shrine of the black nazarene) on january 9, followed by the commemoration of the feast of the child jesus, santo niño, in the subsequent week since this feast falls in the third week of january. these three christocentric festivities are observed and enormously celebrated by a large number of people in the philippine archipelago. the celebration of christmas reflects the culture of festivity, even in the difficulty of life brought about by various forms of economic oppression. the resilience of filipinos is shown in their attendance during the traslacion, which they relate to the image of the suffering christ, and lastly, the love for children is evident during the feast of the santo niño as the epicentre of the catholic faith. utilizing the “baby-adult-child” pattern of celebration, while possessing a comical quality, enhances the religious conviction of the people, fortifies their sense of belief, and expresses their unwavering devotion, which moulds the hearts of filipinos. chupungco (2014) affirmed that this phenomenon under consideration exhibits a profound connection to societal issues and human emotions while embodying a celebratory, heartfelt, spontaneous and expressive nature. 6 gestures and language of popular piety in the philippines philippine culture is embedded in the celebration of different forms of popular piety across the country. it is evident in the gestures and language of the ritual acts that engage a filipino christian. 6.1 gestures the gestural characteristic of popular piety in the philippines is distinguished by the presence of extravagant and exaggerated bodily motions, which extend beyond the mere acts of kissing or caressing religious images and objects, serving as symbolic actions as reflected in dppl, 15: popular piety is characterized by a great variety and richness of bodily, gestural, and symbolic expressions: kissing or touching images, places, relics, and sacred objects; pilgrimages, processions; going bare-footed or on one’s knees; kneeling and prostrating; wearing medals and badges ... these and similar expressions, handed down from father to son, are direct and simple ways of giving external expression to the heart and to one’s commitment to live the christian life. without this interior aspect, symbolic gesture runs the risk of degenerating into empty customs or mere superstitions, in the worst cases. 7 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19163 7 the rich cultural diversity of the philippines has contributed to the emergence of various symbolic gestures within the context of christian liturgy. the gestural acts performed during the lenten season in the country, like the actual crucifixion in cutud, pampanga, walking pilgrimages going to antipolo cathedral (our lady of peace and good voyage), and flagellation as a form of penance are identities of filipino religiosity. it is crucial to recognize the beauty and charism of popular piety while appreciating its anthropological and cultural aspects. however, it is important to use moderation in these displays of filipino devotion to ensure they align with sound theological principles and can feasibly harmonize with the liturgical celebration. furthermore, gestures are not only limited to actions but are evident in dance. the music of the people “is instinctively linked with hand-clapping, rhythmic corporeal movements, and even dance. such are external forms of interior sentiment and are part of popular traditions, especially on occasions such as patronal feasts” (dppl, 17). the surrounding environment undeniably influences the manifestation of an individual’s emotions through dance. in the country, a known dance ritual for fertility is celebrated in obando, bulacan, under the patronage of st paschal of baylon, st claire and our lady of salambao. in addition, street dances are performed in different parts of the country during the celebration of santo niño, particularly in cebu and tondo. from this, we can understand that the language of the body is the language of piety. however, can we consider dancing a meaningful form and expression of christian faith because the liturgy, in its strict sense, does not have provision for dancing during liturgical celebrations? in biblical times, we can see dancing as a form of worship: “wearing a linen ephod, david was dancing before the lord with all his might, while he and all israel were bringing up the ark of the lord with shouts and the sound of trumpets” (2 sam. 6.14-22). in this biblical text, we can see the encounter of faith and local culture. the convergence of beautiful, pleasing bodily movements, coupled with the supplications and devotions of individuals, presents an intriguing manifestation of faith that fosters a profound connection with the divine. dancing processions are a distinctive embodiment of the convergence between evangelization and cultural expressions. historical and cultural factors naturally mark popular piety. for this reason, it needs to be considered in assimilating the christian faith in language and gestures. it is vital to acknowledge that the process of inculturation places significance on preserving fundamental aspects of a particular cultural viewpoint, especially how filipinos understand christianity as influenced by “personal and national historical experiences of pain and struggle, of victory and celebration” (cfc, 31). 8 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19163 8 6.2 language it is imperative for the church to embody the essence of christ in all linguistic contexts because the theological principles of the christian faith are conveyed through language that is influenced by cultural perspectives. the prayer used in popular piety incorporates the notions of “pamilya” (pertaining to family), “kahirapan” (referring to poverty), “pagsamo” (signifying supplication), “pangako” (representing promise) and “pagmamahal” (indicating love) (all translations by the author). the perfect example is the novena prayer to our lady of perpetual help enshrined in baclaran church: we, too, have our crosses and trials. sometimes they almost crush us to the ground. dearest mother, share with us your abundant faith and confidence in god. make us aware that god never ceases to love us; that he answers all our prayers in the way that is best for us. strengthen our hearts to carry the cross in the footsteps of your divine son. help us to realize that he who shares the cross of christ will certainly share his resurrection. (congregation of the most holy redeemer baclaran, metro manila, philippines, may 1994) the prayers associated with popular piety have a socio-political dimension and are connected to societal problems: poverty, health, education and food in the philippines are indicative of several concepts that hold significance in the daily lives of its populace. in this context, “we have a fact of fundamental theological and pastoral significance: it is the poor, the object of god’s special love, who understand best” (instruction on christian freedom and liberation, 22). however, because the prayers are from the cultural perspective of a particular community, they may lose their inspiration from “sacred scripture, the liturgy, the fathers of the church and the magisterium, and concord with the church’s faith” (dppl, 16). the theological aspect of popular piety is made apparent by including scriptural readings. paul vi emphasizes the significance of incorporating biblical elements into 9 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19163 9 popular piety, stating, “today it is recognized as a general need of christian piety that every form of worship should have a biblical imprint” (marialis cultus, 30). the celebration of popular piety must be accompanied by scriptural text because “sacred theology rests on the written word of god, together with sacred tradition, as its primary and perpetual foundation” (dei verbum, 24). it is noteworthy to observe that the constitution on the sacred liturgy includes a provision for conducting a bible service prior to the commencement of the liturgical celebration given that the solemnities and festivities are widely observed in the archipelago: bible services should be encouraged, especially on the vigils of the more solemn feasts, on some weekdays in advent and lent, and on sundays and feast days. they are particularly to be commended in places where no priest is available; when this is so, a deacon or some other person authorized by the bishop should preside over the celebration. (sc, 35) the conscience of the people “is gradually formed through scripture and the church’s living tradition” (cfc, 99). given that the word of god is the bedrock of our catholic faith, “it encourages popular piety to discover the harmony between the old and new testaments and to interpret one in the light of the other … in choosing biblical texts, it is always desirable to take short texts that are easily memorized, incisive, and easily understood, even if difficult to actualize” (dppl, 89). through this, the church commemorates the manifestation of redemption in the present day through the proclamation of the word of god and the observance of ritual practices. hence, popular piety supplements the thirst for biblical text. moreover, the aesthetic appeal of language extends beyond its usage in religious prayers, encompassing the lyrical compositions found within sacred music as well. the music of the philippine catholic church has a distinct characteristic: it is festive and romantic. in fact, it has been explicitly explained that “filipinos are kundiman-oriented. the kundiman is a sad filipino song about wounded love. filipinos are naturally attracted to heroes sacrificing everything for love. they are patient and forgiving to a fault” (cfc, 39). the devotional, religious and even liturgical songs in the country acquire a kundiman dimension. for example, here is an excerpt of the marian song “stella maris” by bukas palad music ministry in 1997: maria sa puso ninuman (mary in the heart of all) ika’y tala ng kalangitan. (you shine brighter like a star in the sky.) ningning mo ay walang pagmamaliw (there are no words to describe your light) inang sinta inang ginigiliw (my dear beloved mother) (translation by the author) 10 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19163 10 the filipino terms “sinta” (dear) and “ginigiliw” (beloved) could serve as expressions that capture the deep-seated marian devotion observed among the filipino populace. it is not surprising that marian devotions hold significant popularity within the archipelago. kroeger (2015) states that the role of filipino popular religiosity, particularly its devotion to the virgin mary, has been acknowledged for its substantial impact on the preservation and advancement of the spiritual lives of local christians. pope john paul ii’s remarks on filipino devotion to mary as a pueblo amante de maria, a people with a special love and devotion to mary, indeed reinforced this assertion. the integration of music in popular piety is an inherent and essential aspect since it facilitates “the conservation of the received corpus of traditional songs … linked with a biblical and ecclesial spirit which is open to the possibility, where necessary, of their revision or to the composition of new songs” (dppl, 17). this experience can be perceived as a preliminary encounter with liturgical practices. the ethos of the vatican ii emphasizes the necessity of active participation and an understanding of the musical content. the purpose of sacred music is to evoke a profound sense of connection and communion with the divine. during singing, the faithful connect profoundly with the trinitarian god, mary, and the saints. kroeger (2015) concurred that these are the circumstances in which popular piety is suitable due to its assurance of veracity and authenticity. popular piety serves to deepen the faith and strengthen the bond of the people of god. however, it does not escape from misuse, abuse and misinterpretation. the issue of syncretism has been subject of discussion for the longest time, although some theologians seem to view this terminology in a very positive manner and an inevitable stage of inculturation. hence, since any evangelization will be incarnated in a specific culture, pope paul vi emphasizes that popular piety ‘is subject to penetration by many distortions of religion and superstition and might endanger the ecclesial community’ (evangelii nuntiandii, 48). syncretism is the process of amalgamating one or more religious systems to form a novel system by incorporating beliefs and unconnected traditions. religious syncretism is prominently observed, as seen by the presence of many religious symbols, such as the image of santo niño, buddha, and lucky charms, which are commonly displayed in commercial establishments. furthermore, the practices of baptism, weddings, and funerals are often accompanied by the incorporation of superstitious beliefs. in this context, numerous misunder standings regarding christian concepts may emerge, distorting the teachings and principles that are upheld. in light of the proselytizing nature of prevalent religious practices, it is imperative to delineate the boundaries that separate the incorporation of faith, culture, and individual inclinations inside our spiritual beliefs so that “it may never incorporate rites permeated by magic, superstition, animism, vendettas or sexual connotations” (varietates legitimae, 48) 11 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19163 11 7 reflection popular piety enriches the liturgical celebration. it must maintain a discernible identity while aligning harmoniously with the liturgy because “the spiritual life, however, is not limited solely to participation in the liturgy” (sc, 12). however, popular piety must find its culmination in the liturgical celebration. given its significance in the lives of the faithful, it is imperative that it remains intact and not be eliminated. it is the very mind of the constitution when it states: popular devotions of the christian people are to be highly commended, provided they accord with the laws and norms of the church, above all when they are ordered by the apostolic see. but these devotions should be so drawn up that they harmonize with the liturgical seasons, accord with the sacred liturgy, are in some fashion derived from it, and lead the people to it, since, in fact, the liturgy by its very nature far surpasses any of them. (sc, 13) what is said of the “christian liturgy is also true of popular piety” (dppl, 12). hence, it is suggestive that the prayers of popular piety exhibit a trinitarian dimension in the sense that “faithful require instruction on the character of christian prayer, which is directed to the father, through the mediation of the son, in the power of the holy spirit” (dppl, 80). its celebration assumes a centrality on the paschal mystery of christ while duly recognizing the integral role played by the holy spirit in guiding the faithful throughout worship, and the observance must foster an ecclesial dimension. in the pursuit of achieving harmony, “it is important that the question of the relationship between popular piety and the liturgy not be posed in terms of contradiction, equality, or, indeed, of substitution” (dppl, 50). since popular piety arises from the faith of the people, it must be taken care of with profound respect and mutual understanding. the harmonization must radiate the principle of sound tradition and legitimate progress. the dppl provided a framework for assessing and revitalizing popular piety that can be adopted in the philippine setting. it serves as a foundation for developing pastoral suggestions and local principles and guidelines for the renewal of popular piety in the country. the harmonization of popular piety is governed by several key principles, namely the “biblical, liturgical, ecumenical, and anthropological spirit” (dppl, 12). however, it is interesting to note that the principle for renewal of popular piety is only enshrined in dppl 12, with a vague description and subject for interpretation. there is no specific mention of whether the four criteria must be met or how they should be applied in a specific context. in this regard, there are aspects that need 12 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19163 12 consultation and discussion of local theologians. for example, several manifestations of popular piety have no biblical basis. one instance is the widely known easter procession, encuentro or salubong, which occurs at dawn after the easter vigil mass. salubong is a procession that portrays the encounter between jesus and mary, his mother following his resurrection. curiously, there is no biblical evidence to support this practice, but the filipino people firmly believe that jesus initially appeared to his mother. this obstacle hinders the process of renewing and aligning different expressions of popular piety with the liturgy. it will present a dilemma since one of the principles presented by the dppl is for popular piety to be guided by a biblical spirit. it is now the task of theologians and liturgists to establish the biblical foundation of the respected popular piety in their place. perhaps the salubong is the world in front of the text for the faithful. this faith is grounded in the resurrection account amplified by the matristic culture of filipinos. in this sense, perhaps it is best to look at the case of the sabuaga festival. cunanan (2021) examines the relationship between liturgy and popular piety in the context of the sabuaga festival, an easter sunday celebration in sto tomas, pampanga, philippines. the article discusses how harmony between liturgy and popular piety is achieved in the sabuaga festival. the author examined how the festival integrates the personal experiences and cultural traditions of the locals with the paschal mystery of christ through the ceremonies of santa misa and misa concelebranda. in the philippines, the holy week celebration culminates on easter sunday and is regarded as a weeklong vacation. this is the period when catholic individuals studying and working in the capital return to their provinces to reunite with their families and celebrate the holy eucharist collectively. the anthropological aspect of filipino culture, characterized by its familial orientation, is exemplified in the liturgical celebration. since culture has a vital role in the faith of the people, it is essential to discern its connection with the religious dimension of these practices while giving importance to their anthropological aspects. bevans (2018) affirms this assertion, citing that it is crucial for the church to communicate the gospel and educate effectively and in an attractive manner, and failing to include the cultural and contextual aspects of faith would be a betrayal of the church’s purpose. interestingly, the celebration also became a centre for tourism because of its numerous activities: 13 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19163 13 as the thomasians pray and worship the risen christ in the celebration of the holy eucharist, they unite their lives and history as a people to the mystery of christ’s resurrection. this is evident in the cultural events, which encourage participants to creatively portray the paschal mysteries. for example, in the free-interpretation dances, some participants portray the stabat mater, wherein the blessed mother stood at the foot of the cross in sorrow over her beloved son’s suffering and death. moreover, the street dancing festivities reenact the believer’s courageous anticipation of christ’s resurrection, which they believe is the source of their own future resurrection. (cunanan 2021: 75) as these activities are orchestrated by the parish church and the local government unit, they attract tourists, including catholics and non-catholics, providing an excellent opportunity for a dialogue and evangelization that is ecumenical by nature. since a multitude of devout people gather in these religious events, united within purpose and prayers while manifesting their beliefs, such practices serve as a “locus theologicus which demands our attention, especially at a time when we are looking to the new evangelization” (directory of catechesis, 338; henceforth dc). the church is an inclusive place because “her nature is a dialogical reality” (dc, 334). it endeavours to facilitate popular piety as a valid form of christian worship for the contemporary human person, particularly those who have limited religious education and catechetical formation. finally, the custom of sagalas involves the scattering of flower petals and the performance of stabat mater dolorosa, which is derived from the scriptural verse in luke 2.35. this practice suggests that the scriptural basis of salubong is not centred on the encounter between jesus and mary, but rather on the resurrection of christ and an appreciation on the role of the blessed mother in the economy of redemption. it lies within the genius of local theologians and liturgists to establish the biblical foundation in renewing popular piety in accordance to the principle of biblical spirit. the author also establishes the biblical roots of the procession by giving evidence from biblical occurrences, such as the crossing of the red sea and the procession of death at golgotha. this contains a concise yet impactful depiction of biblical verse and stories that is easily memorized by the faithful. the sabuaga festival exemplifies the real integration of catholic faith into indigenous customs. the incorporation of indigenous symbolism, music and dance displays profound reverence for heritage while preserving a distinct catholic doctrine. it demonstrates a model that satisfies the four key principles of dppl and also emphasizes its role in directing believers toward the appropriate practice of popular piety, resulting in a more profound sense of liturgical worship. it is an expression 14 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19163 14 of christian faith in the culture, and christians may explore its profound spiritual aspects in its expression as a “joyous encounter of the work of evangelization and culture” (pope john paul ii 1979). the liturgy serves as a formal and institutionalized framework for worship, but popular piety enriches the experience with fervent manifestations of faith that arise from the sincere devotion of faithful. the connection between popular piety and the liturgy can establish a dynamic and harmonious relationship that enhances the lived experiences of the people of god. the participation of the faithful in these forms of popular piety enriches their spirituality and finds its culmination in the liturgical celebration. 8 conclusion this study has examined the complex connection between popular piety and the liturgy, highlighting the significance of adapting these practices to the local culture to promote a more profound comprehension and active participation. it demonstrates that popular piety not only enhances the spiritual lives of filipino catholics but also acts as a crucial manifestation of their cultural identity and communal history. through a careful examination of the reception of vatican ii’s dppl, it is clear that popular piety represents genuine worship and a direct encounter with the divine, effectively connecting personal experiences of faith with the communal aspect of the liturgical celebration. although popular piety has a significant role in the lives of the faithful, the possible risks of misinterpretations, syncretism and departures from orthodoxy provide barriers to the smooth integration of popular piety into the liturgical. hence, any endeavour towards harmonization should exhibit reverence towards the authentic manifestations of popular piety while firmly rooted in the theological tenets of the catholic church. the results of this research affirm the idea that popular piety should not be seen only as a departure or hindrance to liturgical norms but rather as a productive means for evangelization and a catalyst for more profound involvement in the faith. the renewed interest in popular piety necessitates thoughtful contemplation, assessment and rejuvenation in alignment with the directives established by the dppl, guaranteeing that these practices consistently guide the faithful toward the core of catholic worship – the commemoration of the paschal mystery. the presence of popular piety in filipino culture offers the church a distinct chance to embrace diversity and foster unity in religion. 15 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19163 15 in the future, it is essential that pastoral initiatives give priority to theological education that clarify misunderstandings about popular piety and emphasizes their proper role within the liturgy. this study supports the idea that popular piety should be recognized as a legitimate form of worship. this would lead to a lively and inclusive church that respects the cultural practices of its members while staying dedicated to the fundamental catholic teachings. about the author kevin maicom is a faculty member of de la salle university, manila, philippines. over the years he has nurtured the faith and understanding of students in different academic institutions. his passion for christian living education extends beyond the classroom. he actively contributes to the field as a developmental editor and content and language editor for christian living and values education books at rex bookstore. this experience allows him to ensure the quality and accessibility of religious education materials. driven by a deep curiosity in the intersection of faith and culture, his research interest lies in liturgy, inculturation, and theological anthropology. this focus on the lived experience of faith informs both his teaching and his editorial work. contact: kevin.maicom@dlsu.edu.ph references magisterial documents catholic bishops’ conference of the philippines. 1997. the catechism for filipino catholics. manila: episcopal commission on catechesis and catholic education and word and life publications. congregation for divine worship and the discipline of the sacraments. 1994. iv instruction on the correct application of the conciliar constitution on the sacred liturgy, varietates legitimae. rome: libreria editrice vaticana. ———. 2001. directory on popular piety and the liturgy: principles and guidelines. rome: libreria editrice vaticana. congregation for the doctrine of the faith. 1986. instruction on christian freedom and liberation. rome: libreria editrice vaticana. pontifical council for the promotion of the new evangelization. 2020. directory of catechesis. rome: libreria editrice vaticana. pope francis. 2013. apostolic exhortation on the proclamation of the gospel in today’s world, evangelii gaudium. rome: libreria editrice vaticana. pope john paul ii. 1979. homily given at the shrine of the virgin mary of zapopang. rome: libreria editrice vaticana. pope paul vi. 1975. apostolic exhortation to the episcopate, to the clergy, and to all the faithful of the entire world, evangelii nuntiandii. rome: libreria editrice vaticana. mailto:kevin.maicom@dlsu.edu.ph 16 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19163 16 pope paul vi. 1965. dogmatic constitution on divine revelation, dei verbum. rome: libreria editrice vaticana. pope paul vi. 1975. for the right ordering and development of devotion to the blessed virgin mary, marialis cultus. rome: libreria editrice vaticana. second ecumenical sacred council of the vatican. 1963. constitution on the sacred liturgy, sacrosanctum concilium. rome: libreria editrice vaticana. books and journal articles bevans, s. 2019. “pope francis’s missiology of attraction.” international bulletin of mission research 43 (1): 20–28, https://doi.org/10.1177/2396939318800565. cunanan, e. 2021. “true harmony between liturgy and popular piety: expressing the thomasian faith in the sabuaga festival.” scientia 10 (2): 71–93. mendiola: manila. chupungco, a. 2014. “liturgy for the filipino church.” in j. manabat (ed.), filipino religious culture and liturgy: status questionis. manila: san beda college, 31–40; also in j. manabat (ed.), liturgy and popular religiosity. manila: san beda college, 325–34. foley, e. 2024. “lecture on the liturgical movement as decolonization: an historical perspective.” manila: de la salle university. francis, m. 2014a. local worship, global church: popular religion and the liturgy. collegeville, minnesota: liturgical press. ———. 2014b. “the future of liturgical inculturation and the contribution of anscar j. chupungco, osb”, liturgy 29 (3): 3–10, at p. 9. doi: 10.1080/0458063x.2014.894824. kroeger, j. 2015. “discovering the rich treasures of popular piety: theological-pastoral-missiological insights”, landas: journal of loyola school of theology, https://ajol.ateneo.edu/ landas/articles/158/1783. macaranas, j. 2021. “understanding folk religiosity in the philippines.” religions 12: 800, https:// doi.org/10.3390/rel12100800. tondo, j. 2010. “popular religiosity and the transnational journey: inscribing filipino identity in the santo niño fiesta in new zealand,” asia pacific journal of anthropology 11 (3–4), https:// doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2010.513401. https://doi.org/10.1177/2396939318800565 https://ajol.ateneo.edu/landas/articles/158/1783 https://ajol.ateneo.edu/landas/articles/158/1783 https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12100800 https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12100800 https://doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2010.513401 https://doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2010.513401 ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 2 93 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20158 b o o k r e v i e w doi: 10.54195/ef20158 bevans, stephen b. 2024. community of missionary disciples: the continuing creation of the church maryknoll, ny: orbis isbn: 978-1-62698-555-1 reviewed by james butler i’ve been excited to read this book since i first heard that stephen bevans was writing it, and then even more so when i heard him present the main ideas from the book at a research seminar at the university of roehampton. his book seeks to develop an ecclesiology based on the insight that it is not that the church has a mission, but the mission has a church. he argues that the church is continually coming into being on its pilgrim journey. for those familiar with bevans’ writing the book has a familiar feel. it has his detailed, insightful and generous approach, showing his deep engagement with his own catholic tradition, as well as an informed and appreciative engagement with theologians and sources from across the ecumenical spectrum. some of the discussion draws heavily from his previous work, bringing ideas from a number of his books and articles into one, longer treatment of mission ecclesiology. one thing i particularly appreciated was chapter 2, which is a complete revision of the first chapter of constants in context, telling the story of acts. this story is narrated in a much more pneumatological way, picking up much more clearly the church coming into being through the mission of god and the work of the spirit. the book is split into three parts which focus on three different words from the title community of missionary disciples. part 1 focuses on “missionary” exploring of the missio dei and the essence of church as missionary. there is plenty of biblical work in chapters 1 and 2, followed by engagement with church teaching in chapter 3. chapter 4 explores mission as a “single, complex reality” with depth and breadth before giving an account of prophetic dialogue in chapter 5. part 2 focuses on “community”, developing an account of church through the biblical metaphors of the “people of god” (chapter 6), “body of christ” (chapter 7) and “creation of the holy spirit” (chapter 8). chapters 9 and 10 explore the credal marks of the church, 94 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20158 94 which bevans prefers to see as dimensions. part 3 focuses on the word “disciples” with the comment that the structure of the church serves mission. he discusses the identity of disciples in their baptism (chapter 11) before turning to discussion of leadership (chapter 12), ministry (chapter 13) and ordination (chapter 14 and 15). those aware of pope francis’ writings, and particularly evangelii gaudium, will immediately notice that the phrase he has picked up for talking about church – the community of missionary disciples – is straight out of francis’ work. pope francis is a key conversation partner for bevans throughout the book, and he highlights the ways in which francis’ work has drawn out these key themes from the catholic tradition, particularly the writings of the second vatican council. this book is more clearly catholic than many of bevans’ writings, spending a lot of time engaging with papal documents and the catholic tradition. this, i think, is a real strength, drawing out insights which come from catholic theology about ecclesiology in the light of the missio dei. the book also acts as a helpful commentary on pope francis’ missiological and ecclesiological emphasis, combining his writings with his biography and history. this book still demonstrates bevans commitment to ecumenical work as he engages with a wealth of missiology across the traditions. the comprehensiveness and detail which he goes to does, however, mean that the book has more of a textbook feel for much of the time. we are taken in detail over many arguments and discussion which will be of great service to those approaching these ideas for the first time, but in developing an argument for the church as a community of missionary disciples i wondered if perhaps some of the details could have been referenced and footnoted rather than included within the main text. the skill of bevans is of being able to bring together a huge wealth of writings, knowledge, wisdom and theology, in a coherent and engaging way. this is one reason among many that he will have an impact on the field of missiology for many years to come. perhaps, though, this breadth and depth means that at times bevans’ own voice becomes slightly lost. for someone who has had such a significant impact on the field, i think he could feel a little freer to speak in his own voice and make clearer his own constructive contributions. perhaps this is in part down to his humility and generosity, where he sees the good in everything, and values the diversity of missiology. which brings me to the second point, that at times i would like to have heard a more critical voice. while it is great to have the diversity of voices, i couldn’t help thinking that voices which he engaged with together, might have quite robust critiques of each other, and perhaps this kind of conversation would have benefitted the book. for example, christopher wright’s framing of the missio dei is distinct from, say, pope francis or the conversation in the missional church literature and these differences could have been explored. 95 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20158 95 this book will be a significant textbook for mission ecclesiology, and will be used by many students to great effect. personally, the thing which i most value about the book is the way bevans offers a commentary on pope francis’ thought about mission and ecclesiology, placing his evangelii gaudium and fratelli tutti in the wider context of catholic missiology and in pope francis’ own history as an argentinian priest. i would highly recommend the book as a thorough and detailed engagement with a breadth and depth of writing and reflection around mission and ecclesiology. at the same time, i would like to see stephen bevans write a shorter book, perhaps 80 pages or so, which take this book as a foundation and allow him the freedom to articulate his own account of mission ecclesiology more clearly. i’m thinking of something like herbert mccabe’s god matters, offering pithy insights and theological depth, freed from the need to heavily evidence, reference or footnote. about the reviewer james butler, university of roehampton, london; church mission society, oxford. contact: james.butler@roehampton.ac.uk mailto:james.butler@roehampton.ac.uk 1 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef21714 a r t i c l e ecclesial futures 2025 doi: 10.54195/ef21714 making sense about churches’ engagement with technology: a post-pandemic reflection on digital ministry heidi a. campbell and meg boone abstract the covid-19 pandemic marked a pivotal moment for religious congregations, compelling them to navigate profound technological, theological and social disruptions. this article employs sensemaking theory to explore how congregational leaders interpreted and adapted to the challenges of digital ministry. sensemaking theory offers a framework for understanding how people make sense and meaning out of complex situations, like to global covid-19 pandemic. the article investigates church leaders’ experiences as documented by the tech in churches during covid-19 project, a threeyear study of how indiana churches utilized and integrated technology to sustain community and worship amidst the pandemic. findings highlight shifts in leaders’ attitudes toward technology, from seeing it as a peripheral tool pre-pandemic to an essential component of ministry afterwards. the study also reveals generational differences in technology adoption and decision-making, reflecting diverse approaches to maintaining theological and communal identities in a digital context. despite technology offering unique opportunities for outreach and inclusivity, concerns about the sustainability, burnout and authenticity in tech ministry persist. this research calls for further exploration of equitable technological integration, intergenerational collaboration, and the relationship between faith and digital tools in post-pandemic reality. keywords: congregations, church, covid-19, pandemic, sensemaking, technology 1. introduction the covid-19 pandemic was a critical moment for religious congregations, disrupting established liturgical patterns and practices and forcing rapid technological adaptation upon them. for many religious leaders, the pandemic presented unprecedented challenges, requiring many congregations to reevaluate their roles, strategies and methods of engaging their community. technology became an essential tool, 2 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef21714 2 enabling connection online at a time of social isolation. this shift raised questions about the nature of worship, community, and identity in a digital age. this study uses sensemaking theory as a lens for understanding how and why religious leaders approached technology in distinct ways during and after the covid-19 pandemic. derived from social and organizational psychology, this theory explains how individuals and groups interpret information and make sense of their experiences. it helps explain how individuals seek to logically make sense of new and challenging situations, especially when previous experience are not adequate resources to deal with present circumstances. we argue that religious leaders, tasked with maintaining continuity, engaged in a process of sensemaking in their technology decision-making related to ministry practices. applying sensemaking theory helps to highlight issues congregations and leaders need to consider when seeking to prepare for future ecclesial disruptions. approaching churches’ technological decision-making around the pandemic as a form of sensemaking highlights several issues leaders were forced to navigate. pastors were thrust into a new cultural space, a technological environment where social and spiritual interactions became primarily mediated experiences. by engaging with sensemaking theory, this article explores three key research questions: – how did congregational leaders “make sense” of the necessity of using technology during the pandemic? – how do congregational leaders continue to “make sense” and justify using technology in their religious ministry/work? – what questions and issues does technological and ministry sensemaking raise for the further study and support of congregational engagement with technology? the article answers these questions by applying sensemaking theory to identify the rationale and responses behind church leaders’ decisions about which tools and platforms to use, as well as to frame new patterns of practice. by drawing on data presented in campbell, osteen and sparks 2023, this article uses sensemaking theory as a lens to help explain church leaders’ technological decision-making processes in indiana and describe the rapid response required of them to new technologies. 2. studying the covid-19 pandemic, congregations and technology engagement while there is an extensive literature on the theological and practical use of technology in church congregations and worship settings, dating back to the early 2000s (e.g. hipps, 2005; soukup, 2008; hutchings, 2017), this article specifically focuses on research regarding technology use and choices made during the covid-19 pandemic. 3 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef21714 3 this period significantly disrupted religious worship, prompting many scholars to investigate congregational adaptation to technology and the implications of their choices in more nuanced ways. one scholarly concern was the implications of rapid digital adoption on religious communities, especially the impact on their buildings and relationships. many scholars focused on the ways churches’ experiences in virtual spaces influenced congregational understanding of what it means to be a faith community. for instance, dein and watts (2023) explored how online services reshaped interactions between congregants, creating tension between those who saw digital accessibility as positive and those who showed concerns about the perceived lack of “authentic” fellowship offered. similarly, makhutla (2021) emphasized that while social media, particularly facebook, aided in maintaining congregational connections, some of these same churches voiced concerns about the long-term impact of livestreaming worship on their community relationship. a second research theme was concerns about the “digital divide”, illuminating disparities in many congregations regarding technology access and skills among congregants. village and francis (2020) explored the social fragility of rural churches, showing that limited resources hindered their ability to adopt digital solutions. kühle and larsen (2023) expanded on this theme, examining how inequities in internet access exacerbated challenges for smaller, rural congregations, forcing many to rely on minimal solutions such as recorded services uploaded to social media. i also (campbell 2023) argued that the move to online worship revealed to many congregations for the first time that they were impacted by the digital divide, due to a lack of resources and expertise, which complicated their digital transition. these findings align with broader analyses of digital inequalities (connolly, costa-font & srivastava 2025), which explored systemic barriers to technology adoption during the pandemic across various sectors. third, scholars raised questions about the cultural and theological implications of digital gatherings and how they altered, or even threatened, established aspects of liturgical worship. while the theological challenges posed by digital worship to established ecclesiological models have been explored for more than a decade (e.g. campbell and garner 2016; berger 2018; kurlberg and phillips 2020), scholarly attention increased during the covid-19 pandemic. for example, edelman et al. (2021) found that while digital rituals created inclusivity for individuals with disabilities or in remote locations, they often left participants feeling disconnected from sacred spaces and personal interactions integral in worship. francis and village (2022) explored how anglo-catholic and evangelical clergy within the church of england 4 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef21714 4 differed in their acceptance of digital tools, reflecting broader tensions between tradition and innovation. this suggests scholars must reflect on online worship calls for the rethinking of the nature of traditional missional and ecclesiological practices (kurlberg and phillips 2020). fourth and finally, sustainability and burnout in tech ministry emerged as a pressing concern. benton and girdley (2023) emphasized that both clergy and volunteers faced significant fatigue, exacerbated by the dual demands of doing digital and in-person ministry during the pandemic. griffin’s research (2021) reported many pastors contemplated transitioning to secular careers due to the pressures of ministry during the pandemic, highlighting the need for clergy training in managing conflict during times of high stress. researchers have also highlighted concerns about the sustainability of digital ministry post-pandemic, especially as pastors and volunteers reported burnout ( johnston et al. 2022). this literature underscores that the pandemic was a pivotal moment of both technology growth and stress for clergy and congregations. collectively, these studies highlight the need to approach the covid-19 pandemic as a unique period of forced transformation for faith communities who had to make dynamic changes to established systems and practices, often before they could fully reflect on the implications of those choices. to better understand what occurred, we offer sensemaking theory as a framework for analyzing how church leaders navigated technological adoption and negotiated the impact of their choices. 3. sensemaking theory as a tool for studying churches’ response to technology this article argues that church leaders’ responses to technology during the pandemic can be better understood through the lens of “sensemaking theory.” sensemaking theory originated within organizational psychology as an approach to studying how individuals and groups interpret and respond to ambiguous or complex situations. karl weick, a pioneer in this theory, defines sensemaking as the process of “retrospective interpretation” where individuals and organizations construct meaning from past experiences to make sense of the present and guide future actions. central to this theory is the idea that individuals do not passively absorb information, but instead actively create narratives to explain what they encounter in their environment (weick 1995). according to weick, sensemaking is driven by a need to situate oneself in new social contexts and understand one’s place and role in the emerging space of change. 5 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef21714 5 sensemaking occurs when organizations face disruption or uncertainty – moments when old structures or ways of operating no longer work, which aptly describes the situation in which most religious leaders found themselves at the onset of the pandemic. people use their social interactions and existing knowledge to interpret the situation, derive meaning and make decisions. weick’s framework emphasizes that the environment itself is “enacted”, meaning that people do not simply react to the environment but shape it through their actions and decisions. this notion that individuals and groups seek to create a sensible, understandable environment is critical in understanding how organizations adapt in times of crisis (maitlis and christianson 2014). over time, scholars have expanded the application of sensemaking theory to the fields of communication, information science, and human-computer interactions to study the social and interactive aspects of how individuals create shared meanings through communication. instead of viewing sensemaking only as a retroactive practice, scholars have utilized it to explore dynamic meaning-making practices, examining how individuals conceptualize information seeking and use in active learning situations (savolainen 1993; ancona 2011). however, whether applied to active or past situations, sensemaking theory is fundamentally about studying how people create a plausible narrative about an event or social interaction to constrict a shared understanding of a situation that can be communicated to others (sandberg and tsoukas 2015). both deborah ancona from information science and karl weick from organizational studies have contributed to the development of sensemaking theory. while they highlight different characteristics of the theory, they overlap in three areas. this includes (1) seeing sensemaking as both an individual and communal enactment, (2) drawing together experience and perspective to construct a shared meaning or mental map, and (3) actively creating a plausible conceptual environment to contextualize the current situation and aid in both instrumental functioning and comprehending times of change. we argue that enacting sensemaking strategies was crucial for many groups, including religious organizations, during the covid-19 pandemic. it provides a way to understand and explain how religious communities, especially congregations, interpreted and responded to the many external disruptions and forced changes they faced regarding technology adoption. for instance, when churches were forced to close their doors during the pandemic, leaders quickly turned to digital platforms to maintain community and continuity in worship. this rapid shift can be understood as an example of sensemaking in action, as church leaders extracted cues from their environment, such as the need to keep worshippers connected and the limitations of in-person gatherings, and enacted new 6 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef21714 6 solutions. many churches relied on platforms like zoom and facebook to continue worship, but this digital transition was not without its challenges. church leaders had to reinterpret what it meant to gather and worship communally. by conceptually constructing new spaces for spiritual engagement leaders attempted to create meaning in a time of uncertainty. moreover, the role of identity construction in religious sensemaking cannot be overstated. religious groups, deeply tied to collective identity and shared values, often interpret and navigate change through theological frameworks. as sandberg and tsoukas (2015) highlight, sensemaking in organizations is not just about finding plausible solutions but also about maintaining consistency with existing identities. in this way, the transition to digital worship was not merely a technical decision, but a redefinition of religious practices that required building links to theological and communal values. in this article, we employ sensemaking theory as a means to reflect on and explain how religious leaders and congregations respond to change, particularly during the covid-19 crisis. the theory’s emphasis on identity, social interaction, and collaborative interpretation helps to explain not only how religious leaders and congregants navigated ambiguity and uncertainty during the pandemic but also how religious congregations continue to reflect on and make technology decisions in ways that maintain their community and theological identities in the digital age of post-pandemic reality. 4. technological decision-making in the tech in churches project this article centres around the findings of the tech in churches during the covid-19 pandemic project (see https://www.techinchurches.org/). this three-year research study took place between 2020 and 2023, seeking to understand how indiana churches integrated digital technology during the covid-19 pandemic and its broader implications for congregational life. funded by the lilly endowment and in partnership with the center for congregations’ “connect through tech” (ctt) grant programme, this study tracked the impact the move towards online worship made on 2,700 religious congregations in indiana in the usa. each received a technology grant of up to $5,000 to help them purchase equipment, wi-fi, or platform subscriptions, enabling them to transition from traditional in-person worship to online worship in early 2020. the project sought to investigate the practical, social and theological choices made by these congregations and their leadership. central questions included how churches utilized grant funds, how technology shaped pastors’ https://www.techinchurches.org/ 7 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef21714 7 and congregants’ perceptions of ministry and community, and what challenges and opportunities arose from the adoption of digital tools. the research was conducted in three stages to address its objectives comprehensively. the first stage focused on how church leaders navigated decisions about technology during the pandemic’s early days. the second explored how churches perceived and articulated the relationship between faith and technology. the final stage examined the long-term impacts of these technological changes on pastors, congregations and church practices. data collection methods included qualitative analysis of notes and transcripts from “tech talk sessions” involving 478 church leaders, a discourse analysis of the grant application and reports submitted by grant recipients, and a survey of 246 leaders in congregations involved in this project. the transcripts of the tech talk sessions, grant applications, and final grant reports were provided to the research team by the center for congregations, which initially collected this information. these were treated as anonymized secondary texts, which were thematically analysed. survey data was collected directly by the research team. the survey instrument, data collection and informed consent process were all reviewed and approved by the institutional review board at texas a&m university, where this research took place. the study produced three major reports and five “tech trend” papers, which collectively documented findings from 2020 to 2023. the research revealed several key insights. in the first report, findings highlighted the immense pressure on pastors, who often became de facto technology coordinators, taking on additional responsibilities without shedding existing ones. churches aimed to recreate a digitally mediated “sunday morning feeling” but faced challenges such as volunteer burnout and difficulties engaging elderly members in the online transition (campbell and osteen 2021). despite these struggles, the shift opened new opportunities for outreach and engagement, allowing churches to connect with geographically distant individuals and previously unreached groups. the second report explored how pastors used ctt grant funds to rapidly build online worship capabilities (campbell, daly, osteen and wallace 2023). technology was often described as a “needed blessing”, enabling churches to sustain their mission and reach new audiences. the report also noted that small and rural churches, which received the majority of grants, often depended on these funds to overcome significant technological barriers. by the third report, the study shifted focus to the post-pandemic era, examining how churches’ attitudes and practices toward technology had evolved. many congregations reported increased acceptance of digital tools, though differences in adaptation emerged based on church size and the age of leaders (campbell, osteen and sparks 2023). while technology helped churches 8 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef21714 8 innovate and sustain their missions during the pandemic, the shift also raised questions about the nature of authentic community in a digital space. overall, the project emphasized the transformative potential of technology for churches, as well as its capacity to foster innovation and the challenges it poses to traditional conceptions of worship and community. by documenting these experiences, the research contributes valuable insights into how faith communities navigate the interplay between digital tools and religious practice. in this article, we focus on the findings from the final report of this research project and what it reveals about how church leaders made sense of the numerous decisions, changes, and new skills they had to adopt during the pandemic. 5. making sense of technology engagement during covid-19 campbell, osteen and sparks 2023 provides insights into how indiana church leaders navigated integrating technology over three years during the covid-19 pandemic. in the following two sections, we highlight specific practical and conceptual shifts made by church leaders and congregations in their use and thinking about technology. all quotes and information shared in the remainder of this article were taken from this report and/or the research data collection related to the survey findings. in this section, we address the first research question of how congregational leaders made sense of the necessity of using technology during the pandemic. 5.1 pandemic and technology as agents of forced change in this study, leaders highlighted technology as a factor leading to significant changes in their congregation. however, it is important to note that the prime cause for technology adoption was not the technology itself, but rather the pandemic crisis that brought these initial disruptions. technology, instead, was a solution adopted by many churches to solve the problem of the forced closure of congregations. some leaders and congregations seemed to initially blame technology for challenges encountered during moves to digital worship. this was because for most churches, adoption of digital technology was not a gradual process, but a sudden necessity. however, this blame-shifting could be seen as a coping mechanism for the stress that adopting technology caused. as one pastor from greencastle, indiana, summed it up succinctly: “covid made us start using technology. we did not have a choice.” anxiety about technology could also be tied to the fact that most congregations in this study were not technology outsiders; pre-pandemic, only 25% of churches in the study reported using digital media in their services. however, by december 2021, 71% of the studied churches had embraced live streaming and other online tools. 9 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef21714 9 churches with smaller congregations, especially those in rural areas, often faced more struggles with technology, as they reported they often lacked even basic technology resources (lack of computer or wi-fi in the church) and so experienced a steeper learning curve. this highlights that technology was often, at least initially, viewed in a critical light by some as a way to draw attention away from the continued instability and uncertainty caused by the impact of the covid-19 pandemic. 5.2 technology applauded as ministry game-changer despite the concerns and stress that technology caused for congregational leaders, many reported that it also presented unprecedented opportunities for expanding their community and ministry into new local and global contexts. many congregations leveraged facebook, with usage skyrocketing from “a little” (30%) pre-pandemic to “a lot” (63%) post-pandemic. one church shared that uploading recorded services to facebook became a critical method of communication. livestreaming services became a game-changer for many churches, opening their service to a broader online audience and ways to connect with previous members. this enables them to see online church services as a form of outreach, rather than a member-focused gathering. many pastors reported that technology enhanced accessibility for members in ways they had not previously considered. online services now offer people access to live transcription and the ability to control the volume of music and preaching. this contributed to some leaders shifting their view about online services from being a temporary stop-gap solution to a potential for expanded ministry. a church in fort wayne, indiana, with a congregation of 75, shared that “live streaming is allowing us to reach those we otherwise would not be able to.” these shifts were not merely about maintaining connections during the pandemic; they also enabled churches to expand their ministries in ways previously unimaginable, reaching shut-ins, elderly members and geographically distant individuals. what technology disrupted was established systems, practices and expectations of what a church gathering is. what technology offered was an innovative glimpse into what the church could look like. 5.3 congregations stretched as technology decision-making bypasses established processes the technological decision-making processes religious leaders had to undergo during the pandemic challenged previous church systems and protocols. leaders commented that pre-pandemic, congregational decision-making processes were often structured, lengthy affairs. it often involved multiple stages of information gathering, introduction of change to a select group, discussion and debate, proposal evaluation, and members’ feedback. it could also raise issues of practicality and 10 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef21714 10 resources alongside considerations about church tradition (such as liturgy, theological praxis). one pastor reported having to make immediate decisions about technology within the first few weeks of the pandemic, which disrupted this normal process and increased anxiety for leaders and members. in order to ease these tensions, pastors often presented technology as a temporary or practical measure to members or church leadership, a pragmatic solution to an immediate problem. this helped alleviate or subvert some congregational concerns, as long-term use was not part of the decision-making conversation. another pastor is focused on the instrumental nature of what technology allows them to do, to mitigate debates about the potential impact of technology choices. others, however, found themselves having to follow pre-established decision-making protocols, which often slowed down the implementation of tech solutions and seemed to increase rather than lessen anxiety about technology. technology implementation also created anxiety because few churches in this study used technology in their services, and only 3% of churches pre-pandemic considered it an integral part of their ministry. however, based on the 2023 survey during the post-pandemic period, this number had increased to 17%, reflecting a profound shift in attitudes. church leaders, however, learned that framing technology as a pragmatic decision made under pressure often impacted their congregations and budgets, leading to the purchase of tools based on immediacy and necessity. some leaders expressed regret for buying more than they needed, in terms of numbers or device capacity, or purchasing platform subscriptions they did not need, or acquiring second-hand items that were not system-compatible. they reported that these purchases might have been avoided if they had even briefly considered a long-term technology strategy or undertaken a more thorough review process. 5.4 technology choices influenced by generational associations by far, the most common technology adopted by churches in this study to stream services was facebook. its usage skyrocketed amongst congregations from being used “a little” (30%) pre-pandemic, to “a lot” (63%) post-pandemic. many churches reported that uploading recorded services to facebook and creating a congregational facebook page became a critical method of communication between leaders and members during the pandemic. this study showed that a preference for using facebook is not surprising, as leadership dynamics and generational affiliation seemed to correlate with technology decisions directly. the age of church leaders directly shaped technology platforms chosen by congregations, as the primary age range for pastors in the study was 50-70. the study found younger leaders favoured platforms like instagram and twitter for church communication and livestreaming, while older leaders heavily relied on facebook. for example, 83% of leaders aged 11 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef21714 11 60–70 used facebook extensively compared to 58% of those aged 20–30. notably, this generational difference in social media platform preference – adults over 50 primarily use facebook while youth under 30 use instagram most – mirrors research findings in other studies correlating digital media preference to specific age groups (pew research center 2024). leaders reported that when considering what technology their church should adopt during the pandemic, they often went with what was familiar or most comfortable to them and other church leaders. selecting a digital platform that was familiar or already used by the church seemed to alleviate some stress around technology choices for both members and leaders. it also highlights the importance of paying attention to generational differences in technology use and familiarity when making technology decisions that serve the whole congregation. such consideration may also help mitigate congregations’ stress related to change and technology. 6. making sense of continued technology engagement in post-pandemic churches this study also highlights that conversations about technology decision-making are not yet done for churches, even though the covid-19 crisis is over. this section addresses the second research question of how church leaders continue to make sense of their use of technology post-pandemic. specifically, this study found that leaders still require negotiation and justification of technology adoption and use with their congregations in two areas. 6.1 the digital divide is still present, impacting many congregations despite churches adding new digital resources to their ministry toolboxes, many leaders realized they are still behind the digital curve. leaders reported making progress in learning about and using digital media. however, the “digital divide” remains a significant concern, particularly for smaller and rural congregations. the study found larger churches had a tech advantage, in terms of resources and pre-existing infrastructure, with 59% of those with over 500 attendees already utilizing technology before the pandemic. in contrast, only 22% of smaller churches with under 100 members had done so. this disparity meant that smaller congregations had to make more drastic adjustments during the initial stages of the pandemic, with 63% implementing technology for the first time. many relied on basic tools like recording and uploading videos, as shared by a church in west lafayette, indiana, which used facebook for weekly sermon discussions. these smaller churches often struggled with funding and expertise, and the ctt grants played a crucial role in bridging this gap. however, challenges persist, as many congregations still lack the resources 12 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef21714 12 to integrate digital tools into their ministries fully. the resistance and technological hesitancy exposed underlying theological concerns related to digital justice, as limited access impacted congregations’ ability to connect. the study suggests that embracing digital tools could foster inclusivity and bridge generational divides in religious communities, reinforcing the need to shift how churches perceive and integrate digital media into worship. 6.2 long-term congregational technology integration requires continued evaluation and learning as many churches continue to incorporate facets of technology into their worship, pastors face ongoing concerns about balancing technology use with traditional forms of ministry. burnout among leaders is a recurring theme, as the demands of managing both in-person and digital platforms take a toll on them. a kokomo church noted the importance of congregational support during their pastoral transition and the pandemic, which helped them navigate these challenges. for many, livestreaming remains central, not only for worship but also for expanding discipleship initiatives. a church in marion, indiana, shared that they used grant-funded equipment to create a curriculum for their discipleship pathway, illustrating how technology can be leveraged for long-term ministry goals. however, leaders continue to wrestle with questions about fostering authentic community in a hybrid model. while many respondents expressed optimism about technology’s role, they acknowledged that it cannot fully replace the interpersonal connections that define congregational life. 7. technological and cultural sensemaking in postpandemic churches this section examines how sensemaking influences church leaders’ decisions regarding technology for their congregations in 2023 and beyond. specifically, we highlight two ways in which the construction of specific narratives, emerging from leaders and congregational use of technology, framed post-pandemic views of digital media in ministry and worship. 7.1 congregational shifts in views of technology a key category in the study is the shift in attitudes towards technology before and after the pandemic. pre-pandemic, many church leaders viewed technology as a peripheral tool rather than an essential part of their ministry. however, the pandemic forced many churches to adapt to online worship formats, and post-pandemic church leaders rapidly showed a much more positive or neutral attitude towards technology. this shift could be analysed using the concept of “enacted environments” from sensemaking theory. sensemaking theory posits that organizations 13 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef21714 13 enact their environments, meaning that the actions taken by church leaders, such as implementing live streaming and social media outreach, were not just responses to the pandemic but also a way of constructing new digital environments for their ministries. for instance, the transition from negative to neutral or positive attitudes towards technology, especially the increased use of platforms like facebook, can be analyzed as a process of identity construction and sensemaking where church leaders sought to adapt their theological and community identities to a new digital context. by applying sensemaking theory as an interpretive lens, researchers can explore how church leaders, facing forced changes, constructed new narratives around digital technology, ultimately shaping the direction of technological use in the post-pandemic period. 7.2 generational differences in technological decision-making a second way the use of sensemaking impacted congregations’ views of technology was seen in notable generational differences in response to technology within churches. according to the study, younger leaders (under 40 years old) tended to embrace social media platforms like instagram and twitter. in comparison, older leaders (in their 60s and 70s) leaned more towards using facebook for communication and outreach. this provides a rich context for applying sensemaking theory’s focus on the social aspects of decision-making, where generational identity plays a crucial role in interpreting and responding to the crisis. these generational differences were not simply about technological competence, but also about how different age groups constructed their identity about technology. for example, older leaders who may have initially resisted adopting digital tools could have gradually come to see technology as a necessary part of maintaining their religious mission. this change can be understood as a process of sensemaking in which these leaders redefined their role within their congregations and adapted their practices to ensure continuity of worship and community. the study finds that church leaders aged 60+ were more likely to use facebook as their primary platform, supporting this interpretation, as it reflects the leaders’ process of incorporating technology in ways that aligned with their personal and communal identities. sensemaking theory helps to explain the generational identity differences that influenced not just technology adoption but also how leaders made sense of their evolving role within the church community and how these decisions impacted the congregation’s engagement with digital platforms. this strategy highlights the dynamic, ongoing nature of sensemaking, where each generational group actively negotiates their responses to the pandemic’s disruptions. 14 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef21714 14 8. lessons learned by leaders on navigating times of change by returning to the three areas highlighted in the literature review on key traits of sensemaking – individual and communal enactment, construction of an experience of shared meaning making, and situating the event in a new environment where functional and conceptual resources exist – we can see how church leaders enacted the process of sensemaking. we also suggest it points to a process leaders can enact to prepare for future times of unexpected change. when churches were faced with the sudden disruption of in-person services, this required both leaders and their congregations to engage in personal and corporate sensemaking. this required leaders to recognize the urgency of responding to the situation thrust upon them, and realize a technology-driven ministry was their best, and often only, solution. a pastor from greencastle, indiana, stated, “when covid made us [start using technology],” highlighting the reactive nature of this decision (campbell et al., 2023). church leaders had to adapt quickly, often learning on the fly, with pastors shouldering the burden of setting up and operating new systems, which added a new layer of responsibility to their roles. however, this was more than a pragmatic decision, and leaders had to recognize that technology adoption and adaptation brought with it liturgical, ecclesiological and theological challenges. this meant leaders had to present and “sell” the idea of digital worship to congregations, who had mixed pragmatic and theological concerns. evidence from this study suggests that pastors who engage leadership teams and/or congregational members in discussion and buy-in about technology adoption before it is implemented find greater long-term acceptance of digital ministry. also, for those in technologically hesitant or resistant congregations, framing the technology transition not as a choice, but as a necessity, or the only solution to social-distancing restrictions, seemed to help leaders and members accept a move to online worship. this shows the importance of corporate sensemaking in the initial adoption of a digital ministry solution and the need for communal engagement in naming and implementing change solutions. the next trait of sensemaking highlighted is creating a space and attaching meaning to the new experience in ways that connect with the already established identity of the group. this demonstrates how leaders have transitioned in their views and framing of digital media over time. in this study, we observed congregational leaders shifting, often subtly, from a pragmatic framing of technology to a more missional focus. while many leaders presented technology as the only viable option to continue services at the onset of the pandemic, by late 2020 to early 2021, many leaders in this study began to stress the realized opportunities online worship offered. 15 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef21714 15 leaders justified the continued use of technology by emphasizing how it offered expanded reach to new audiences and even new opportunities for established church members with different limitations. one leader from richmond, indiana, proudly shared, “people appreciated the livestreams”, especially those who had to continue social distancing due to health issues (campbell et al., 2023). leaders noticeably adapted their narratives to highlight the positive aspects of online worship, like allowing former or long-distance members to reconnect with the church or offering an accessibility alternative for older members who had challenges accessing areas of the physical church building. by highlighting how technology served to enhance the church community and ministry, it presented digital tools as strategic assets for their old members and new online visitors. many pastors describe online worship as allowing them to reflect on their faith community and how it could function. seeing and describing the church “enhanced” or “reimagined” by technology presents an image of church 2.0 or a digital church that could offer new forms of church outreach, better maintain social connections, and engage with a broader, more diverse audience. finally, by presenting digital worship as a new experience, but one that extended their established goals and mission, played an important role in congregational buy-in to technology. leaders noted that once members were able to get over their initial fears about technology and adjust to the technological learning curve, seeing digital worship as extending what they had already been doing helped the congregations become more comfortable with this new way of doing church. this also proved important as leaders began to justify continued technology use post-pandemic, emphasizing its ability to reach broader audiences and support new forms of community engagement. sensemaking helped congregations reframe new practices as part of their evolving identity in response to external change. while the context in which the worship service was new, leaders sought to conceptually stress the ways the services had often not been changed. instead, they remained connected to their historical and liturgical tradition. highlighting the area in which congregational worship remained constant was an important part of the leaders’ sensemaking process. leaders also encourage congregations to see technology as a tool to empower them to adapt practices for a specific moment and challenge, rather than as a replacement. this helped congregations not only accept the digital tools but also begin to see them as a new but potentially integral part of church ministry in the twenty-first century. sensemaking happened as leaders saw technology adoption as a communal negotiation, creating a new experience of church for people, as technology required a shift in worship practices. however, the also enable them to maintain their connections and 16 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef21714 16 mission during this uncertain time not just to try and understand this new world, but as a way to process their mistakes and victories into teachable moments, enabling them to keep moving forward with the constant ebbs and flows of change brought on by the pandemic. overall, these three aspects of sensemaking played a crucial role in helping leaders adapt to the technological and social changes brought on by the pandemic and responses to change. churches, like other organizations, had to adopt new patterns of communication and collaboration to make this transition and establish new practices. as outlined by maitlis and christianson (2014), sensemaking is social, with decisions often being made collectively in response to external pressures. this is particularly important in religious organizations, where decision-making involves negotiation among clergy, leadership teams, and congregants. the collaborative nature of this process can be seen in how congregational leaders in the tech in churches project reported seeking input from their communities regarding if, when, and how to implement digital worship. spadaro (2014), suggests the digital revolution requires church members and leaders to critically reflect on how they think about and practice christianity, and may be an uncomfortable process for some. this points to a need for ongoing dialogue about how congregations can maintain the authenticity and integrity of religious practice in the face of forced technological adaptation and change. 9. the future study of congregational technological sensemaking around digital ministry the findings from this research point to several areas that require further study regarding the ongoing and evolving relationship between churches and technology. this section addresses the study’s third research question, about what issues the technological and ministry sensemaking process highlights for further study and support of congregational engagement with technology. one issue for exploration is how churches can balance integrating digital tools with maintaining the communal and spiritual experiences central to congregational life. many leaders noted a shift in their views of technology, from a peripheral tool pre-pandemic to an integral resource post-pandemic. future research could explore the long-term theological and social implications of this change. another important question concerns the sustainability of technological innovations. with many churches reporting burnout among staff and volunteers, how can congregations develop models for digital ministry that are both effective and sustainable? furthermore, the findings highlight disparities in technological adoption across church sizes and demographics, suggesting more attention is needed to consider how smaller and rural congregations can overcome resource limitations and bridge the digital 17 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef21714 17 divide. finally, the generational differences in technology use among leaders suggest that investigating how intergenerational collaboration can shape future technology decisions in congregations is warranted. building on these questions, researchers and religious leaders concerned about the future of religious congregations’ engagement with technology should delve deeper into the sociological and theological implications of technology use in churches. themes such as how digital platforms redefine congregational understanding of what it means to be a faith community and how liturgical worship should (or should not) be modified to accommodate technological affordances warrant further study. this is particularly true as hybrid and online worship formats are becoming normalized in churches. we also suggest researchers should further investigate how digital tools influence perceptions of religious authority and leadership, especially as congregants increasingly consume sermons and other content remotely. the role of social media in shaping congregational identity and outreach presents another avenue for exploration, particularly given its increased use during the pandemic. moreover, future studies should examine the impact of digital technology on inclusivity within congregations, such as its role in engaging marginalized or elderly members. in addition many churches grappling with resource disparities, researchers should prioritize studies that explore strategies for equitable access to technology and training. this would ensure that congregations of all sizes can effectively integrate digital tools into their ministry. these investigations could provide vital insights for faith communities navigating the intersection of tradition and innovation in an increasingly digital world. finally, this research suggests that sensemaking theory offers scholars and theologians a valuable framework for understanding how church leaders navigate technological disruptions and frame their decision-making. it draws attention to narratives leaders may create to justify technology innovation, while stressing this engagement does not threaten their communal or theological identity. it also demonstrates that key characteristics of sensemaking offer religious leaders a template for preparing new processes of communal reflection and adaptation during moments of unplanned change. 18 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef21714 18 about the authors heidi a. campbell is professor of communication, affiliate faculty in religious studies, and a presidential impact fellow at texas a&m university. she is also director of the network for new media, religion and digital culture studies, and has authored over 100 articles and books on themes related to digital religion, including digital creatives and the rethinking religious authority (2020), digital religion: understanding religious practice in digital media (2021), and digital religion: the basics (2023). contact: heidic@ tamu.edu meg boone received her bachelor’s in journalism and master’s in communications from texas a&m university. she is currently pursuing a career in public relations in dallas, texas. she served as a research assistant on the tech in churches project between 2024 and 2025. references ancona, d. 2011. “sensemaking: framing and acting in the unknown”, in the handbook for teaching leadership: knowing, doing, and being ed. s. snook, n. nohria and r. khurana, thousand oaks, ca: sage, 4–19. benton, a. l., and a. p. girdley. 2023. “clergy and compassionate leadership: a tightrope of fatigue and satisfaction during covid-19”, journal of psychology and theology 51 (4), doi: 10.1177/00916471231182735. berger, t. 2018. @ worship: liturgical practices in digital worlds. new york: routledge. campbell, h. a. 2023. “when churches discovered the digital divide: overcoming technological inaccessibility, hesitancy & digital reluctance during the covid-19 pandemic”, ecclesial practices 10 (1): 36–61. doi:10.1163/22144417-bja10046 ———, s. osteen and g. sparks. 2023. we’re still here: reflections of the post-pandemic digital church. network for new media, religion, & digital culture studies. available from https:// oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/200172 ———, et al. 2023. “mission to serve tech: churches ‘lock down’ technology during the global pandemic”, available from http://128.194.18.20/handle/1969.1/197075 ———, and s. garner. 2016. networked theology (engaging culture): negotiating faith in digital culture. baker academic. ———, jennifer daly, sophia a. osteen and andrea wallace. 2023. “mission to serve tech: churches ‘lock down’ technology during the global pandemic”, available electronically from https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/197075 campbell, heidi a., and sophia osteen. 2021. “when pastors put on the ‘tech hat’: how churches digitized during covid-19”, available from https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/ handle/1969.1/194959 connolly, g., g. costa-font and d. srivastava. 2025. “did covid-19 reduce the digital divide? a systematic review”, health policy and technology 14 (2), article 100979, https://doi. org/10.1016/j.hlpt.2025.100979. dein, s., and f. watts. 2023. “religious worship online: a qualitative study of two sunday virtual services”, archive for the psychology of religion 45 (2): 191–209. doi: https://doi. org/10.1177/008467242211453 mailto:heidic@tamu.edu mailto:heidic@tamu.edu https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/200172 https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/200172 \\nas-1\projects\radboud university press\ecclesial futures\2025\campbell and boone\1 originelen\1 input\manuscripts\ http://128.194.18.20/handle/1969.1/197075 https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/197075 https://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/194959 https://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/194959 https://doi.org/10.1177/00846724221145348 https://doi.org/10.1177/00846724221145348 19 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef21714 19 edelman, j., a. vincent, e. o’keeffe, p. kolata, m. a. minott, k. steurzenhofecker, j. bailey, c. roding pemberton and d. lowe. 2021. british ritual innovation under covid-19. project report. manchester metropolitan university. url: https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/630667 francis, l. j., and a. village. 2022. “reading the church of england’s response to the covid-19 crisis: the diverging views of anglo-catholic and evangelical clergy”, journal of anglican studies 20(2): 185–97. doi:10.1017/s1740355321000267. griffin, b. a. 2021. “challenges of pastoral leaders: maintaining resilience while contemplating transitioning out of ministry”, https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/etd/379/ hipps, s. 2005. the hidden power of electronic culture: how media shapes faith, the gospel, and church. grand rapids, mi: zondervan. hutchings, t. 2017. creating church online: ritual, community and new media. london: routledge. johnston, e. f., d. e. eagle, j. headley and a. holleman. 2022. “pastoral ministry in unsettled times: a qualitative study of the experiences of clergy during the covid-19 pandemic”, review of religious research 64 (2): 375–97. kühle, l., and t. larsen. 2021. “‘forced’ online religion: religious minority and majority communities’ media usage during the covid-19 lockdown”, religions 12: 496. https://doi. org/10.3390/rel12070496 kurlberg, j., and p. m. phillips (eds). 2020. missio dei in a digital age. london: scm press. maitlis, s., and m. christianson. 2014. “sensemaking in organizations: taking stock and moving forward”, academy of management annals 8 (1): 57–125, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/194165 20.2014.873177 makhutla, n. e. 2021. “effectiveness of using social media for preaching during covid-19 lockdown”, pharos journal of theology 102 (2). doi: https://doi.org/10.46222/pharosjot.102.22 pew research center. 2024. social media fact sheet (13 november). https://www.pewresearch. org/internet/fact-sheet/social-media/ sandberg, j., and h. tsoukas. 2015. “making sense of the sensemaking perspective: its constituents, limitations, and opportunities for further development”, journal of organizational behavior 36 (s1), s6–s32, doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/job.1937 savolainen, r. 1993. “the sense-making theory: reviewing the interests of a user-centered approach to information seeking and use”, information processing & management 29 (1): 13–28. soukup, paul a. 2008. “technology, theology, thinking, and the church”, grace & truth (a journal of catholic reflection for southern africa) 25 (3), 4–17. spadaro, a. 2014. cybertheology: thinking christianity in the era of the internet. new york city: fordham university press. village, a., and l. j. francis. 2020. “faith in lockdown: experiences of rural church of england clergy and laity during the covid-19 pandemic”, rural theology 18 (2): 79–86. weick, k. e. 1995. sensemaking in organizations. thousand oaks, ca: sage. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12070496 https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12070496 https://doi.org/10.1080/19416520.2014.873177 https://doi.org/10.1080/19416520.2014.873177 https://doi.org/10.1002/job.1937 _hlk196385349 _heading=h.1fob9te _heading=h.30j0zll _heading=h.nnmsehcn559g ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 1 51 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18743 a r t i c l e doi: 10.54195/ef18743 a missional church strategy in an era of humanlike chatbots david hirome abstract the recent prominence of advanced chatbots that greatly mimic human intelligence and conversation appears to have set a new stage in the rapidly developing field of artificial intelligence. chatbots such as chatgtp and bard have risen to global popularity among internet users who interface with the chatbots in a nearly humanlike manner through a question-and-answer format. but such great technological developments also give rise to questions regarding theology and spirituality. thus, this paper asks: what does it mean to be human in an increasingly ai-driven world? how can christian communities around the globe respond to the ongoing developments in the field of ai? based on missional anthropology, this paper argues for an understanding of humans as embodied agents of god as central in a missional strategy to respond to the proliferation of advanced ai chatbots today. keywords: chatbots, artificial intelligence, human intelligence, christian communities, missional anthropology, embodied agents introduction we are now living in an era where a christian can simply swipe their smartphone and instantly get curated responses to difficult spiritual questions, interpretations of the bible, personalized prayers and written sermons, all with a human touch. this is the power of chat generative pre-trained transformer (chatgpt), a recent advance in artificial intelligence that continues to excite and engage internet users across the world since its launch in november 2022. despite its recent appearance on the technological scene, chatgpt has already made significant inroads among christians in southeast asia. this has been more pronounced in south korea, a global technological powerhouse. chatgpt-powered startups have penetrated the south korean christian landscape at an astonishing 52 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18743 pace (ko 2023). one of these startups is called meadow and it can write wonderful sermons for pastors. the other is named biblely and it can have the bible read to you in your pastor’s voice or even in your parent’s voice. such technological developments raise pertinent areas of theological and missiological reflection for the church today. background chatgpt exemplifies the ongoing progress in artificial intelligence (ai) that is revolutionizing human–machine communication online. however, it’s important to note that chatbots like chatgpt rely on distinct artificial intelligence technologies, highlighting the need to view ai as a diverse rather than uniform technological system (coghill 2023: 605). ai chatbots are designed to simulate human conversation and respond to user queries in real time. originally emerging as tools for customer support and online assistance, these ai-driven conversational agents have evolved to encompass a wide range of applications, from virtual assistants in mobile devices to integrated communication platforms on websites and social media (følstad and skjuve 2019). ai chatbots continue to impact human communication by altering traditional modes of interaction and reshaping the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. for instance, unlike conventional communication channels, chatbots operate 24/7, providing instantaneous responses and information retrieval. this accessibility has transformed the way individuals seek and receive information, fostering a culture of immediate gratification and expectation in communication. the proliferation of ai chatbots is part of a broader trend in the increasing integration of technology into virtually every facet of contemporary life. from healthcare and education to business and entertainment, ai technology has become an omnipresent force, reshaping the way individuals interact with their environments and with each other. chatbots are categoric technologies of the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) and particularly artificial intelligence. the technology of ai has been considered key for 4ir and thus needful of “serious scrutiny as it will influence humanity and the world” (mdingi, 2020: 2). advances in ai present challenges to the biblical view of humanity and that of the world, a locus of god’s mission. thus, the relationship between advanced technologies such as ai chatbots, and the church’s mission, is an area that requires sustained scrutiny (mcalpine, 2011: 144). it is against this background that this article asks: what does it mean to be human in an increasingly ai driven world? how can christian communities around the globe respond to the ongoing developments in the field of ai? from a perspective of missional anthropology, this article argues for an understanding of humans as embodied agents of god as a central tenet in a missional strategy to respond to the proliferation of advanced ai chatbots today. in talking about a missional church 53 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18743 strategy, the aim is not to propose a model or structure but rather spur local christian communities to “engage their context, learn to listen and see where god is at work in the midst of all the confusion, anxiety, pluralism, and technological transformation” (roxburgh and boren 2009: 86). purpose of the article the primary objective of this article is to propose steps towards a missional church strategy in light of the proliferation of humanlike chatbots. this entails an exploration of how the church, in the face of advancing ai technology, can adapt and leverage humanlike chatbots in a manner that enhances its mission. in doing so, this article examines the intersection of humanlike chatbot technology and missional anthropology with particular emphasis on the imago dei. importance of the topic humanlike chatbots (hlcs) present significant challenges and opportunities in the context of the church’s missional engagement in the world. the technology of hlcs continues to evolve with a goal of producing chatbots whose performance appears to erase the distinction between machines and humans. it is thus significant to ensure that such technological advancements align with the core values and identity of the church. by proactively engaging with these considerations, the church is better placed to harness the positive use of ai while mitigating potential pitfalls in its missional engagement in the world. in this way, the people of god are formed for mission-shaped lives in an era of humanlike chatbots. literature review overview of humanlike chatbot technology it is evident that theological research today strives to keep up with the rapid advances in artificial intelligence as new prototypes of chatbots evolve on a regular basis. what is certain is that ai chatbots have emerged as sophisticated tools in the realm of digital communication, exhibiting remarkable capabilities in understanding and responding to user queries. a chatbot is an ai system “which responds like an intelligent entity when conversed with” (khanna et al. 2015: 277). chatbots are diverse and oftentimes different ai systems may be identified as chatbots. thus, a chatbot is often synonymous with “the terms ‘conversational agents’ and ‘dialogue systems’ and may refer to task-oriented as well as non-task-oriented solutions” (skjuve et al. 2021). the history of chatbots stretches way back to 1966 with the earliest example of eliza (weizenbaum 1966). more recent examples from the last decade include virtual assistance systems such as google assistant and siri. chatgpt illustrates the capability that chatbots have gained today. 54 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18743 the current state of ai chatbot technology reflects advances in the areas of natural language processing (nlp) and deep learning (dl) contributing to their widespread adoption across various industries. nlp is a key chatbot technology that enables algorithms to build and represent human languages (singh and mahmood 2021). conversely, dl technology mimics the human brain function to “decode patterns from the training data and uses the same patterns to process new information” (maher, kayte and nimbhore 2020: 507). together, nlp and dl enable chatbots to interact with users in a nearly humanlike manner. openai, the company behind chatgpt, have leveraged nlp and dl in a framework known as generative pre-training transformer or gpt (radford et al. 2018). this has enabled chatgpt to implement “unsupervised pre-training and supervised fine-tuning to generate human-like responses to queries and provide responses to topics that resemble that of a human expert” (dwivedi et al. 2023: 3). furthermore, the advances in hml chatbots extend beyond text-based interactions to include multimodal capabilities. some chatbots can now interpret and generate responses based on images, videos and audio inputs, providing a richer and more interactive user experience (lin et al. 2023). for instance, chatgpt4, an advanced version of openai’s chatbots, can output text in response to a users’ input of an image (openai 2023). the incorporation of such multimodal capabilities in hlcs further serves to anthropomorphize these machines. this prompts a review of the societal impact of these hlcs. societal impact of humanlike chatbots hlcs are becoming influential actors in shaping societal interactions, transforming communication patterns, and redefining community dynamics. this means humanlike chatbots pose a significant impact on individuals and communities. some of the ways in which this impact unfolds include: enhanced accessibility, shift in communication channels, personalised experiences, and human relationships. ethical issues related to chatbot use in society also raise concern. first, hlcs contribute to enhanced accessibility, providing users with immediate and convenient access to information and services. this is particularly evident in sectors like customer service, where chatbots offer instant support, reducing response times and increasing overall convenience (xu et al. 2017). the increased access and convenience afforded by hml chatbots points to a possible wider deployment of these chatbots in virtually all sectors of society. second, the increased integration of hlcs has led to a notable shift in communication channels. users increasingly engage with organizations and services through chat-based interfaces, influencing expectations for real-time and asynchronous communication (li et al. 2021). this shift has implications for traditional forms of 55 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18743 communication as an increasing number of users interact with hlcs perceiving them as similar to humans. third, hlcs leverage data analytics and machine learning to personalize user experiences. by analysing user preferences and behaviour, chatbots can tailor responses and recommendations, fostering a sense of individualized interaction. this personalization can enhance user satisfaction and engagement (tamara, tumbuan and gunawan 2023: 168). fourth, the prevalence of hlcs raises questions about the impact on human-tohuman social interactions. some studies suggest that an over-reliance on digital communication, facilitated by chatbots, may lead to a decrease in face-to-face interactions, potentially affecting the quality of human-to-human relationships as users find it more comfortable to self-disclose to a chatbot than a human (lee et al. 2020). such developments imply that users may soon perceive hcls to be real humans. but this would also imply an erasure of the distinction between a human and chatbot with repercussions for christian theology and its teaching on the uniqueness of humans. hence the need for sustained missional and theological responses to the evolving chatbot technology in the world today. finally, the societal challenges with hlcs relate to issues of trust and ethical concerns regarding the interaction between humans and chabots. for instance, there is a direct relationship between the degree of trust that users confer upon chatbots and the level of human likeness in the chatbot (go and sundar 2019). this means the more hlcs are designed to mimic human language and behaviour, the more confidence humans will put in these chatbots. ethical issues have also been raised regarding the unidirectional emotional bond that users form with their hlc (scheutz 2011). this suggests that the chatbot manufacturers prioritize a user dependence on these machines. with all this integration of ai technology in society, christian communities have moved to harness ai for missional purposes. missional approaches amid ai technological advancements the integration of the technologies of 4ir in society has prompted churches to incorporate these innovations into their missional approaches. the uptake of technology by the church stretches from the first century, and the manner in which technological shifts have aided christian mission throughout history is variously documented. from the technology of writing to the global reach of electronic and digital media, mission has always been on a par with the technological innovations of the time. but as hollinghurst notes, digital technology presents “probably the most important development facing christian mission” (hollinghurst 2020: 75). the evolving digital technologies, such as social media, streaming services and mobile apps, provide churches with unprecedented opportunities to share their message, connect with a global audience, and engage in online evangelism at a scale not equalled in mission 56 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18743 history. accompanied to this is the rise of virtual communities facilitated by online platforms. this has led to discussions about how these spaces can foster discipleship. several studies have examined how churches can leverage technology to create virtual small groups, bible studies and discipleship programmes, allowing for meaning ful connections and spiritual growth beyond physical church spaces. yet the incorporation of ai technology and particularly chatbots by christian communities for missional purposes is not yet widespread. instances of missional use of ai technologies have been identified in the fields of community engagement and pastoral care. the church of england was one of the early adopters of chatbots for missional purposes with the use of amazon’s virtual assistant alexa to offer prayers and answer theological queries for people (church of england 2018). following the 2022 advent of chatgpt, several christian innovators created chatbots to reach an even more diverse group of people. chatbots on sites such as biblemate.io can now answer difficult theological questions while biblemate.org provides options for bible study and counselling. pastors.ai allows churches to customize chatbots using digital resources of their local church. these innovations open up the space for a sustained missional use of chatbots in the digital space. but at the sametime, theological frameworks should inform how christian communities ought to respond to ai technology. to illustrate, a vast difference exists in the fundamental nature of humans and products of ai. individuality as espoused in ai “starts from a substance into personal and, finally, interpersonal. however, humanity as a created being is interpersonal from the beginning, both in essence and existence” (saragih 2023: 242). thus the question of human identity is linked with relationality and forms a point of departure to examine theological perspectives in the context of hlcs and missional approaches of christian communities. understanding the intersection: hlcs and theology theological perspectives on humanlike chatbots in navigating the intersection of hlcs and missional church, it is crucial to consider theological perspectives that shape how technology is understood within the context of human interaction. theological frameworks provide a lens through which the church interprets and responds to the advancements of technology. the two main questions that arise at the intersection of ai technologies and theology deal with issues of ethics and anthropology (puzio 2023: 35). ethical dimensions of human enhancement through ai technology centre on whether certain technological advancements such as chatbots align with the theological understanding of human nature and the moral responsibilities of humanity. hlcs may appear morally superior to humans. as part of the latest in the developments in ai, an hlc such as chatgpt, can be “seen in a form that is purer and less affected 57 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18743 by defilements than human beings, meaning it is technically in a better position to preach, practice, or even reach the final goal of enlightenment” (travagnin 2023: 41). arguing from the reformed theology of archetype-ectype distinction as regards moral agency, xu notes that artificial moral agents, such as hlcs, are imitations of human moral agency (xu 2023: 644). he considers human moral agency as archetype while hlcs are ectype and thus imitate human moral agency. such imitation means that ai moral agency can be described in at least two ways: as an extension of human morality but also as limited. the extension of human moral agency through ai artefacts means that “humans mediate their moral values into these artefacts while creating them” (xu 2023: 644). but this extended human moral agency is limited since it is “only related to particular moral issues” (xu 2023: 644). this demonstrates that hlcs have no moral agency of their own and instead display extended but limited human morality. it is thus suggestive that in spheres that require moral agency, hlcs should be approached as replicas rather than replacements for humans. for instance, hlcs can be deployed in pastoral care to extend the human agency. however, attending to the unique moral matters of those receiving pastoral care is presently beyond scope for hlcs and can only be addressed by humans. another way in which ai imitates humans is illustrated by the inherent bias that surrounds ai systems. developers of ai often model these systems after themselves (foerst 2005: 67). the result is that the bias in human society is carried on in these systems especially in the areas of “race, class, gender and territory” (coleman 2023: 350). for instance, chat gpt-2 was known to produce “racist output even when conditioned on non-racial contexts” (wallace et al. 2021). it is evident that hlcs like chatgpt are trained on millions of internet pages and thus imitate the human culture contained in those pages. the same is reflected in the religious sphere as hlcs often project the bias inherent in the data they are trained upon. it was revealed that “there was clearly a sharp and distinguishable strain of evangelical theology in gpt-2” (reed 2021: 8). this calls for attention to the inherent bias in bible based hlcs such as those running on chatgpt. it is also worth recognizing that this bias is not purely down to data upon which the hlcs are trained but to what occurs at “every level of the construction of a.i.” (reed 2021: 6). bias permeates the whole culture that produces the ai. it is in the people, data, algorithms and processes. as regards anthropology, an understanding of how the concept of humanity is expressed in technology provides a base “for a theological engagement with ai and technology” (puzio 2023: 35). theologians have long affirmed the uniqueness of humans based on human beings’ creation in the image of god. a theological approach to the anthropological debate on the technologies of 4ir has been marked by an “interest in what it means to be made in the image of god in an age of robots and ai” (green 2018: 237–8). however, an appeal to the concept of the image of god appears 58 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18743 to have waned in modern theology. the image of god as understood through power of intellect, reason and rationality is no longer unique to human beings but has also been interpreted to apply to ai agents. this leaves the relational and functional views of imago dei as the only available points to contrast humans and ai agents (fourie 2020: 25–6). the relational view of imago dei is particularly relevant since it necessitates embodiment. the relationality of humans, such as argued by karl barth, is an expression of the imago dei and is displayed in embodied human to human encounters (barth 1960: 225–6). but efforts are underway to enhance human to machine encounters through embodiment of hlcs, like suggested by openai (degeurin 2024). thus, a consideration of hlcs and embodied intelligence is vital as churches strategize missions in a rapidly evolving ai environment. embodied intelligence the combined technologies of robotics and ai are geared towards creating machines which possess humanlike intelligence in the physical world. this technology is known as embodied intelligence. cangelosi et al. (2015) note that embodied intelligence is a foundational term in computer intelligence which refers to: the computational approach to the design and understanding of intelligent behavior in embodied and situated agents through the consideration of the strict coupling between the agent and its environment (situatedness), mediated by the constraints of the agent’s own body, perceptual and motor system, and brain (embodiment). the new frontier in embodied intelligence aims to enable hlcs like chatgpt to ground their language into concepts of the physical world. chatgpt, like other large language models (llms), possesses vast knowledge of the physical world but lacks an experience of the same world (biggie et al. 2023: 2). thus, for chatgpt to ground its language implies “associating words with sights, sounds, and actions, in order to anchor their meanings in day-to-day life and in communicable expressions” (oregon state university college of engineering 2024). a typical case is an experiment based on the human brain-body system that integrated a robotic arm and three llms including palm 2, gpt-3.5 and gpt-4, to successfully perform a task in the real world (bhat et al. 2024). this creates a key avenue for theological reflection. embodied intelligence is an important point for a theological critic as regards ai and robotics because ai agents are designed to mimic the nature of a human being in the physical world. some theologians have thought positively of embodied intelligence. for example, hazel notes that “embodied intelligence is a point of contact in the dialogue between ai and christian theology, which affirms the psychosomatic 59 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18743 unity of the human person” (heltzel 1998: 22). to hazel, an ai agent that is designed to perform tasks with intellect is a bridge to a human. but other theologians stress that the issue of embodied intelligence is key in delineating the difference between humans and ai agents, and this is more relevant as llms are integrated with robotics. humans are intellectual embodied beings who are dissimilar to embodied ai agents. herzfeld has this in view when she asks, “does a human-like intelligence require a human-like body?” (herzfeld 2010: 119). she adds that the human experience of the world is unique from other creatures such as dogs. this implies that “a different body would mean we would experience a different world” (herzfeld 2010: 120). thus the experience of embodied ai agents as they accomplish human tasks in the real world would differ significantly from the human experience. for haugeland, intelligence in humans is not simply a mental occurrence, “it’s in their bodies and, even more, out there in the world” (haugeland 1997: 26). in this way, human intelligence takes on a holistic dimension. humans are also conceived to dwell holistically with the environment and the overall ecosystem. this view is promoted by ecotheologians who “argue for a worldview grounded in cosmogenesis – the whole universe story – which decentralizes the human as individual and promotes holistic thinking about both the human and its broader context in creation” (green 2018: 29). the holistic view of humans looks beyond the “traits associated with the human mind and individual human bodies” (green 2018: 29). a human being is thus understood in consideration to both his immediate and distant surroundings. these surroundings include all aspects of creation whether natural or artificial. the holistic view confronts “the focus on individuals as the locus of wisdom and relationality and expand theological imagination to include all webs of relationship, including societies and ecosystems” (green 2018: 29). on the other hand, ai agents are often one-dimensional in their replication of humans. the holistic understanding of humans also challenges the focus on individual wisdom that is prevalent in ai agents. thus, humans are able to intelligently function in harmony with others in the society and environment. an appreciation of the holistic and relational qualities of humans is thus essential in understanding the difference between humans and ai agents. towards a missional church strategy christian communities as embodied agents of god in humanlike chatbot world the technologies of ai as shown above particularly in the combined fields of robotics and hlcs call for relevant responses from the church. christian communities need theological exposure to the functioning of the technologies of ai chatbots. fourie 60 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18743 points to the fact that “the lack of literacy is one of the contributing factors why efforts to address the significance and impact in theological terms have been somewhat scattered and disorganised” (fourie 2020: 13). intentional effort to acquire a knowledge of robotics and llms is vital if christians are to learn how to live as embodied agents of god in a world of advancing hlcs. stephanus joubert notes that “believers must be present in this never-ending drama of technological change, culture and human experience without losing their identity” ( joubert 2020: 8). the aspect of embodiment is thus an essential guide for christians in the world of hlcs. as shown in the preceding section, the concept of embodied intelligence is evolving as llms are combined with robots to function in a more humanlike manner in the real world. joubert notes that “the church must facilitate immersive, yet provocative performances of the gospels while simultaneously embodying and empowering others with wisdom to traverse this unchartered terrain of technological innovation with insight and discernment” ( joubert 2020: 1). christians are therefore better placed to respond to these technologies by emphasizing the relational and holistic qualities that define each member in their communities as an embodied intelligent being who differs from a combination of llms and robots. green’s (2018: 109) reminder is also important for christian communities, “honouring the relational quality of the human also helps underscore differences between us and robots. as it stands now, robots and ai are at best superficially relational, and function independent of social and ecological contexts.” the above note is important in guiding christians as embodied agents of god in a world of advancing hlcs. an intentional effort at stressing the relational qualities of humanity as christians in a context of embodied hlcs will not only differentiate humans from these advanced chatbots. more importantly, it will enable a christian to act as an embodied agent of god and bring an authentic human presence to others. a christian’s bodily presence that engages in activities or movements such as sports, dance, and work, in person and with others, will emphasise the relational and holistic qualities of humanity. this human bodily engagement will, at same time, set a clear boundary with hlcs, and ultimately with advancing technologies of llms and robotics. missiological implications in a world of humanlike chatbots the great commission as spelt out in matthew 28.16–20 demands “go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” this phrase has also been interpreted in missiological circles to include the domain of the cyber world. christian mission is called to “enter into the domains of the cyberspace in order to deliver the minds and souls – essentially, the consciousness – of the present generation who are either alienated or captured in the cyberspace” (kim 2019: 64). an undertaking of this nature requires 61 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18743 several considerations, one of which includes “embracing the essence of the incarnational model and practicing embodiment principles of integrating mind, body and action in all aspects of life, ministry, and mission” (kim 2019: 64). a pattern of embodiment of the whole person in the whole christian life also relates to the concepts of “relational and holistic anthropology” (green 2018: 263). these concepts also relate to the contextual and ecological theologies that are relevant to mission studies and praxis. this will aid in thinking more missiologically in terms of social justice and liberation for the less advantaged in an era of humanlike chatbots. in relation to social justice and liberation in an age ai, eugene baron (2020: 8) notes: there is a need for missiologists to have their contextual theologies (postcolonial, black liberation, etc.) in their front pockets. it will be imperative to read the bible from the perspective of the most vulnerable and marginalised in society. public theology of human dignity is crucial to understand our value, contribution and agency in the kingdom of god on earth. a first missiological implication in a world of humanlike chatbots regards human dignity. human dignity is an important concept in regard to ai agents. it is necessary to ensure that mission is always directed at the embodied human rather than humanlike chatbots. a poor human being needs more attention than the most intelligent chatbots. a second missiological implication regards the necessity of human agency in mission, baron (2020: 4) notes that the idea that the 4ir will reproduce the human being’s functions and abilities in the form of artificial intelligence (ai). though this would rapidly change the efficiency of responsibilities and tasks being carried out in business environments, as well as promise various benefits within ecclesial contexts, missiologists should be posing critical questions on the (non)-agency of human beings. chatbots may outperform humans in all fields and this includes church contexts where for example a chatbot counsellor would be preferred to a human being. in a related way, robots equipped with ai will pose questions of standardisation. barron notes that “it would be imperative … to ask in terms of human agency: whose human being standards, actions and patterns would all human beings be standardised?” (barron 2020: 4). such questions are important when taking into account issues of race and class. there are missiological implications for instance in standardising robots to white in a south african context that has suffered apartheid. a third missiological implication in a world of hlcs concerns the authentic experience of humans. baron notes that “the agency of the world in ‘god’s mission’ (missio dei) 62 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18743 will also be tested on the sharing of authentic experiences of god’s creatures” (baron 2020: 4). this is particularly important in cases where a victim interfaces with an ai agent on behalf on the perpetrator. as illustrated in the context of trauma, the use of robotics raises questions about authentic human encounters in the healing process. while ai may facilitate interaction, the absence of personal involvement from those responsible for the pain poses a challenge to the idea of true reconciliation and healing (2020: 4). thus, a context such a trauma raises questions about the relational and holistic attributes of humans, which are deficient in ai agents such as hlcs. mission in the era of humanlike chatbots will therefore need to consider the relational and holistic nature of human beings even as engagement is made with attention to the need for human dignity, human agency and human experience. christian communities should also consider that “as the bearer of god’s image, it is our duty to direct technology development for the greatest good. it demands wisdom and care; we should never delegate the duty to machines” (saragih 2023: 243). practical considerations some practical concerns related to missional approaches in christian communities in an era of hlcs are reflected in the following five suggestions. 1. maintain human oversight in ai chatbot interactions, especially for complex pastoral care issues. back this up by training pastoral staff to collaborate with chatbots, ensuring a seamless integration of technology with the church’s human-centered approach. this will help to balance ai capabilities with human oversight and ensure that the church maintains its relational and pastoral focus, using technology as a supportive tool rather than a substitute for genuine human connections. 2. not all members may have equal access to technology, leading to a potential digital divide within the congregation. therefore, seek to implement inclusivity measures such as providing technology resources for those in need, offering offline alternatives, and ensuring that ai chatbots complement traditional communication channels. 3. privacy concerns may arise as members express concerns about data privacy when interacting with ai chatbots. a solution here is make early communication about the church’s commitment to privacy, implement robust data protection measures, and offer opt-in/opt-out features for individuals to control their level of engagement. 4. aim for community building beyond technology. emphasize that while technology enhances community engagement, it does not replace the essence of human connection. as such, encourage members to balance digital interactions 63 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef18743 with in-person relationships, reinforcing the importance of face-to-face connections. 5. seek transparency and communication. foster a culture of transparency by openly communicating the role and limitations of ai chatbots within the church community. regularly update members on how technology is being used to support the church’s mission. towards a missional church strategy the advancements in ai technologies have posed a number of challenges to christian communities today. one of the key concerns for christian communities in an era of the humanlike chatbots is how to foster an understanding of a human being as an embodied agent of god. it is also crucial for christian communities to consider the avenues of mission in a world increasingly adapting to ai chatbots. christians are therefore better placed to respond to these technologies by emphasising the relational and holistic qualities that differentiate humans from embodied chatbots. they can help other humans affirm these qualities while also advocating for a definition of each member in their communities as an embodied intelligent being that far surpasses the possibilities of ai technology. a missional church in the era of advancing hlcs will therefore need to consider the relational and holistic nature of human beings even as engagement is made with attention to the need for human dignity, human agency and human experience. about the author david hirome is a phd student at acts university in south korea. his interests include digital culture, mission theology and world christianity. he is an ordained minister in the anglican church of uganda. contact: hiromedavid@gmail.com references baron, e. 2020. “the questions for post-apartheid south african missiology in the context of 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10.54195/ef20157 b o o k r e v i e w doi: 10.54195/ef20157 bargár, pavol. 2023. embodied existence: our common life in god eugene or: cascade, wipf and stock isbn: 978-1-6667-4408-8 reviewed by nigel rooms theological anthropology is foundational for a sound understanding of christian mission in, from and with the local church. who are those in whom god is at work both inside and outside of the christian community? how does a theological understanding of the human person contribute to the crossing of boundaries in christian mission which encompasses all of creation? it is no surprise that missiologists bevans and schroeder (2004) make anthropology one of their six ‘constants’ that have to be negotiated in contextual mission in every age and context. however, the theological relationship of the judaeo-christian tradition with the body is not a happy one as adrian thatcher has shown in his recent review of the field, with the aptly named book vile bodies (2023). we need a much more positive approach to body theology, especially in mission, which i believe is provided by the work under consideration here. pavol bargár, the author of this book, is well-qualified to write on the subject since he works at the protestant theological faculty of charles university in prague as well as being a member of and significant contributor to the international association of mission studies – especially from his base in eastern europe. the book arises from a wider ecumenically-based research project conducted by bargár and other colleagues at charles university (xvii). this ecumenical perspective is clear in how bargár interacts with documents from the world council of churches and its faith and order commission throughout the book. it is also true to say that bargár is widely read and draws together an amazing number of sources and interlocutors in the work as a whole. many other theological anthropologies have been written, such as david kelsey’s (2009) massive two-volume magnum opus. what is unique about this work is the 91 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20157 91 direct theological engagement with missiology and its dialogical approach to the subject from popular (mainly, but not wholly) western cultural artefacts (or poiesis) – especially cinema in the form of film. in fact, the book begins with a description of a film by the director wim wenders (1) and each chapter has a film or two to illustrate the argument – both positively and negatively. largely this works: even though i was not that familiar with many of the particular films bargár utilises, he gives a full description and carefully explains the connections to the subject matter. perhaps therefore it is cinema itself which has influenced bargár to write as he does about theological anthropology from six perspectives in each of the six chapters – story, body, imagination, transformation, relationality and feast. this approach, the author claims, “enables us to seek and pursue a common life for the whole creation in the force field of god’s radical and transformational reign – our common life in god” (129). what i appreciated here was the bringing together of several themes, which while not original in themselves are helpfully explicated together in one place. thus, narrative theology, particularly the storied human being, is a good place to start and embodiment has recently seen a resurgence of interest especially in practical theology. i have long thought that the gift of human imagination is much underused in the christian church and its mission and no serious commentary on humanity these days could ignore themes of transformation and relationality in community. i really enjoyed the final chapter on ‘feast’ as, while i know receiving and offering hospitality is key to the life of mission, i hadn’t quite seen it related to the breadth and depth of the celebratory feasts in scripture. inevitably i have a few quibbles. bargár wishes to reframe the kingdom of god to the ‘kin-dom of god’ (56) which i am not against, but in the exchange of one metaphor for another i would have expected a greater critique of the newer image, but it is rather taken for granted. siblings might be more equal than the citizens of a kingdom, but that doesn’t stop deep fissures and rivalries emerging between them. then i’d like to have seen a bit more on the relationship between the two hemispheres of our brains, spirituality, sexuality, prayer, theosis and transfiguration (rather than only transformation), particularly in the light of the work of iain mcgilchrist, maggie ross, sarah coakley and others. finally, i’d also like to have read a concluding chapter which brought all the others together and maybe some examples from the field of how the proposals made can be embodied in practice, but perhaps these are available elsewhere in the wider research project. overall, i would thoroughly recommend this affordable book, it will make you think again about the human person and christian mission, give many avenues for deeper 92 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20157 92 reflection and offer wider reading on the subject. it may even change your mind and how you inhabit your relational body in god’s good creation. about the reviewer rev canon dr nigel rooms, co-editor ecclesial futures. honorary research fellow; the queen’s foundation for ecumenical theological education, birmingham, uk; department of christian spirituality, church history & missiology, university of south africa (unisa). contact: nigel@praxisworks.uk references bevans, stephen b., and roger p. schroeder. 2004. constants in context: a theology of mission for today. maryknoll, ny: orbis. kelsey, david h. 2009. eccentric existence: a theological anthropology. 2 vols, louisville ky: westminster john knox. thatcher, adrian. 2023. vile bodies: the body in christian teaching, faith and practice. london: scm press. mailto:nigel@praxisworks.uk ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 2 108 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19878 b o o k r e v i e w doi: 10.54195/ef19878 shaw, richard. 2024. the unsettled: small stories of colonisation auckland: massey university press isbn 978-1-99-101668-3 reviewed by steve taylor a few years ago, i booked myself in for a spiritual retreat. the five-day experience offered a focus on land and place and the opportunity to hike parts of rakiura national park, a nature reserve park located on rakiura/stewart island at the bottom of aotearoa, new zealand. a few hours into a day walk, i encountered a sign “māori land. access courtesy of landowners.” a google search once the retreat ended revealed that this particular part of rakiura national park was owned by indigenous people, who had generously agreed to allow walking across their land. the words of the sign have left me pondering my hermeneutical location. the walk i had made was a privilege. the beauty, birdsong and access were a gift courtesy of another. the single sign is part of a larger story. i read, write and work as a new zealand pākeha. i am part of a history that has been unavoidably and powerfully shaped by my ancestors’ actions as they migrated from great britain to aotearoa new zealand during the nineteenth century. how do i respond to what is privilege? can the systems that support local christian communities today be disentangled from the actions of my ancestors, who profoundly reshaped aotearoa new zealand? what does it mean for me to write and think about the development and transformation of local christian communities “courtesy” of another? the unsettled, by richard shaw, provides an excellent resource for exploring these questions. the book opens with a photograph of shaw’s great-grandfather surrounded by his rugby team, the armed constabulary coastal rugby team. the 109 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19878 109 date is 1881, and the photograph was taken a few kilometres from the parihaka pā, which the armed constabulary invaded in 1881. around 1,600 men were imprisoned without trial. women were raped. houses were torn down and crops were destroyed. then, in the years that followed, shaw’s great-grandfather became the owner of three farms in the area. richard shaw describes growing up with stories of milking and rugby, but never of his great-grandfather’s involvement in the invasion of parihaka and his acquiring confiscated land. the farms of the family were part of the 1,275,000 acres that the crown confiscated during the mid-1860s (waitangi tribunal, 1996).1 the unsettled explores why some stories fall out of collective memory and what it might mean to ask the right questions about our ancestors’ histories. asking questions about the past involves encounters with pioneer stories. how did migrants acquire the land they did? richard shaw’s questions about what it means to remember rightly and live justly are significant for those writing about the development and transformation of local christian communities on lands with long settler histories. shaw works with small stories as a research methodology. shaw interviews people wrestling with their origin stories, which shaw calls “secular creation stories”. these stories are woven through the unsettled ’s nine chapters. shaw also researches his own small story and the lives of his irish ancestors. he ponders how those oppressed by patterns of colonization in ireland became implementers of these patterns in aotearoa new zealand. he tracks the way that law, transport, communication and the forming of local constabularies were used to generate wealth. he asks why indigenous voices are silenced – “whited out” – by the processes of colonizations. shaw makes no explicit claims to be doing theology. he writes as a professor of politics at massey university. however, theological themes are present in the unsettled. there is the language of bearing witness, defined as the courage to take “a public position … a decidedly active thing to do” (171). there is a discussion of religious murals that hung in taranaki churches, including cross-cultural motifs in works painted by 1 for a summary, see tom bennion. “review. the taranaki report: kaupapaptuatahi muru me te raupatu. the muru and raupatu of the taranaki land and people by the waitangi tribunal.” waikato law review 23 4 (2), 180-189. http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/wkolawrw/1996/23.pdf. http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/wkolawrw/1996/23.pdf 110 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19878 110 michael smithers (126–7). there are several uses of the phrase “touch the hem of the unknown garment” (178, 192) a phrase with origins in a gospel story in matt. 9.20-22 and luke 8.43-48. shaw uses the phrase to advocate for new forms of community in which future ways of being emerge “from and in concert with memories of past ways of doing” (178). shaw concludes with a concluding experience of sitting with two nuns and realizing that their story of service to god could be applied fruitfully to the future facing pākeha in aotearoa new zealand. these motifs – of witness, crossing cultures and new ways of being – are instructive starting points for those pondering doing faith on “māori land” by courtesy of prior landowners. there is a growing body of theologians writing about settler colonial theology. writing about aotearoa new zealand from english shores, richard davis argues that settler colonial theology is a more just framing than decolonial or post-colonial theology. davis points out how “de-” and “post-”, when attached to “colonial”, imply a moving beyond colonialism. the reality is that colonizers are always walking on land with history, among traditional owners with stories of dispossession and injustice. for davis (2022), the phrase “settler colonial” allows the settler to “face their own complicity in narratives of ongoing colonisation and aim at their undoing”. for south african theologian steven theo savides (2022: 1) we are all “implicated as witness to, participant in, and beneficiary of settler colonial systems”. this requires identity work that respects the significance of the past, even in the present, and constructs new structures of relationship. writing from the united states, enns and myers (2021: 10) call for settler “response-ability”. they challenge settlers to respond to their small stories by investigating how settler colonialism structures our current relationships. these voices are raising themes that those of us writing and thinking about the development and transformation of local christian communities need to heed. while making no explicit theological claims, the unsettled offers important resources for those willing to name their privilege and justly name the legacies of colonization. the focus on small stories provides ways for individuals to examine their genealogies. the motifs – of witness, crossing cultures and new ways of being – are stepping stones for a public theology that takes “response-ability”. about the reviewer steve taylor, director angelwings ltd, ōtepot, dunedin, aotearoa new zealand. contact: kiwidrsteve@gmail.com 111 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19878 111 references davis, richard a. 2022. “settler colonialism.” political theology network, https://politicaltheology.com/settler-colonialism/. enns, elaine, and ched myers. 2021. healing haunted histories: a settler discipleship of decolonization. eugene, or: cascade books. savides, steven. 2022. “unsettling the settler colonial imagination: decoloniality as a theological hermeneutic in south africa.” phd diss., university of notre dame. waitangi tribunal. 1996. “the taranaki report. kaupapa tuatahi.” wai 143. wellington: gp publications, https://ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz/delivery/deliverymanagerservlet?dps_ pid=ie28689604. https://politicaltheology.com/settler-colonialism/ https://politicaltheology.com/settler-colonialism/ https://ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz/delivery/deliverymanagerservlet?dps_pid=ie28689604 https://ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz/delivery/deliverymanagerservlet?dps_pid=ie28689604 ecclesial futures 2025 – volume 6 – issue 2 19 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23483 a r t i c l e doi: 10.54195/ef23483 “bringing the gospel to the city together”: interconfessional cooperation in missionary church development in vienna thomas kräuter and jack barentsen abstract in the changing context of western europe, many churches and denominations aim to reach non-christians with the gospel through new missionary ecclesial forms. from the perspective of missional theology the mission and unity of the church are inherently connected. this raises the question how interconfessional unity might be expressed in the praxis of missionary church development. however, there has been very little research on this issue. thus it remains unclear what ecumenism in missionary church development looks like in practice, what promotes and what hinders it. therefore, an empirical investigation among seventeen christian leaders from different confessions involved in missionary church development in vienna was conducted. the study found that ecumenical cooperation is very limited, with some exceptions. this seems due to both theological factors, like diverging interpretations of mission and the gospel or different stances on issues of sexual ethics, and non-theological, like lack of time and resources. building on these insights, the paper suggests the establishment of a regional ecumenical church planting hub and outlines possible steps toward its realization. this platform might foster relationships and exchange across confessional boundaries and thus help new forms of church in vienna to express the ecumenical unity of the church and to complement each other toward a faithful participation in the mission of god in the city. keywords: missionary church development, missional theology, ecumenism, regional cooperation, urban church planting, austria 1. introduction the socio-religious context of western europe has changed significantly due to processes of pluralization and secularization. in light of these dynamics, there has been a renewed interest in the missionary dimension of ecclesial life in the traditional churches (e.g. elhaus and kirchhof 2020). consequently, various attempts are being 20 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23483 20 made in almost all confessions to find new ecclesial forms to reach non-christians with the gospel through church planting, innovation or experimentation (philipp 2020; schlegel and kleeman 2021). this article deals with ecumenical cooperation in missionary church development, for “there is a growing realization among churches and christian mission organizations” that stronger interconfessional collaboration in mission “has become more important and urgent than ever before” (kafwanka 2014: 154–5). so far this topic has not received much scholarly attention, which is somewhat surprising for several reasons. not only does the shared concern for missionary church development evoke the practical question if and how churches in western europe might cooperate in these efforts. there have also been important recent missiological developments towards the realization of what bosch called an “ecumenical missionary paradigm” (bosch 2011: 377). thus, the twentieth-century rift between ecumenicals and evangelicals has largely been overcome. in fact, there are now “significant missiological convergences” between all christian confessions (keum 2014: 397), as evidenced by recent missiological documents from different traditions (cf. bevans 2015). most centrally, this ecumenical missiological consensus includes the conviction that mission is primarily the act of a missionary god. the church originates in this mission of god and is therefore missionary by its very nature (franke 2020: 6). moreover, god’s mission and consequently the church’s as well is understood to be holistic, including but not limited to evangelism, discipleship, social engagement and creation care (franke 2020: 27–30; bevans 2015). according to keum, general secretary of the council for world mission, the time is thus ready to “shift gears from convergence to cooperation” (2014: 398). shouldn’t this imply promising preconditions for interconfessional collaboration in missionary church development as well? furthermore, in the missio dei paradigm the mission of the church and the church’s unity are intrinsically connected. because all churches originate from and participate in the one mission of god, the call to mission is always also a call to ecumenical unity (bosch 2011: 474–5). must research on missionary church development then not also ask how this unity can find expression in these efforts? some scholars have recognized this and accordingly appeal for an ecumenical extension of the mixed-economy concept (herrmann 2020: 91) or for the formation of regional interconfessional networks in church development (eiffler 2020: 496–7; herbst and pompe 2022). however, the discussion so far has not gone beyond these initial impulses and hardly any research has been done in actual church development practice. current insights are limited and point toward a discrepancy between the missiological ideal of ecumenical missionary unity and lived church practice, so that the described missiological consensus has “little to do with what happens on the ground” (währisch-oblau 2016: 165). the reasons for this are not sufficiently 21 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23483 21 researched, but both remaining significant theological differences (franke 2020: 5) and more mundane aspects like lack of time and resources (brinksma 2018: 196–201) might play a role. it consequently remains unclear how ecumenical missionary unity happens in urban church development as well as what promotes and what hinders it. to answer these questions, this article reports an empirical study among practitioners in the austrian capital vienna. this city offers a fitting research context, for here not only various free churches but also the traditional churches, most notably the catholic church, are highly active in church development. over the last decade, the archdiocese of vienna underwent a developmental process, in which all activity was to be “reoriented around the missionary nature of the church” (schönborn 2015: 3), as part of which several church plants and revitalizations were started (flachberger 2020: 25–62). these new forms of church are characterized by scholars as “charismatic-evangelical-catholic”, because they often combine typical aspects of evangelical spirituality like personal conversion to christ and discipleship with catholic features like strong marian devotion and high eucharistic spirituality (sandler 2022: 160–3; hinkelmann 2022: 200–9). because of this they are on the one hand more easily compatible with evangelical1 and pentecostal free-churches. on the other hand, previous research has shown that cooperation in mission with catholics still represents a challenge for many austrian evangelicals (miller 2010: 341–7). thus, these new catholic missionary forms of church inhabit “a confessional field of tension” (hinkelmann 2022: 195) and demonstrate the complex conditions of lived ecumenical missionary cooperation in austria. in the rest of the article we will first describe the research design of the study, then present the key findings and finally discuss them in light of relevant literature. 2. methodology the empirical investigation aimed to contribute to a better understanding of interconfessional cooperation in missionary church development in the tension between theological ideal and lived ecclesial practice. as part of that “lived theology”, the theological convictions informing said practice were of special interest (cf. ward 2017: 62–7). thus, we used an explorative research approach with qualitative empirical methods to explicate the “deep meanings about the nature, purpose and intentions of the actions and assumptions of particular individuals or communities” (swinton and mowat 2016: 22). 1 in austria, “evangelical” refers not only to the cross-denominational evangelical movement, but also to one free-church denomination, the “association of evangelical churches” (beg). to distinguish these, when referring to the denomination, this article uses the capitalized “evangelical”. 22 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23483 22 2.1 research method the objects of investigation were projects of missionary church development in vienna. these could be church plants or revitalizations, fresh expressions, “erprobungsräume,” or church development processes. the selection criteria were purposely kept broad due to the explorative nature of the study. to understand how and why cooperation does or does not take place between these projects, from february 2023 to february 2024 kräuter conducted seventeen semi-structured interviews with project leaders from seven different confessions. five catholic priests and theologians, four evangelical free church pastors, three lutheran ministers, an anglican minister, a baptist pastor, a house-church pastor as well as one pentecostal and one reformed pastor. most of them were directly involved in church planting or church development in vienna, while three were guiding regional or national initiatives in their denominations. the interviewees were deliberately selected through theoretical sampling to include those most likely to provide insights relevant to the research questions. the final number was reached via data saturation. the interview  guide centered around two main topics: (1) the interviewees’ conception and practical embodiment of mission and gospel as well as (2) their experiences with interconfessional collaboration. to make different emphases in missional practice apparent, we used the anglican “five marks of mission” inspired by a recent study on the soteriology of dutch pastors and church planters (paas, stoppels and zwijze-koning 2023). the five marks differentiate mission into evangelism, discipleship, loving service, societal transformation and creation care and can be considered as one of the most common explications of the ecumenical consensus on the integrality of mission discussed in the introduction. 2.2 data analysis and reflexivity all participants gave informed consent on their data being used for this study. the audio recordings were securely stored and deleted after transcription. the transcripts were anonymized and sent to the participants for review. once approved they were analysed using template analysis (king, brooks and tabari 2018), which organizes the relevant data sections in a hierarchical thematic template through subsequent rounds of coding. the final template encompassed three overarching themes: “mission”, “gospel” and “experience with missionary cooperation”. these included several layers of subthemes and codes. for example the theme “mission” contained the subthemes “understanding of mission”, “goal of mission”, “strategies of mission” and “context of mission” (see table 1 for a list of themes, subthemes and codes). the template was then used as basis for data interpretation. the important themes were reflected according to the study’s epistemological interest and connected to each other. thus, 23 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23483 23 for instance, different understandings of mission were linked with corresponding soteriological convictions. the epistemological potential of this study was limited by both our personal situatedness and the research design. as our own evangelical convictions influenced the entire research process, this project can be seen as an evangelical reflection on the possibilities of missionary ecumenism in western european church development, nevertheless aiming to serve the whole church (cf. franke 2020: 85). furthermore, the research method and sample affected the results. the data is grounded only on the reflections of a single leader per project and thus includes neither other diverging perspectives nor directly observed lived practice. also, the interviewees only included one pentecostal pastor, no orthodox priests and no representatives of migrant churches. table 1 sample list of themes, subthemes and codes themes mission gospel experience with missionary cooperation subthemes – understanding of mission – goal of mission – strategies of mission – context of mission – what is the gospel – meaning of salvation – meaning of lostness – different understandings of gospel – theological criteria for cooperation – motivations for cooperation – examples of cooperation – factors promoting cooperation – factors hindering cooperation if necessary, more subthemes in the subtheme “understanding of mission”: – a disputed term – different dimensions in the subtheme “factors hindering cooperation”: – lack of resources – theological differences – bad experiences – ecumenical thinking underdeveloped codes in the subtheme “a disputed term”: – negative connotation – narrow and broad definitions – variously filled in the subtheme “meaning of salvation”: – fullness of life – reaching heaven – new earth – justification – access to kingdom – community with god in the subtheme “factors promoting cooperation”: – shared theological profiles – personal relations – trust – spiritual community – humility – generational differences 24 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23483 24 3. results and analysis 3.1 missionary cooperation in vienna: pluriform and limited the main research question was how interconfessional cooperation happens in church development in vienna. to do justice to the complexity of lived ecclesial practice, the terms “cooperation” and “collaboration” were only loosely defined to capture multiple forms of interaction as reported by the respondents, varying in intensity, duration and purpose. one of the chief insights gained was that generally the closest missionary cooperation happens within the respective denominations. thus, evangelical, pentecostal, reformed, catholic and lutheran leaders connect in inner-confession regional or national networks for spiritual fellowship, strategic partnership, the sharing of resources and further training. at the local viennese level, only the catholic diocese entertains a cooperative network between its practitioners. additionally, there were also several instances of inter-confession cooperation observable. the roman-catholic archdiocese and its church development initiatives are most actively seeking ecumenical cooperation. they partner with the anglican church, especially its centers for church planting and multiplication as well as the htb network2 (catholic theologian interview 16). furthermore, priests and deacons are regularly sent on study trips or internships to anglican or free-church church plants and representatives from other confessions are consulted as external experts (catholic priests interviews 2, 4 and 17). moreover, all interviewed catholic leaders were well-acquainted with evangelical church planting literature and some recounted how they sought help from free churches in their start-up phase. there were also a number of regional, national and international church planting networks between primarily evangelical and pentecostal leaders from different denominations as well as international church development networks between leaders from the traditional churches. most of the interviewees were attached to one or several of these. on the local level, ecumenical collaboration mostly remained limited to particular events organized together or sporadic networking meetings. altogether, with few exceptions, interconfessional cooperation in missionary church development in vienna was quite sparse. many even stated that they were hardly in contact with or completely unaware of any initiatives from other denominations (e.g. reformed pastor interview 6, lutheran minister interview 9, evangelical pastor interview 13). 2 churches planted by the london anglican church holy trinity brompton and their plants. 25 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23483 25 3.2 three kinds of cooperation research participants identified three main aspects of cooperative praxis. the first and most widespread was mutual learning. in exchange with other practitioners, “we can show each other how to proclaim jesus in our context”, a catholic priest noted (interview 4). similarly, an evangelical church planter stated that he wants “to learn from the experiences of others who previously planted churches here” (interview 1). in most cases, however, this exchange happens primarily within denominations or theological traditions. at the same time, many of the respondents told of cross-denominational learning experiences. several catholic leaders explained how they gained a new appreciation for the cross and the bible from their evangelical colleagues, as expressed for instance in expository sermon series through bible books. on the other hand, some evangelical leaders mentioned how they adopted liturgical elements from catholics or were inspired by pentecostal boldness and the house-church emphasis on communal discipleship. still, there were significant differences in the respondents’ readiness to learn. while some believed that they “could learn something from everyone” (catholic theologian interview 12), one participant differentiated between “theological and logistic aspects of church planting” and stated that “theologically, i don’t think i could or would want to learn from others” (reformed pastor interview 6). the second often-repeated kind of cooperation was support and aid. for some, this help took the form of collegial counselling, “where we can carry each other” (catholic theologian interview 12) or “where we sit together, one recounts a situation and asks for insights. what would you do differently?” (evangelical pastor interview 13). others mentioned the sharing of tools and resources. the third kind was spiritual fellowship with colleagues. many noted how important it is to regularly have the opportunity to “open one’s heart”, pray for and encourage each other (evangelical pastor interview 13). 3.3 diverging interpretations of “mission” in church development in vienna differences in the respondents’ conceptions of mission became apparent. concerning the five marks of mission, the majority of the participants professed a holistic understanding including “both word and deed” (anglican priest interview  8) or both “proclaiming the gospel” and “co-shaping the world out of the gospel” (catholic theologian interview  12). however, on closer inspection the relationship of these two aspects was assessed quite differently. most evangelical pastors clearly prioritized gospel proclamation in evangelism and discipleship in their missionary praxis. referring to the great commission, they repeatedly argued that it was “the primary task” or “highest goal” of mission to preach the good news of christ, so that people become his disciples. this did not 26 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23483 26 at all mean that they disregarded the social responsibility of the church. however, they considered these efforts a “pre-stage” to the “real” mission, namely evangelistic action (evangelical church planter interview 13). hence, the reformed pastor recounted how they gave a ukrainian refugee visiting their church money for food and housing, but also evangelistic tracts. “we told him ‘we want to help you, but what you really need is not money, but something deeper’” (interview 6). furthermore, marks four and five, the transformation of society and creation care, were not included in the mission interpretations of most interviewed evangelical leaders. on the other hand, only one baptist pastor prioritized acts of service, societal engagement and creation care over evangelism and discipleship. her motto was, “you don’t need to talk about your faith a lot, live so that people ask you” (interview 15). similarly, a lutheran minister remarked, “the people don’t look where the finger points, but who the pointer is. primarily it is about setting an example and not preaching” (lutheran minister interview 9). these respondents further distanced themselves from the evangelical mission interpretation described, which would patronizingly perceive the world as mission objects. these different conceptions of mission are vividly illustrated by the following example. three projects described how they sent or handed out christmas cards to locals. the card of one evangelical church plant included a qr code, which led to an evangelistic sermon where the pastor explained the meaning of christmas. the two other initiatives instead invited passers-by to themselves write down a prayer or wish to the christ child. their aim was not evangelistic but simply to “give somebody a treat, no strings attached” (lutheran minister interview 9). 3.4 the gospels of personal redemption and complete restoration these diverging mission interpretations corresponded with different understandings of the gospel. many leaders from different confessions emphasized the notion of “personal redemption” for sinners through the sacrificial death of jesus in their gospel presentations. everyone who trusts in jesus gets saved from divine judgement. these included the majority of evangelical participants but also other leaders. thus, a catholic priest characterized redemption as “being freed from sin and eternal death. christ tore down the dividing wall between god and us on the cross. now we can freely access god through jesus” (interview 4). similarly, a lutheran minister remarked that the gospel included “showing people that god loves them, but that we are separated from him because of our wrongdoings” as well as explaining that “because of jesus’ death and resurrection the way to god is open” (interview 5). in contrast, others understood sin not so much as a transcendent personal problem warranting redemption, but rather highlighted its immanent and social dimensions, requiring restoration. in jesus, god reconciled the world to himself. 27 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23483 27 therefore, the gospel enables us to “accept that humans are not perfect”, because god loves us despite our mistakes (catholic theologian interview 12). it “frees from the brokenness of sin and leads into freedom as a person and fullness of life” (catholic priest interview 2). furthermore, ultimately god will not judge, but instead completely restore creation from its brokenness. he will “fix everything” – a wordplay made by a lutheran minister (interview 9) on the german “richten” (meaning “judge” or “fix”) of the apostles’ creed’s article seven. consequently, most representatives of this gospel of “complete restoration” also rejected the notion that non-christians would be separated from god in hell. this was either seen as “too exclusivist” (baptist pastor interview 15) or “incomprehensible with the loving nature of god” (catholic priest interview 2). generally, those advocating for the “personal redemption gospel” tended to give precedence to evangelism and discipleship in their mission interpretation and practice. on the other hand, the representatives of the “complete restoration gospel” either prioritized demonstrating the gospel by acts of service, societal engagement and creation care or practised their evangelism and discipleship in a decidedly less-confrontational manner. in addition, a minority of the respondents embraced a third “holistic” understanding of mission and gospel (described below).3 3.5 factors hindering cooperation the different soteriological and missiological convictions clearly negatively affected collaboration. for evangelicals, a shared gospel interpretation was a precondition for missionary cooperation. still, the evangelical respondents assessed the other traditions differently. while one evangelical church planter continuously differentiated between those “who have the gospel in the centre” and those who don’t; in his view a local catholic parish met these requirements, because “they really follow jesus” (interview 1). for others, gospel agreement with catholics signified an oxymoron. that said, a key insight of this study is that interconfessional cooperation also remained limited in the presence of broad soteriological and missiological agreements. although many spoke about the importance of “a kingdom perspective” or “bringing the gospel to the city together” (catholic theologian interview 16) this was not reflected in much of the praxis. often, projects with very similar concerns in close proximity didn’t keep in touch or weren’t even aware of each other. it thus seems that generally, “missionary ecumenical thinking is still underdeveloped” (lutheran minister interview 3) in vienna. 3 these types are simplified models highlighting important similarities and differences in the responses. 28 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23483 28 a second inhibiting factor was reservation and distrust against other traditions. evangelical and pentecostal free churches still often deal with suspicion from mainline churches and thus “always first have to wait and see what others think about them” (pentecostal pastor interview 11). while evangelicals are often suspected of fundamentalism, pentecostals face allegations of spiritual abuse or manipulation. on the other hand, almost all evangelical leaders spoke of a negative bias against catholics in their denomination due to past experiences of discrimination and exclusion. thirdly, sexual ethics, particularly the evaluation of homosexual practice, are highly divisive. these “ethical sexual-moral topics currently are to ecumenism what baptism or the lord’s supper were before,” a baptist pastor opined (interview 15). in fact, the question of homosexuality seems to have reached almost confessional status. four of the first five interviews raised the issue by themselves and multiple representatives on all sides of the debate stated that cooperation with those disagreeing was difficult to impossible for them. nevertheless, the fourth and by far most-repeated hindering aspect was simply a lack of time and resources. in the eyes of many leaders, interconfessional networking requires more resources than available besides other pastoral duties. consequently, it is frequently perceived as an “additional burden that drains the energy of the local congregation” (pentecostal pastor interview 11). 3.6 factors promoting cooperation besides shared theological profiles, three other aspects promoting collaboration were discovered. the first can be described as “a theology of generosity” (lutheran minister interview  3), “the ability to differentiate between foundational and secondary issues, paired with humility and readiness to learn” (house-church pastor interview 10). secondly, the age of practitioners also appears to play a role. according to an evangelical pastor, “postmodern” young people “are well aware that there isn’t always black and white, that there are grey areas and tensions in the bible that you can’t resolve” (interview 14). similarly, a catholic respondent observed that “young people attend youth vigils at heiligenkreuz abbey and then afterwards go to a worship night at icf” (interview 16).4 thirdly, ecumenical collaboration across theological differences seems to be more successful when grounded in personal relationships and spiritual community. for most interviewees, encounters or friendships with christians from other confessions helped to overcome prejudices and initiate cooperation. “a short while ago, i 4 heiligenkreuz is a local cistercian monastery, icf is a neo-charismatic free church. 29 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23483 29 met the local catholic priest and was astonished by seeing how he hurts that so many people don’t know jesus personally. that completely changed my outlook on catholics”, an evangelical pastor explained (interview 7). similarly, a catholic participant remarked that ecumenism must happen “while we pray and do mission together” (interview 16). 4. discussion and theological reflection the interviews showed that interconfessional cooperation in missionary church development in vienna happens diversely but only in a limited fashion. moreover, it is set in a “confessional field of tension” (hinkelmann 2022: 195), marked by different mission and gospel interpretations as well as diverging views on sexual ethics. together with the described time constraints, it is easily understandable why close collaboration generally tends to stay within inner-confession or inner-tradition boundaries. nevertheless, from a missional perspective the question still remains how the unity of the whole church can be expressed in church development in vienna. the interviews showed that missionary ecumenism is often experienced as an additional burden for local practitioners. therefore, in this section, we will discuss what form of interconfessional cooperation might avoid this and thus make sense in the context of vienna. 4.1 the power and problem of diversity in cooperative networks a crucial element of practical theological research is incorporating insights from other relevant disciplines into the interpretation of observed practice (osmer 2008: 93–4). for this study it makes sense to learn from research on cooperation in urban development and planning, for like church development the development of cities also happens in the midst of change processes and necessitates collaboration between various stakeholders sharing a similar concern in a region (görgl, döringer and herburger 2020: 378–87). in such cooperative networks “network power”, the ability to achieve things together that are not possible alone, emerges when three factors are present (booher and innes 2002: 225–31). first, a diverse array of actors “consistent with the full range of interest and knowledge relevant to the issues at hand” jointly works on a common problem. secondly, these agents are aware how they themselves can profit from what the others bring to the table experiences, insights, resources or contacts. the third requirement is “authentic dialogue” about the shared concern, where all divergent perspectives are valued and maintained. only then creative solutions and options for action in complex situations can be found. at the same time, too much diversity can harm cooperative networks. if the different perspectives 30 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23483 30 prevent the development of common goals or a shared vision, a network becomes incapacitated (payer 2008: 35). thus, in cooperative networking it is crucial to find the right amount of diversity that enables mutual benefit but does not thwart productive collaboration (barentsen 2024). in missionary church development in vienna it would not be reasonable to encourage leaders holding diverging mission and gospel interpretations to partner closely, as the diversity would be too high to set shared goals. nevertheless, the different theological traditions and missionary approaches provide valuable insights from which the whole church can benefit. in the words of dutch missiologist stefan paas (2014: 188): unity in mission is extremely important, because the missionary challenge in europe is so immensely complex. co-operation, networking, and constant interaction are crucial to open up the hermeneutical space that we need for a better understanding of this challenge. it is a profound conviction of missional theology that every tradition has “something that can be shared with others” for mutual enrichment and the building up of the church to “the fulness of christ” (kim 2016: 263). therefore, cooperation in missionary church development needs to enable both close collaboration with those of similar missiological and soteriological convictions as well as truly ecumenical exchange with practitioners from all traditions. as one church planter succinctly remarked: “i believe that you need a strong shared theological direction for cooperation in church planting. at the same time, we still need the big picture, to learn from one another, share synergies, and connect” (evangelical church planter interview 7). in our opinion this necessitates complementing forms of cooperative networks. that way the missional demand for ecumenical unity can be met while remaining missiological, soteriological and ethical differences are also taken seriously. almost all of the interviewed practitioners already participate in regional or national cooperative networks within their respective traditions or confessions. furthermore, existing international church planting networks connect similar traditions like evangelicals and pentecostals. still lacking, however, is a broader ecumenical regional viennese network that connects diverse church development actors in the city. this vision matches eiffler’s proposal for an ecumenical network of all new forms of church in a place (2020: 460–1). such “collaborative hubs” already exist elsewhere and facilitate “connection across a broader ecclesial ecology through partnership, education, and leadership development” (benac 2022: 4.118). we will now further discuss the inception of such a network for vienna, “the vienna church planting hub”. 31 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23483 31 4.2 the vienna church planting hub the german theologians herbst and pompe try to flesh out the practical implications of the missiological togetherness of mission and ecumenical unity in their concept of “regio-local church development.” they want to aid churches and new ecclesial expressions to see their action as part of a collective, cooperative practice, namely the mutual participation in the one mission of god in their context, instead of ignoring or competing with each other (herbst and pompe 2022: 10.31). to that end, participants should realize their respective strengths (profiling), complement each other in their shared responsibility (complementing), coordinate common tasks and reciprocal duties (cooperation), and practically support each other (solidarity) (herbst and pompe 2022: 24).5 these dimensions can be connected with the three aspects of cooperative praxis discovered in the interviews: support and aid, mutual learning, and spiritual community. in terms of herbst and pompe’s cooperation and solidarity: material, personal, or social resources could be shared and common projects undertaken (cf. kim 2016). for complementing and profiling, contextual learning from and with each other could be fostered in learning communities, training events or visits. moreover, church planter training could be contextualized for vienna in cooperation with seminaries, mission organizations and church governance boards, encouraging students of theology to do internships in local initiatives. such initiatives would need to be embedded in spiritual community, a wish expressed by many leaders in church development in vienna. the church planting hub could support this community by enabling encouragement, comfort and intercessory prayer through periodic meetings for exchange, worship and prayer or a yearly conference. what might concrete steps towards such cooperative networking in ecumenical plurality look like? first of all, network research points to the necessity of establishing trust between the diverse partners, which requires authentic dialogue about similarities and differences (payer 2008: 35; benac 2022: 110). in the viennese context, the soteriological and missiological diversity of the potential partners needs to be addressed. one suitable theological framework for this exchange could be tomlin’s “generous orthodoxy”. based on the nicene creed, he attempts to lay down the essentials of orthodox christian faith, while also pointing out how different traditions can learn from each other in their witness (tomlin 2022: 125–70). moreover, herbst and pompe highlight the importance of reconciliation for ecclesial cooperation (2022: 20; cf. avtzi 2013). the interviews revealed the enduring 5 it must be noted that this model has not been empirically tested and is situated in the german regional church context. further research is needed to assess the practicability of our inferences. 32 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23483 32 negative effect of past hurtful experiences as well as continuing prejudices in collaboration between different denominations. these need to be addressed, acknowledged and forgiven. if a cooperative network like the vienna church planting hub is to succeed, its beginning must be strongly rooted in the establishment of relationships and trust. secondly, the development of networks requires different roles (payer 2008: 45–6; zimmer 2017: 173–4). for instance, forerunners initiate networking by establishing first contacts and cooperations. gatekeepers generate new impulses and partners through their social capital and providers support the network administratively, financially or logistically. furthermore, existing research suggests that the establishment of collaboration depends on the initiatives of both church governance and individual local leaders (eiffler 2020: 451; zimmer 2017: 174; benac 2022: 20–1, 93). consequently, both local and regional christian leaders in vienna need to invest in relationships with representatives of other confessions. on the local level, forerunners could begin to meet for prayer with colleagues in their district and jointly invest in the neighbourhood. at the same time, church governances could aid interconfessional cooperation by providing resources and developing support structures. for instance, each confession could employ one suitable leader on a part-time basis to help develop the church planting hub. thirdly, a network needs moderators. these lead the participants in the development of a shared vision and transparent decision-making processes. they also take steps to promote the relationships and trust needed for the network to properly function (hucht 2017: 141–7). to avoid intergroup conflict, the diverse vienna church planting hub should be moderated by a team of leaders from different confessions and theological traditions. these moderators should be respected in their own denominations and share a commitment to missional ecumenism in the city. with their interactions they can then prototypically model interconfessional cooperation and exchange for the network participants. 4.3 the theological vision: participating faithfully in the mission of god in vienna pursuing ecumenical unity in missionary church development in vienna through the vienna church planting hub will be challenging and require time, resources and dedication. however, it is worth the effort. to faithfully participate in the mission of god in the city, all churches and traditions are “in need of the witness of the other” for complementing and correction in their missional practice (franke 2020: 165). in closing, this is briefly illustrated with the two dominant gospel interpretations and corresponding missionary paradigms observed in the interviews. from the perspective of missional theology, the redemptive and restoring mission of god in which the church participates needs to be understood as holistic. it brings 33 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23483 33 about personal redemption as well as restoration for society and all creation (wright 2006; keller 2012: 267–71). however, it seems that many viennese practitioners fail to maintain this integral vision. missional theology hence reminds those holding to a personal redemption gospel that human sin has societal, economic and ecological dimensions that manifest themselves in unjust structures, oppression or the destruction of creation. these immanent expressions of sin are addressed in the gospel just as much as its transcendent, spiritual effects and therefore require confrontation and transformation through the missionary church. at the same time, representatives of the complete restoration gospel must not miss the fact that the mission of god is at least as concerned with the transformation of the human heart. because the horizontal consequences of sin are intrinsically connected with the disrupted vertical relationship with god, the christian engagement for justice, peace and reconciliation ultimately cannot do without reconciliation to god through personal repentance and faith.6 the vienna church planting hub could be one important way to foster such ecumenical missional correction and complementation and thus help new forms of church to faithfully participate in the mission of god in the city.7 5. conclusion this article sought to contribute to a better understanding of interconfessional cooperation in urban missionary church development. to that end an empirical study with 17 practitioners from seven different denominations was conducted in the austrian capital vienna. the study showed that despite the ecumenically shared missionary concern, interconfessional cooperation as of yet remains rather limited. only the roman catholic church actively seeks to collaborate with and learn from the anglican church as well as from various free churches in its efforts to revitalize old and plant new churches. part of the reasons for the limited amount of ecumenical cooperation are theological differences, such as diverging mission and gospel interpretations or contrary positions on sexual ethics. however, the most mentioned factor simply was a lack of time and resources that often leads to ecumenical networking being seen as an additional burden. 6 in the interviews three participants, a baptist pastor, a catholic priest and an anglican reverend (interviews 8, 10, 16) embodied this holistic gospel and mission interpretation. 7 james (2018), in his study on church plants in seattle, shows much more extensively how this correction and complementation between different missionary ecclesial types can look like in ecclesial praxis. 34 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23483 34 based on these insights, we discussed what form of missionary ecumenism might be suitable in the observed tension between the missional mandate for unity and the contextual factors complicating that quest. hence, we suggested the formation of a regional ecumenical network, the vienna church planting hub, complementing existing inner-denominational cooperative activities. this platform would deliberately bring together the diverse theological perspectives present in church development in vienna to correct and complement each other in their joint participation in the mission of god in the city. nevertheless, it remains to be seen in further research whether this theoretical proposal could work out in actual ecclesial practice. about the authors thomas kräuter, th.m., assistant pastor of evangeliumsgemeinde in vienna, orcid 0009-0007-3907-9114. contact: tom.kraeuter@evangeliumsgemeinde.wien. jack barentsen, ph.d., professor of practical theology, evangelische theologische faculteit leuven, belgium; extraordinary researcher in practical theology, faculty of theology of north-west university, potchefstroom, south africa, orcid 0000-00032197-7163. contact: jack.barentsen@etf.edu. this article represents the publishable summary of kräuter’s master thesis at the evangelische theologische faculteit leuven (2024), “gemeinsam für die stadt: wie geschieht interkonfessionelle zusammenarbeit in der missionarischen kirchenentwicklung im urbanen kontext? eine qualitativ-empirische untersuchung in wien,” supervised by barentsen. declaration of interest the authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work 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(eds), pp. 151–166. ward, pete. 2017. introducing practical theology: mission, ministry, and the life of the church. grand rapids: baker academic. wright, christopher. 2006. the mission of god: unlocking the bible’s grand narrative. nottingham: intervarsity press. zimmer, miriam. 2017. “beziehungsprofile und positionsanforderungen: rollenbewusstsein in sozialen netzwerken entwickeln.” in zimmer, sellman, and hucht (eds), pp. 167–87. zimmer, miriam, matthias sellmann and barbara hucht (eds). 2017. netzwerke in pastoralen räumen: wissenschaftliche analysen – fallstudien – praktische relevanz. würzburg: echter verlag. https://doi.org/10.1163/15709256-20221434 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-211-73127-7_3 ecclesial futures 2025 – volume 6 – issue 2 131 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef25097 b o o k r e v i e w doi: 10.54195/ef25097 olsworth-peter, ed. 2024. mixed ecology: inhabiting an integrated church london: spck isbn: 978-0-281-08938-3 reviewed by jack barentsen for many churches and city networks, denominational structures no longer offer the life-sustaining support necessary for congregational vitality. instead, churches and their leaders find themselves in an increasingly complex world of churches, communities, organizations and networks. this comprises different denominational churches, different forms and styles of church, various forms of chaplaincy, and christian activism. the ecosystem has changed. olsworth-peter guides us in a practical overview of this new ecosystem, visualizing it with a dozen or more helpful graphs. tellingly, the author was ordained in the anglican church precisely in 2004, the year of this church’s famous mission-shaped church report. thus, he started his ministry journey at a time when traditional forms of church were already under stress, and widespread experiments started with what was at first called “fresh expressions” and has since blossomed into a wide variety of initiatives. his book presents a living picture of what is now called a “mixed ecology of church”. the term “ecology” denotes natural systems of symbiosis, and has become a metaphor for other worlds. the introduction reflects on the two piers of brighton, the one rusting away with rarely a special occasion, the other flourishing with shops, entertainment and tourism. neither pier fulfils its original purpose in the fishing and shipping industries, but each has adapted more or less successfully to the ever changing ecosystem, where connectivity is the key to life and flourishing. in five chapters, olsworth-peter extends this metaphor to church contexts. the first chapter explores the “why” of a mixed ecology. earlier metaphors were more functional, “blended church” and “mixed economy”, while “mixed ecology” points to a diversity of life forms, where the key is connectivity and exchange of nutrients and protection. an ecosystem supports many species that could not survive without it. 132 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef25097 132 the covid-19 pandemic accelerated the growth of these ecclesial ecosystems. already the early church manifested such an ecology, with liminal communities, simple structures and adaptive leadership. this parallels contemporary developments, with new forms of church appearing next to traditional forms. hence, olsworth-peter distinguishes between church planting as attractional, and pioneering as contextual. he works out a theological basis with five guest authors, and consists of five themes: reconciliation, community, difference, creation and self-giving. the co-existence of all these forms, communities and organizations is the topic of chapter 2. an ecosystem houses producers and consumers. there is biodiversity and interdependence to maintain balance, absorb waste and nourish life. participating in a mixed ecology is like a journey, which the author describes in six phases: noticing the other, offering oneself, gathering with others, seriously connecting, collaborating and co-creating. although this journey is easily depicted as a continuing cycle, different inhabitants of an ecosystem are at different points in their journey and move at different speeds. the author describes various patterns of collaboration and co-creation, each featuring its own network within the larger ecosystem. chapter 3 then outlines what it takes to inhabit a mixed ecology, distinguishing seven sacred spaces or “habitats” that help understand how churches relate to their environment: cell, chapel, chapter, cloister, garden, refectory and library – words that are perhaps familiar in an anglican context, but may need more explanation for other contexts. this picture of inhabiting is further elaborated by analysing different starting points (incomer or citizen) and dwelling patterns (resident or commuter), and different postures (abiding, innovating, enabling). each step is graphically illustrated, which is helpful when using the book as a practical handbook, but might otherwise be quite overwhelming. chapter 3 continues with the practice of enabling other leaders as a vital quality of ministry. such leaders develop an attitude of openness and awareness within themselves and in others, creating spaces to collaborate with potential and emerging leaders. this practice, olsworth-peter believes, facilitates a move from “multichurch” to “inter-church” where entitlement and power are replaced by “humility, sacrifice, grace, and so forth” (101). leading a mixed ecology then becomes the focus of chapter  4. the typical questions of leadership are explored, why (goals), what (forms), how (methods), and where (places) – but now with elements from the above descriptions of mixed ecology. this produces the recognition that there are many leadership charisms for a mixed ecology. familiar ones are the parish priest, lay pioneer, and contextual chaplain. others include the founding starter, community entrepreneur, advocate and innovator. 133 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef25097 133 this results in a mixed ecology of leadership, which in turn requires reflection on the structures and focus of ministry training, which olsworth-peter himself worked with in various training sessions. the ultimate goals is a sense of co-creative leadership, combining duplication and collaboration to see growth. finally, chapter  5 focuses on how to shape a mixed ecology, interpreting the needs of the ecosystem in terms of vision: how to cast it, support it, embed it, implement it, and how to nourish and protect it. every chapter includes “talking points” along the way and “discussion questions” at the end. the book presents itself as an explorative and practical handbook of mixed ecologies of church. such ecclesial ecosystems can be mutually enriching with good levels of biodiversity and a variety of leaders. the author shares his rich experience in coaching, educating and training with a broader audience. much of this ecosystem seems to take place with the institutional support, the larger umbrella of the church of england, although it is broader. yet, that kind of denominational support is surely helpful to nourish and shape these ecologies. this represents a significant challenge for many churches and city networks across europe, where often there is no single denominational system that is capable of providing this umbrella. this will require churches, workers and visionaries of many kinds to move away from competitive to more collaborative modes of serving our cities. it requires a generous ecumenism where we move beyond tolerating each other, or cooperating pragmatically, to acknowledging god’s work through the spirit in the other – the other who is recognized as gift to ourselves (and we to them), to learn and grow into greater christlikeness as we serve our cities. about the reviewer jack barentsen, professor emeritus of practical theology (specialization: religious leadership), evangelische theologische faculteit, leuven, belgium; institute of leadership and social ethics. contact: jack.barentsen@etf.edu mailto:jack.barentsen@etf.edu 1 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 doi: 10.54195/ef22577 a r t i c l e innovative mission funding: approaches used by assemblies of god ghana in the vision 3000 initiative mishael donkor ampofo and peter white abstract this study examines the innovative funding approaches employed by the assemblies of god ghana (ag ghana) during their vision 3000 church planting initiative (2015–19). through analysis of semi-structured interviews with 14 key stakeholders and extensive document review, the research explores how ag ghana developed funding strategies combining traditional church giving with modern technological solutions. the study reveals that ag ghana successfully utilized mobile micro-giving programmes, corporate partnerships, diaspora networks, and systematic local church contributions. while achieving significant success in resource mobilization, the initiative encountered challenges including urban–rural economic disparities, and sustainability concerns in economically disadvantaged regions. the findings provide insights into contemporary mission funding approaches, suggesting the need for adaptive funding models that balance innovative financing mechanisms with traditional stewardship practices while remaining sensitive to local economic realities. the study also highlights the role of accountability and transparency, in mission fund mobilization and management. this contributes to ongoing discourse on sustainable mission funding in african christianity. keywords: mission funding, vision 3000, assemblies of god ghana, church planting, resource mobilization 1 introduction the dramatic shift in global christianity’s centre of gravity towards africa has fundamentally transformed mission work dynamics, particularly in funding approaches. this transformation is evidenced by africa becoming the continent with the highest number of christians, making up approximately 58% of the population in the year 2020 ( johnson and grim 2020). as of 2024, africa is home to approximately 734 million christians, making it the continent with the highest number of christians ecclesial futures 2025 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 22 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 globally (gordon-conwell theological seminary 2024). within this context, the emergence of africa-to-africa missions represents a significant paradigm shift in how mission work is conceptualized, implemented and funded in contemporary times. the financing of mission initiatives remains a critical challenge in contemporary african christianity, as churches seek to balance local sustainability with global impact. the assemblies of god ghana (ag ghana) provides an instructive case study through its vision 3000 initiative (2015–19), which aimed to establish 3,000 new churches within a five-year period. this ambitious project exemplifies the innovative approaches african churches are developing to address mission funding challenges while maintaining indigenous agency and sustainability. while missions have traditionally been associated with western agencies’ funding work in africa, the rise of african churches taking leadership in mission work presents both opportunities and challenges in mission funding approaches. the complexity of mission funding involves various aspects, including generosity, poverty alleviation and financial sustainability (myers, 2011: 130; franklin and niemandt 2015). despite some scholarly attention to aspects of mission funding, bate (2001: 50) asserts that there remains academic neglect regarding comprehensive research on money and missions, particularly in african-initiated projects. vision 3000 funding mechanisms present a particularly compelling case study in mission funding innovation for several reasons. first, it represents one of the most ambitious church-planting initiatives in contemporary african christianity. second, it emerged from african indigenous church leaders rather than a western mission organization and leadership, offering insights into indigenous approaches to mission funding. third, its implementation coincided with significant technological and economic changes in ghana, allowing examination of how traditional funding mechanisms adapt to contemporary realities. the relationship between mission expansion and financial sustainability has generated significant scholarly discourse. alawode (2020: 2) emphasizes that successful african churches must balance global connection with local relevance in their financial approaches. similarly, short (2021: 4) argues that effective religious fundraising requires endowing fiscal transactions with spiritual meaning, highlighting the need for both practical and theological considerations in mission funding. asamoah-gyadu (2021: 158) notes that technological and economic advancement in african christianity requires new approaches to financial systems and resource mobilization. the complexity of mission funding in african contexts presents unique challenges that demand critical examination. the intersection of theological principles, cultural realities and economic factors creates a multilayered environment where traditional western funding models may not be fully applicable. this article examines how ag ghana addressed these challenges through innovative funding mechanisms ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 33 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 during their vision 3000 initiative, focusing particularly on the integration of traditional stewardship practices with modern innovations. this article contributes to the growing body of literature on african mission funding by providing a detailed analysis of an indigenous initiative that successfully navigated the complexities of modern mission financing. through examining ag ghana’s vision 3000, this study offers insights into innovative funding approaches that may inform other african churches’ mission strategies while maintaining cultural authenticity and financial sustainability. 2 methodology this study employs a qualitative methodology to assess the vision 3000 initiative funding approaches within the assemblies of god ghana. following malhotra and birks’ (2006) approach to exploratory qualitative research, the study combined a historical and a phenomenological approach. mustafa (2010) defines a historical approach as a methodology that enables the assessment of evidence to establish specific events and draw conclusions about past developments in the church’s mission work. data collection involves semi-structured interviews with 14 participants; rev. professor paul frimpong-manso (immediate past general superintendent, visioner of vision 3000), rev. dr. sam ato bentil (chair of vision 3000 committee, immediate past general treasurer, senior pastor of liberty centre ag lapaz), rev. dr. sylvanus amegashiti-elorm (secretary of vision 3000 committee, regional director for onehope africa, senior pastor of trinity temple ag, tema), rev. anthony john doe (current foreign missions director, seen as operations head for vision 3000, senior pastor of north kaneshie ag), two current regional superintendents, one former regional superintendent, one regional missions director and six senior pastors from the 24 ag ghana national regions. these participants were supplemented by an analysis of church documents and reports. the study utilizes purposive sampling, which groenewald (2018) describes as identifying participants who can meaningfully contribute to understanding the phenomenon. the data analysis followed creswell’s (2018) thematic analysis framework, where interview transcripts and document reviews were systematically coded and analysed to identify emerging patterns and themes. the coding process included open coding to identify initial themes, axial coding to link categories, and selective coding to refine and integrate core themes (strauss and corbin, 1998: 101–3; saldana, 2015). nvivo software was utilized to manage and organize the large volume of qualitative data. the findings are presented thematically and structured around the key funding approaches identified: local church participation and traditional giving, technological innovation, corporate partnerships, and diaspora network mobilization. ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 44 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 direct quotations from participants are integrated throughout the discussions to provide rich, detailed evidence supporting the theme. all participants consented to be named or anonymized and signed informed consent forms following stellenbosch university’s ethical protocols. thus, this article forms part of a broader missiological project approved under ethical clearance number rec: sbe 27453. following the discussions on the methodology employed in this study, the discussion will now focus on discussing some existing literature on mission funding with special reference to africa. this would therefore make room for discussions on the assemblies of god ghana’s mission funding approaches for the vision 3000 initiative. 3 mission funding in the contemporary context of africa the literature on mission funding reveals an evolving perspective on financial sustainability in church growth initiatives, particularly in the african context. traditional approaches emphasize local church giving and foreign mission support, but contemporary scholarship advocates for more diverse and contextually appropriate funding mechanisms. this evolution reflects broader changes in global christianity and the increasing importance of indigenous church development. bonk’s (1991: 58) seminal work on mission funding highlights the complex relationship between financial resources and mission effectiveness. he argues that traditional funding models often create unhealthy dependencies, suggesting the need for more sustainable approaches. this perspective is developed further by myers (2011: 130), who emphasizes that effective mission funding must address both spiritual and material dimensions of sustainability. myers particularly notes that the complexity of poverty involves limitations across the physical, psychological, social, cultural and spiritual needs of mankind, which all impact mission funding dynamics. however, in ag ghana’s vision 3000, a strategy was deliberately developed to mitigate dependency by designing micro-giving structures rooted in local participation and ownership. building on these foundational insights, walls (2002: 91) introduces the concept of the translation principle in mission funding, arguing that financial strategies must be meaningfully translated into local cultural contexts. this theoretical framework helps explain why some funding approaches succeed in certain contexts while failing in others. the principle particularly resonates in african contexts, where traditional communal resource-sharing practices often intersect with modern financial systems. furthermore, african scholarship provides crucial insights into contextual mission funding challenges. bediako (1995: 187) argues that mission funding must resonate with african notions of community and self-reliance. this perspective is ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 55 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 further developed by asamoah-gyadu (2005: 226), who suggests that giving in african contexts often intertwines with deeper cultural and spiritual significance. tongoi (2015) builds on this by examining how poverty impacts giving patterns in african churches. he observes that in contexts of poverty, people often develop low self-esteem and may constantly look to others for their needs. this creates particular challenges for developing sustainable local funding models. gathogo (2011: 133–51) further notes how corruption in both church and society can entrench poverty cycles that affect mission funding capabilities. notwithstanding, vision 3000 offers a counter-narrative by empowering local communities through structured innovative micro-giving rather than much reliance on external relief dependence. furthermore, some studies reveal several emerging approaches to mission funding. pocock et al. (2011: 53–7) describe various models, including self-supporting, indigenous and partnership approaches. they particularly note how the self-supporting model has evolved from its early missionary roots to take on different interpretations in different contexts. franklin and niemandt (2015) introduce the concept of a “missiology of generosity” that seeks to integrate theological and practical perspectives on mission funding. their work suggests that effective funding approaches must be grounded in both sound missiological principles and practical financial realities. notwithstanding, emerging literature increasingly has raised concerns about the need for mission funding to focus on technology by scholars such as mawudor (2016: 179–84), and lederleitner (2010: 838–928). asamoah-gyadu (2021: 158–63) notes the growing importance of digital solutions in african christianity’s financial systems. this technological integration represents a significant shift in how african churches approach resource mobilization and financial management. besides the call for technology and its usage in mission funding, recent scholarship also emphasizes the importance of appropriate funding structures. clark (2005) analyses different structural approaches to mission funding among african pentecostal churches, noting both the strengths and weaknesses of various models. ezemadu (2012:12) provides practical examples of structured funding approaches, such as the case of glory tabernacle mobilizing significant resources for mission support. however, lederleitner (2010: 838–928) cautions that technological solutions must be implemented with careful attention to cultural dynamics and local capabilities. oduro (2014: 86) offers a contrasting perspective, noting how some african initiated churches intentionally avoid formal funding structures, preferring more spontaneous, spirit-led approaches to resource mobilization. this tension between structured and spontaneous approaches remains an important theme in contemporary mission funding literature. van rheenen (2001: 5) emphasizes the need for contextually appropriate models that avoid creating dependency while fostering ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 66 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 sustainable local resource mobilization. stout (2008) argues for greater attention to long-term sustainability in funding approaches. analysis of the above discourse demonstrates the complex interplay between theological principles, cultural dynamics, practical constraints and emerging opportunities in mission funding. it suggests that effective funding approaches must navigate these various factors while maintaining a focus on sustainable kingdom advancement. despite the comprehensive analysis of the existing literature, none have addressed the funding strategies associated with vision 3000 in ag ghana. consequently, the following section aims to contribute to the discourse on funding approaches relevant to vision 3000 in ag ghana. 4 funding approaches used in the vision 3000 initiative the implementation of effective funding strategies plays a crucial role in contemporary mission work, particularly in the african context, where innovative approaches are increasingly necessary. vision 3000’s funding strategy represents a significant evolution in african mission funding models, combining traditional ecclesiastical approaches with innovative technological solutions. this section of the article examines how the assemblies of god ghana (ag ghana) effectively mobilized resources while maintaining local ownership and sustainability through their vision 3000 initiative. vision 3000’s funding approach demonstrates how african missions can develop sustainable funding mechanisms that maintain local ownership while accessing broader resource networks. these funding mechanisms will be discussed further in subsequent subheadings. 4.1 local church participation and traditional giving one of the ways vision 3000 raised its funding was through local church participation as a way of local church giving towards missions. the success of vision 3000’s funding strategy hinged on the active involvement of local churches, illustrating the vital interplay between community engagement and sustainable resource mobilization in the african church context. oduro (2014: 86), in his reflection, noted that local church participation is a crucial element for african church sustainability, which represents the delicate balance between external support and local resource mobilization. as reported in the assemblies of god ghana documentary on vision 3000 (2018), regular training events in each area provided opportunities for churches to share stories of god’s goodness when they worked together toward fundraising at their local levels. this indicates that vision 3000’s financial model was not just structurally innovative, but also deeply embedded in ghanaian ecclesial values of collective responsibility and storytelling. ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 77 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 however, the implementation faced certain challenges. participants such as yeboah, adehenu, ainooson and apaloo noted that “grassroots support for the dedicated missions fund fluctuated due to competing initiatives such as other local churches seeing another project as a priority to them than vision 3000” (personal interview with yeboah et al., 2023). these fluctuations were also observed during national election years such as 2016 and 2020, where economic uncertainty impacted donation consistency. clark (2005) describes the essential balance needed in african pentecostal missions between maintaining local ownership and accessing broader resource networks. vision 3000’s approach achieved this balance through integrated digital and traditional giving systems that preserved local church autonomy while expanding resource access. this integration demonstrated how modern technology could enhance rather than replace traditional giving methods. 4.2 technological innovation in fundraising the integration of mobile technology into fundraising strategies heralds a transformative era in mission funding that redefines traditional giving dynamics. vision 3000’s partnership with airtel ghana marked a watershed moment in leveraging mobile technology for mission funding in ghana. according to doe (personal interview, 2023), “airtel at the time remained the sole network in ghana possessing the technical capacity and platform infrastructure to support automatic mobile micro-giving programs.” this technological integration transformed traditional giving patterns, enabling consistent small-scale donations that collectively made significant impacts. bentil and doe (personal interview, 2023) reported that “well-respected pastors were carefully selected as ‘missions fund ambassadors’ to explain this innovative opportunity during visits to local churches nationwide. interested members signed consent forms to automatically donate as low as ghs10 monthly from their registered mobile account towards ag ghana headquarters for vision 3000 church planting support” (personal interview with anthony doe, 2023). lederleitner (2010: 838–928) emphasizes and encourages the importance of accountability and accessibility in mission funding through contemporary technological solutions. the initiative faced initial challenges, as noted by an anonymous participant: “many colleague pastors discouraged their congregation members from participating, and he did not know why” (personal interview with anonymous participant, 2023). additionally, doe (personal interview, 2023) acknowledged that “early smartphone technology limitations hampered seamless adoption across elderly members unfamiliar with menu settings for recurring payments.” franklin and niemandt (2015) identify mobile platforms as a crucial element of contemporary mission funding. they assert that digital transformation enhances donor engagement. the platform’s automated monthly contributions, instant tracking systems, and comprehensive ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 88 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 financial reporting demonstrated how appropriate technology could enhance both participation and administrative efficiency. a significant innovation in vision 3000’s funding approach was its collaboration with mobile telecommunications networks. short (2021: 1) observes that religious organizations adapting commercial strategies for sustainable operations is an innovation for mission funding. the initiative allowed for micro-contributions through mobile accounts, democratizing participation in mission funding. however, the funding approaches faced significant challenges, particularly in rural sustainability. ainooson (personal interview, 2023) highlighted that “deprived regions’ economic limitations hinder providing sufficient tithes or donations to cover long-term budgetary needs, especially during vulnerable early stages.” alawode (2020: 2) broadly observes that there are difficulties in providing monetary support to native churches in rural areas without fostering unhealthy dependency. 4.3 corporate partnerships and strategic alliances vision 3000’s innovative approach to mission funding showcases the power of collaborative partnerships, demonstrating how strategic alliances with organizations revolutionize resource mobilization beyond conventional ecclesiastical methods. rev. dr. sylvanus amegashiti-elorm, secretary of vision 3000, reported that “a large para-church organization like onehope financed vital evangelistic equipment and tricycle acquisition for rural pastors and indigenous missionaries lacking transportation within the 5 years of vision 3000 enrolment” (personal interview with elorm, 2023). this collaboration yielded approximately 1.5 million ghanaian cedis in direct funding alongside material resources. such partnerships suggest a shift in ecclesial funding imagination, where external organizations are not donors but co-architects of mission. this model repositions mission as a shared responsibility, not a handout economy. the partnership with international christian ministries (icm) further exemplifies what bate (2001: 50) terms “collaborative mission funding”. as rev. professor frimpong-manso highlighted, “icm provided specialized architectural and structural engineering consultations to design optimized durable rural church sanctuaries, offering $10,000 grants to supplement construction costs for churches that could furnish land documentation” (personal interview with frimpong-manso, 2023). short (2021: 3) observes that protestant organizations effectively use investor capitalism language and tactics, presenting financial contributions as “investments” in the kingdom of christ. 4.4 diaspora network mobilization vision 3000’s leadership engagement with ghanaian diaspora networks represented an innovative approach to transnational resource mobilization. frimpong-manso ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 99 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 engaged in the “mobilization of some ghanaian diaspora assemblies of god churches across europe, canada, and america to contribute towards the vision back home” (personal interview with frimpong-manso, 2023). myers (2011: 130) identifies that leveraging global networks while maintaining local ownership and direction is an important rudiment for contemporary mission funding. ezemadu (2012: 12) notes that such diaspora networks provide not just financial resources but also valuable technical expertise and international connections. the initiative’s digital platforms facilitated continuous diaspora engagement, enabling real-time project updates and immediate response to emerging needs. this relationship-based approach ensured sustained support while creating channels for knowledge transfer and professional networking. after analysing the strategies utilized in vision 3000’s funding approaches, the next section will focus on the distribution of resources within these funding mechanisms. 5 vision 3000’s funding and resource allocation vision 3000’s funding approaches demonstrated both innovation and complexity in resource allocation for church planting initiatives across ghana. the initiative employed multiple funding streams while attempting to maintain local church ownership and sustainable development. according to bentil, doe, and elorm, “to steward the resources entrusted for the vision 3000 missions project, a governing missions fund committee that worked with the vision 3000 national committee scrutinized funding applications before disbursing monies to verified emerging churches or missionaries” (personal interview with bentil, doe and elorm, 2023). franklin and niemandt (2015: 389) emphasize the importance of proper fund management in missions as a structured oversight mechanism. this practice affirms a growing maturity in african church financing governance. it moves beyond informal trust towards documented procedures, reflecting a broader ecclesial shift towards institutional credibility. the initiative also revealed disparities between urban and rural resource allocation. elorm and doe noted that “onehope contributed approximately 1.5 million ghanaian cedis in direct funding alongside material resources” (personal interview with elorm, 2023), yet the distribution of such resources often favored urban areas, as noted by several anonymous participants in the study. this urban–rural divide echoed mtukwa’s (2014:98) concerns about equitable resource distribution in african church development. however, further analysis showed that icm-us support and other grants eventually prioritized rural churches, reflecting a phased allocation strategy responding to infrastructure readiness. ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 1010 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 furthermore, frimpong-manso highlighted the “collaboration with international christian ministries (icm), a us-based organization that provided specialized architectural and structural engineering consultations to design optimized durable rural church sanctuaries” (personal interview with frimpong-manso, 2023). short (2021: 3) has shown that protestant organizations effectively leverage investor capitalism language and tactics for kingdom advancement. doe asserts that “the infrastructural buildings sponsored by icm-us benefited more rural churches than urban churches. thus, the icm-us partnership was allocated to more rural churches” (personal interview, 2023). after examining the allocation of resources within these funding mechanisms, the subsequent section will explore the accountability measures implemented in relation to the mission funding strategies of vision 3000. 6 accountability and transparency measures the implementation of accountability and transparency mechanisms represents a fundamental component in the stewardship of missionary resources, particularly exemplified in initiatives like vision 3000. franklin and niemandt (2015: 401) emphasize that extensive consultation and discernment processes are essential for the responsible management of mission funding. their research examining the wycliffe global alliance’s approach demonstrates how structured oversight through representative committees can enhance financial accountability while preserving missionary agency. the establishment of formal governance structures through mission fund committees serves multiple purposes in upholding financial integrity. this principle was practically demonstrated in vision 3000’s funding strategy, where a governing missions fund committee worked in conjunction with the vision 3000 national committee to scrutinize funding applications before disbursing monies to verified emerging churches or missionaries (personal interview with bentil, doe and elorm, 2023). drawing from biblical principles of stewardship outlined by hussein (1998: 14), such oversight bodies help ensure resources are utilized effectively for kingdom purposes while maintaining donor confidence. according to doe (personal interview, 2023), “there were times we wrote a request letter for funds and the governing mission fund reduced the amount we requested or denied it at that particular time, telling us to go and bring some documents before the funds were released.” the biblical foundation for such accountability measures stems from principles of faithful stewardship. wright (2004: 147) articulates that resources are held in trust, requiring responsible administration and distribution. wright’s view provides the framework for developing practical accountability systems suited to african contexts while upholding universal standards of transparency and integrity ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 1111 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 in mission funding. kunhiyop (2008: 183) argues that african churches must develop robust systems for managing resources as they take increasing ownership of mission initiatives. however, the sustainability of accountability mechanisms presents ongoing challenges, particularly in contexts with limited administrative infrastructure. while vision 3000’s initiative brought much-needed infrastructure to optimize future resource flows for maximized stewardship and impact (personal interview with bentil, 2023), sustainability remained a persistent challenge. an anonymous participant (a mission officer) stated that “during our meetings, we asked questions about finance, but proper answers with accounts were never provided for us.” mtukwa (2014: 98) asserts that african churches must balance spontaneity and pragmatism with establishing enduring structures for missionary support. integration of local church governance with broader accountability structures remains vital. johnson (2017: 52) emphasizes that the centrality of local churches in missionary endeavours needs proper channels of accountability. this helps prevent the development of parallel systems while strengthening indigenous ownership of both resources and accountability processes. as demonstrated by vision 3000’s approach and supported by alawode’s (2020: 4) research, the principles of accountability and transparency are not merely administrative requirements but fundamental components that ensure the responsible handling of financial resources in mission work. this integrated approach to accountability in mission funding demonstrates how theoretical frameworks and practical implementation can work together to create effective oversight mechanisms while maintaining focus on the ultimate goal of supporting mission work effectively and responsibly. following an examination of the accountability and transparency measures in the stewardship of missionary resources by vision 3000, a comprehensive discussion and analysis will ensue. this will include insights derived from the evaluation of vision 3000’s mission funding mechanisms, coupled with pertinent lessons learned and recommendations for future practices. 7 discussion and analysis the vision 3000 initiative by assemblies of god ghana represents a significant evolution in african mission funding approaches, demonstrating the successful integration of traditional church-giving mechanisms with modern technological solutions. this initiative’s multi-faceted funding strategy underscores the necessity of balancing technological innovations with cultural authenticity in contemporary african contexts. notably, the partnership with airtel ghana for mobile micro-giving exemplifies how traditional giving patterns can be enhanced rather than replaced by ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 1212 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 modern technology. however, initial resistance from some pastors and technological limitations among elderly members posed notable challenges. furthermore, the initiative’s approach to corporate partnerships and diaspora network mobilization highlights the potential for african churches to access broader resource networks while maintaining local ownership and direction. nevertheless, the urban–rural disparity in resource allocation emerged as a significant challenge, with economically disadvantaged regions struggling to achieve long-term sustainability. this tension between rapid expansion and sustainable development remains a critical consideration for future mission funding initiatives. the research indicates that successful mission funding in african contexts requires more than just financial mechanisms; it demands robust accountability structures and cultural sensitivity. vision 3000’s experience suggests that while technological solutions can enhance giving and transparency, they must be implemented with careful attention to local capabilities and cultural dynamics. the initiative’s challenges with providing comprehensive financial reporting to all stakeholders indicate the ongoing need for improved accountability systems. looking forward, the vision 3000 experience suggests that future mission funding initiatives in africa would benefit from greater attention to rural sustainability mechanisms and more equitable resource distribution systems. a balanced approach that combines innovative funding tools with traditional giving practices, while maintaining strong local church ownership, appears most effective for sustainable mission funding in african contexts. future initiatives should consider developing specialized support structures for economically disadvantaged regions while maintaining the technological advantages demonstrated through mobile giving platforms and corporate partnerships. the findings indicate that mission funding strategies must evolve beyond simple financial transactions to encompass comprehensive approaches that consider spiritual, cultural, and practical dimensions of sustainability. this suggests the need for funding models that can adapt to varying economic contexts while maintaining consistent support for mission work across both urban and rural settings. future mission funding initiatives would benefit from establishing more robust mechanisms for rural church sustainability while continuing to leverage technological innovations and global partnerships for resource mobilization. 8 conclusion vision 3000’s innovative funding approach demonstrates the potential for african churches to develop sustainable, locally-owned mission funding strategies while leveraging modern technology and global networks. the initiative’s multi-faceted funding strategy, combining mobile micro-giving platforms, corporate partnerships, ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 1313 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 diaspora networks, and traditional church giving, provides a model for contemporary mission funding in africa. however, the challenges encountered, particularly regarding urban-rural disparities and sustainability in economically disadvantaged regions, highlight the need for more nuanced approaches to resource allocation and long-term sustainability planning. this study’s conclusions were drawn from a thematic analysis of 14 purposively sampled participants, enabling a nuanced exploration of context-driven funding strategy. the initiative’s experience emphasizes that successful mission funding requires more than just financial mechanisms; it demands robust accountability structures, cultural sensitivity, and adaptive technological solutions. the findings suggest that future mission funding initiatives would benefit from developing specialized support structures for economically disadvantaged regions while maintaining the technological advantages demonstrated through mobile giving platforms and corporate partnerships. vision 3000’s successes and challenges provide valuable insights for future mission funding initiatives, highlighting the importance of balancing multiple funding streams, maintaining strong accountability measures, and addressing sustainability challenges in diverse economic contexts. future research could explore similar indigenous mission strategies in a post-colonial setting across africa, identifying patterns in sustainable resource mobilization. about the authors mishael donkor ampofo holds a phd in missiology from stellenbosch university. his research interests include african pentecostalism, missiology and the intersection of social media studies and management from an interdisciplinary perspective. peter white is an associate professor and head of department for the department of practical theology and missiology in the faculty of theology at stellenbosch university, south africa. his academic journey has been deeply rooted in missiology, with a particular focus on african pentecostalism, religious studies and the intersection of religion and development. his research is driven by a passion for understanding the complexities of african traditional religion and contemporary religious practices. he often explores the dynamics of pentecostal churches, examining their mission strategies, leadership development, and the impact of televangelism. additionally, he is fascinated by the role of social media in modern religious contexts, and his work in this area has provided new insights into how faith communities engage with technology. contact: pwhite@sun.ac.za mailto:pwhite@sun.ac.za ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 1414 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 references alawode, a. o. 2020. “the importance and challenges of money in christian missions.” hts teologiese studies/theological studies 76 (1): 1–8. asamoah-gyadu, j. k. 2005. african charismatics: current developments within independent indigenous pentecostalism in ghana. leiden: brill publishers. asamoah-gyadu, j. k. 2021. digital technology and african christianity: a study in disruption and innovation. oxford: oxford university press. assemblies of 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sustainability of church related organizations: an empirical study on kenya. geneva: globethics.net. mtukwa, g. 2014. “mission funding and church growth in africa.” african journal of evangelical theology 33 (1): 91–103. mustafa, a. 2010. research methodology. new delhi: a.i.t.b.s. publishers. myers, b. l. 2011. walking with the poor: principles and practices of transformational development. maryknoll, ny: orbis books. oduro, t. 2014. “church financial self-reliance: a new paradigm.” journal of african christian thought 17 (2): 84–91. pocock, m., g. van rheenen and d. mcconnell. 2011. the changing face of world missions. grand rapids, mi: baker academic. saldana j. m. 2015. the coding manual for qualitative researchers. 3rd ed. los angeles: sage publications. ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 1515 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22577 short, d. 2021. “fundraising in faith: reframing christian fundraising in light of philanthropy, capitalism, and the spiritual life.” journal of religious leadership 20 (2): 1–18. strauss a., and j. m. corbin. 1998. basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. 2nd ed. thousand oaks: sage publications. stout, k. 2008. “time for change: new visions for mission funding.” international review of mission 97 (384–385): 15–43. tongoi, d. 2015. “christian social innovation in kenya.” african journal of leadership and management 3 (2): 1039–50. van rheenen, g. 2001. missions: biblical foundations and contemporary strategies. grand rapids, mi: zondervan. walls, a. f. 2002. the cross-cultural process in christian history. maryknoll, ny: orbis books. wright, c. j. h. 2004. old testament ethics for the people of god. downers grove, il: intervarsity press. ecclesial futures 2025 – volume 6 – issue 2 127 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef25096 b o o k r e v i e w doi: 10.54195/ef25096 mong, ambrose. 2025. treasure in earthen vessels: the portrayal of priests in fact and fiction eugene, or: cascade books isbn: 9798385215751 reviewed by andre joseph theng mong’s latest volume examines the figure of the catholic priest. being a priest himself working in hong kong, it is no surprise that mong is afforded a personal and deep understanding of the priesthood, including their foibles, imperfections, but also of their heroism and sanctity. roman catholic priests all around the world are united firstly by their promises (or in the case of religious priests, vows) of chastity, poverty, and obedience. their distinctive way of life renders them a fascinating subject both in fact and fiction – mong’s volume thus examines seven cases, basically equally divided into real-life examples and ones in literary texts. it is certainly a timely intervention, and mong’s introduction provides insight into his motivations, namely, the negative press surrounding catholic priests in recent years due to sexual or financial misconduct. mong writes: “while we cannot ignore these evil deeds, we must remember that these wayward clerics do not represent the entire priesthood” (xii). he seeks to complexify the person of the priest beyond one-dimensional stereotypes associated with wrongdoing and irrelevance. the theme of complex figures certainly shines through in each of the chapters, much to mong’s credit. each of these stories will prove to be particularly interesting for readers learning about them for the first time, but certainly also the juxtaposition of these characters in a single volume will provide food for thought on how they might relate to each other, and what they tell us about priests more generally. the first chapter examines two chinese bishops, ignatius kung and aloysius jin luxian, who lived in similar times but whose differing responses to persecution by communist authorities proved controversial. both kung and jin were arrested in 1955; kung refused to lead the chinese catholic patriotic association and was a staunch critic of the communist regime, retaining a hardline stance throughout his life. he was sentenced to life imprisonment and was held in solitary confinement 128 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef25096 128 for many years. in contrast, jin chose a more conciliatory position and engaged with communist authorities to “keep catholicism alive in china” (12). his cooperation with communist leaders following his 1982 release from prison allowed him success in reestablishing the church in shanghai. these differing choices towards engaging with anti-christian civil leaders remain a much relevant question in the present day, both in china and elsewhere. in the chinese context, the controversial 2018 vatican–china “deal”, or provisional agreement, has proved contentious; its implementation might well have impacted cardinal pietro parolin’s papacy chances at the 2025 conclave as he is widely thought to be the architect of the deal. the second and third chapters examine pedro arrupe, sj, and oscar romero respectively. arrupe was a long-time superior general of the society of jesus who steered the jesuits through the changes of vatican ii. the chapter largely focuses on the person of arrupe, and how his experience in his youth and in japan during the second world war and the atomic explosion in hiroshima shaped his leadership later in life. mong highlights how arrupe’s focus on the poor and marginalized influenced francis’ papacy, which was characterized by a great concern for social justice and issues. especially moving is mong’s reflections on the final years of arrupe’s life, when a stroke rendered him paralysed but during which time also “displayed an indomitable spirit” (35). today there is an active cause for his canonization, and in november 2024 the case was formally moved to the vatican marking a step closer towards beatification. chapter  3’s examination of oscar romero bears comparison to those in the preceding two chapters, with romero, an el salvadoran bishop who was gunned down whilst saying mass, displaying shades of the stories of the bishops in china and of arrupe. like jin and kung, romero worked amidst a difficult political context marked by state repression and civil war, and like arrupe, displayed a close affinity for the marginalized. especially insightful is the highlighting of romero’s own transformation as he was initially considered a moderate figure keen to “maintain good relations with the government than to serve the needs of the people” (41). yet his experience as bishop caused him to actively speak up for the sufferings of the people, defending activist priests and he courageously accompanied his flock. romero’s life demonstrates a response to poverty not just of the material kind, but also how “the root of poverty is injustice, which is the refusal to love” (38). the volume comes to life in the next four chapters, each featuring figures of priests from works of fiction, who are all complex characters in their own right. prior to becoming a priest, mong studied english literature to a postgraduate level and worked as a secondary school teacher, and his careful literary analysis shines through in these chapters filled with pedagogical clarity and analytical insight. his affinity with these characters causes us to consider them alongside the historical figures earlier discussed, and indeed, their complexity renders such comparison 129 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef25096 129 worthwhile. these chapters remind me of other texts which stand at the intersection of literature and theology, for example, the work of luke bell osb, monk of quarr abbey, who, like mong, was also a student and teacher of english literature. in 2024, pope francis wrote a letter on the role of literature on priestly formation (francis 2024), where he recalled his experience as a literature teacher at a jesuit school in santa fe. francis wrote: “literature is thus a ‘path’ to helping shepherds of souls enter into a fruitful dialogue with the culture of their time” whilst highlighting the many benefits of reading widely. “this approach to literature, which makes us sensitive to the mystery of other persons, teaches us how to touch their hearts.” chapters 4 and 5 discuss willa cather’s death comes for the archbishop and graham greene’s the power and the glory respectively. cather’s characters jean latour and joseph valliant are closely based on the historical jean-baptiste lamy, the first archbishop of santa fe, and his vicar general, joseph machebeuf. we immediately see here the relationship between “fact” and “fiction”, as works of fiction draw from historical figures. the ambivalence of cather’s latour is illustrated by his hard work in evangelizing in a missional context but who also sought to leave a legacy of his own in a not altogether selfless way, building a romanesque cathedral that he hoped would become his legacy long after his death. his struggles as a priest are further illustrated by the depression and doubt he experienced as a result of a feeling of the ineffectiveness of his apostolate. yet in other instances, such as a carefree motorcycle ride with a friend, we see how the priest comes to terms with his person and his life. a pattern of an increased openness to grace is observed, as well as an openness to a greater generosity in interpreting doctrine in his ministry. an increased openness is similarly observed in the “whisky priest” in greene’s the power and glory. also set in mexico, greene’s characters were distinctly imperfect and flawed, and the “whisky priest” is no exception: often drunk, he is lazy and had fathered a child. yet greene emphasizes the office of the priest, where the ontological nature of ordination renders his sacraments effective regardless of his personal failings: ex opere operato. greene finds merit in the flawed characters, complexifying figures who would otherwise be easily dismissed as “bad priests”. the “whisky priest”, who has an allegorical quality due to being unnamed, is keenly aware and guilty of his own shortcomings and remains faithful to his ministry. finally, chapter 7’s discussion of shusaku endo’s silence, since made into a 2016 film by martin scorsese, narrates the life of a portuguese jesuit, father sebastian rodrigues, who ministers in japan amidst christian persecution in the mid-seventeenth century. christians were forced to apostatize by stepping on a bronze figure of christ known as a fumie. it is here that mong brings fresh insight to understanding the dilemma associated with such an act, radically suggesting that stepping on the figure is in fact an affirmation of faith, comparing rodrigues to the apostle peter – “like peter, the priest understands the teachings of jesus more deeply after his denial” (126). mong 130 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef25096 130 suggests: “rodrigues’s stepping on the fumie is an affirmation of faith in a forgiving god”, arguing that there is a nuance to the momentary “misstep” of the priest, and that a more generous interpretation would in fact point to god’s mercy and grace, despite his silence. mong explores this theme more fully in a separate article (mong 2025), in the process also making a distinction between masculine and feminine faces of christ. in his conclusion, mong writes about a dear former superior whom he looked up to greatly, the late father bonifacio garcia solis op, four-term superior of the rosary province of the order of preachers. the heroic qualities with which mong associates solis will not be unfamiliar to most people who have known priests themselves, especially in a personal capacity. in parts of the world where there are so few priests ministering to large congregations, it can be difficult to develop a nuanced view of the person of the priest especially when viewed only from afar, or in the context of ministry or sacraments. yet some of us who have had the privilege of knowing priests more personally will immediately identify with the ambivalent qualities that mong consistently describes in this book, priests who are deeply faithful but who are also often imperfect, disagreeable, and who struggle greatly. this will be true even in peacetime, let alone the many challenging contexts that the protagonists of these chapters feature in. this volume is thus in essence, a loving ode to the catholic priest, priests whom we know (“our” priests), and is movingly personal and reflective. one point i would have liked to have seen better explored is a more explicit and consistent comparison of the different characters studied here, especially between the historical and fictitious examples. at the same time, pope francis in his letter describes an experience of literature as a “training in discernment”, sensitizing us to “the relationship between forms of expression and meaning”. it is perhaps left to us to make these links for ourselves. finally, the volume leaves us to pray for and give thanks for the priests who work tirelessly in the vineyard of the lord for the salvation of souls, giving wholly of themselves, “warts and all”. about the reviewer andre joseph theng completed his phd at the university of edinburgh, writing about catholic social media from a sociolinguistic perspective. he is interested in media representations of catholicism, especially in digital contexts. contact: andre.theng@ed.ac.uk references francis. 2024. letter on the role of literature in formation, 17 july. available at: https://www. vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2024/documents/20240717-lettera-ruolo-letteratura-formazione.html. mong, ambrose. 2025. “apostate or apostle?: apostasy as conversion in shusaku endo, silence”, in the way 64 (1): 29–42. mailto:andre.theng@ed.ac.uk https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2024/documents/20240717-lettera-ruolo-letteratura-formazione.html https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2024/documents/20240717-lettera-ruolo-letteratura-formazione.html https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2024/documents/20240717-lettera-ruolo-letteratura-formazione.html 1 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 doi: 10.54195/ef19862 a r t i c l e relational authenticity in community: a key for support on the spiritual journey? sarah oliva abstract as god leads his people in this current age, the church, ever-changing and growing, has responded with new expressions of independent community churches. jesus’ mandate for the church to care for its people has not changed. how then, are independent community churches supporting the spiritual journeys of their congregants? this article presents a case study of the big table, an independent community church in south perth, western australia. it uses interviews and participant observations to examine how spiritual support is provided beyond traditional church models. it draws from and extends, a theoretical framework of relational authenticity proposed by lynne taylor (2017), emphasizing its role in nurturing faith during seasons of doubt, crisis and transition. this has theoretical relevance as it extends taylor’s research from recent converts to believers through faith transitions. the study shows how the deeply valued practices of community engagement, worship, scripture exploration and relational leadership sustain spiritual formation and faith continuity, whilst highlighting the importance of relational authenticity as central to supporting believers across faith transitions. the article also has ministry relevance for understanding the journeys of believers who depart existing expressions of church, whilst retaining faith in god. it also holds practical relevance for church leaders exploring new expressions of church, offering insights into fostering meaningful spiritual engagement and support outside traditional frameworks. keywords: relational authenticity, spiritual formation journey, independent community church ecclesial futures 2025 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 22 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 1 introduction through all stages of the spiritual journey, the church is mandated to care for its congregants. in jn 21.15-17, jesus instructed the church to nourish, teach and love god’s children, and peter in his first letter later urged the church to mature in their faith (1 pet. 2.2). scholars agree that spiritual formation and support of congregants’ relationships with god through all stages of their growth and development is a vital role for the church. with church numbers in decline, partly due to a lack of support on the spiritual journey, multiple independent community churches, understood to be non-traditional, non-denominational church communities, have arisen in response. often structured with values and practices that respond to the postmodern world and community in which it finds itself, independent community churches express themselves in innovative ways to meet the needs of people in a changing cultural landscape. there has been minimal study, though, at the intersection of the spiritual formation journey and how independent community churches are best supporting their congregants. this article posits that relational authenticity, understood as the ongoing journey toward authentic expression of persons in their relationships with god, self and others, is a crucial practice in independent community churches that support christians through and beyond seasons of the spiritual journey, including doubt and crisis. the article does this by further defining and unpacking relational authenticity and its relationship to the spiritual formation journey. then, by drawing upon a case study of one independent community church, it presents the role of relational authenticity in the lived experiences of churchgoers. next, it reflects upon the significance of relational authenticity, in contrast to just relationships, through the spiritual practices of community, worship, scripture exploration and relational leadership. finally, it considers the implications of this for ministry relevance to church departers as well as leaders who are pioneering new and diverse expressions of church. 2 relational authenticity and the spiritual journey lynne taylor’s work on atonement and relational authenticity asserts that atonement facilitates the restoration of relationships across all dimensions: personal, social and cosmological. building upon charles guignon’s (2004) definition of authenticity, taylor defines relational authenticity as “the project of becoming the person you are: imaging the relational god” (taylor 2017: 37). atonement is the beginning of an ongoing movement toward relational authenticity and the becoming of a person’s authentic self and all they were created to be (36–7). having been made in the image of god, wholeness and relational authenticity are found in the created beings imaging god through loving relationships (31). the act of atonement positions ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 33 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 the christian in right relationship with god, but the process of becoming relationally authentic, with god, self and others is a journey. relational authenticity can be understood differently to just relationships, in that it is a part of the journey of the christian from the starting point of a right relationship with god, that enables the imaging of god, in love, toward being one’s true, whole and authentic self. for the christian, the spiritual formation journey is an ongoing and fundamental lifetime expedition, with circular movements and undulations of crescents and valleys. it is informed organically by one’s relationship with god and responses to events that naturally occur throughout life (hagberg and guelich 2005). faith struggles through doubt and crisis, are a crucial aspect of the spiritual journey intrinsic to the christian’s existence . the spiritual formation journey is the act of moving toward relational authenticity, set upon by, atonement. unfortunately, many churches are ill-equipped to facilitate spiritual formation effectively through all stages of the spiritual journey (barton et al. 2014). jamieson’s (2002) research on the faith journeys of church departers from evangelical, charismatic and pentecostal institutional church models posits that churches often struggle to address queries around faith. congregants have left the church, but their faith has remained intact . not looking to leave the faith, people are exploring new ways of being the church and expressing their spirituality. in the changing cultural landscape where a subjective understanding of truth is more commonly accepted than an imposed metanarrative, people everywhere, including christians, have a longing for “more god and less church, more faith and less religion” (martin 2002: 9). people are searching for safe spaces where they can be truly authentic in relationships with others. a call to church renewal at the turn of the last century has seen the church respond with new and inventive expressions of faith and the establishment of multiple, diverse small congregations of believers primarily concerned with jesus and authentic relationships with one another. independent community churches, understood to be non-traditional, non-denominational church models with common overlapping hallmarks such as informal and non-conventional locations for meetings, like cafes and pubs, and a declericalized leadership structure have arisen across the globe. callahan’s (2000) work on small community churches observed a growing trend toward small, strong congregations, arguing that people were looking for communities that embraced relationships over busy church programmes. gibbs and bolger’s (2006) investigation on the nature of emerging churches and movements emphasizes that supportive and effective churches meet the spiritual needs of congregants in a changing culture with the main concern being congregants’ holisitic growth through rich encounters with god (gibbs & bolger 2006: 234). viola (2009) asserts that mutual edification through community gatherings without pretence and a hands-on approach in its meetings will accelerate christian spiritual growth. in the missional church space, beard, through his study on spiritual formation practices ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 44 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 in the missional movement, suggests that spiritual formation through missional discipleship takes place via the organic flow of living life together (beard 2015: 181). in these new expressions of church though, the question arises of which practices best support their congregants on their spiritual journey? liesch (2001), on the importance of worship in church today, emphasizes the need for mutual edification in community for worship to be effective, whilst tenelshof suggests the (universal) church needs to provide good listening and responding skills to allow for sharing honestly and authentically and for the holy spirit to bring holistic spiritual growth (barton et al. 2014: 300). breedt and niemandt’s (2013) research on relational leadership and the missional church posits that, in a time where honesty, truthfulness, integrity and relationships are highly prized, for leaders to lead effectively, it is necessary for authentic relationships to be cultivated among those whom the leaders lead. in each of these practices, relational authenticity is at their centre. the case study below showcases an independent community church and the significance of relational authenticity in the lived experiences of its congregants as they move along the spiritual journey. before i develop my method and share my findings, let me briefly introduce the case study. 3 the big table south perth case study the big table south perth (henceforth referred to as tbtsp), is one in a network of small churches in perth, western australia. with a belief that the church is primarily a who and not a what, they “gather together in a bunch of different contexts to worship god, deepen relationship with jesus, live out faith together, be shaped by his word and share the good news of jesus through living their ordinary lives together in community” (the big table 2010). the big table network has an emphasis on small numbers for the cultivation of authentic and vulnerable relationships. as the lead pastor simon stated, “at the big table, there is an opportunity for flourishing intimacy that is not easily conceived in larger groups” (the big table 2021). the missing component of relationships over programs for flourishing churches as argued by callahan (2000), viola (2009) and beard (2015) is foundational to the big table model. the vision of tbtsp is to be a “church-planting church” (the big table 2010). it is a community of people centred around jesus christ seeking to love and support one another in daily life and share this love with the greater communities in which the church finds itself. this occurs by “bringing the kingdom of god into daily contexts through (as examples) participation in running clubs and community gardens” (the big table 2010). upon arrival at the family home where the sunday morning service is held, i was immediately taken by its informal atmosphere. children ate toast in the open ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 55 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 kitchen living area, and two musicians in the lounge corner acoustically practised worship songs for the service. the pastor made coffee while small groups of people conversed in the backyard around a long, big table. whilst tbtsp has never defined itself by its venue, it is aptly named because everyone who gathers at the table is considered equal, welcome and valued. with societal status stripped away, each person has a place and is seen. during the worship block, a small child spontaneously asked to share his week’s reflection on faith, before assisting with the morning’s preparation of a community service initiative, a bread run, where bread is delivered to the homes of people in need. this is just one expression of the diverse rhythms adopted by the community, which include formal and informal gatherings of brunches, retreats, formal church services and shared meals. tbtsp is an independent community church that displays characteristics necessary for relevance today. the church gathers in non-institutional contexts, primarily a home, but also finds itself in cafes, by the river and in the garden. there is a recognition that worship extends beyond the music block, with various styles having been explored. the church structure prioritizes community accountability with a relational leadership model, drawing inspiration from the book of acts. this community of jesus-followers seeks to embody his mission to the greater community through love for one another. they come from diverse denominational backgrounds, engage with contemporary culture and emphasize personal choice and the individual’s responsibility for participation in the community. the church has inadvertently addressed the spiritual needs of a community navigating a shifting cultural landscape. 3.1 case study design the case study used a phenomenological design to inform the data collection and analysis. to answer the central question of which practises best support congregants on their spiritual journey, a thorough study of the big table website, and phenomenological methods of participant observations and semi-structured interviews were undertaken. for the research, hagberg and guelich’s (2005) critical journey model was utilized for mapping the progress and development of the individual participants’ spiritual journeys. their six-stage development model integrates biblical principles and historical perspectives offering a flexible framework, where individuals progress through the journey in a spiral-like fashion. according to hagberg and guelich, the critical (spiritual) journey is the “response to faith in god and the resulting life changes” (hagberg and guelich 2005: xv). hagberg and guelich’s spiritual journey model stages are described as follows: (demarest 2008: 160) ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 66 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 1. the beginning of a converted life, where god is discovered and recognized. 2. the life of learning and discipleship: where exploration and practice of the new belief system takes place. 3. the productive life: where one consciously serves god using their spiritual gifts. 4. the journey inwards: a period where beliefs and paradigms are challenged in what is commonly a disconcerting experience, aptly named the wall. the wall defines a time where the journeyer questions, explores doubts and entertains possibilities that were once easily dismissed as incongruent with their belief system, and which often appear as a failing faith in the eyes of those in stages one to three. coming through to stage five normally comes with a letting go and acceptance that doubt can be congruent with faith. 5. the journey outward: where the journeyer is recentered, surrendering self to god, unafraid of the consequences and aware of god’s love for the believer. this stage can appear as weakness, impracticality and inefficiency to those at earlier stages. 6. the life of love: where god’s love is demonstrated through the person, who is now able to love more compassionately and consistently. the semi-structured interviews conducted with six participants gathered their insights on faith, the spiritual journey and supportive church practices. an openended approach was utilized by incorporating structured and direct questions but allowing flexibility for the participant and interviewer to explore topics that arose organically. the questions were specifically themed to locate where each participant considered themselves on their spiritual journey and identify if they had experienced a season of doubt and crisis. the big table values and specific church practices were then mapped against this placement and explored to determine how they may have supported the participants on their journey through the various stages. interviews were recorded and analysed by coding the collected data. the multiple participants’ interviews helped to achieve data triangulation, enabling a broader, deeper, and more comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon. four themes were explored during the interviews:1 1. understanding of definitions and location on the critical journey model. 2. identification of resonance with church values. 3. open-ended questions on spiritual formation practices. 4. explicit questions on scripture, worship, church structure and leadership. 1 examples of interview questions for each section include: 1.) how would you describe where you’re at on your spiritual journey of faith in god? 2.) of your church values, which resonate most strongly with you for faith support? 3.) in the church community, what opportunities have you had to explore questions that might reveal doubt or unsurety around christian faith, identity and ways of being? 4.) how does community inform your faith development? examples? ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 77 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 concerning the critical journey model, participants were informed about the model and stages, philosophical underpinnings, and offered a diagram to consider and reflect upon. they were asked if they resonated with the model, and if so, where they might locate themselves. they were also asked if they had experienced the wall, and if that occurred during their time at tbtsp. further questions were asked to draw out descriptions of their experience and church support during the time. during both participant-observations as a researcher, i recorded the events and behaviours of the congregants in a journal: the events of the service, how congregants responded as a whole group, individual behavior that stood out as unique, and discernment of the church’s atmosphere. the specific practices of worship, scripture exploration and expression of gifts were also observed closely. the greatest limitation of the study was the sample size affecting generalizability to the greater population. as the researcher and an indirect pastor in the greater big table network, there was potential for bias, which was overcome through a common phenomenological research practice called bracketing. this process involves creating an epoché, wherein i suspended my own bias, opinions and feelings for the purpose and duration of the study. to achieve this, i made note of any instances where my personal thoughts and perspectives could potentially influence the data collection or analysis. at the beginning of each interview, i reminded the congregants i was researching their responses for the study and with no agenda for tbtsp itself. 4 the results this section will discuss the results of the case study: the participants’ journey location, their resonance with church values and spiritual practices, and relational authenticity in community, through worship, scripture exploration and relational leadership. it can be noted here that the results show god works in and through relationships on the spiritual journey. 4.1 the perceived journey location table 1 reflects where the six participants located themselves on their spiritual journey, with five of the six participants indicating they were past questioning the basic tenets of their faith. they expressed that regardless of whatever may eventuate in life, they would be unlikely to reject god. each indicated they were at a place of surrender in life, aware there may be mystery and tension, but god remains the same and they were content to be led by their faith and for god’s purposes. this surrendering to god affirms what taylor (2017) describes as reconciliation with god and self. when presented with the critical journey model, each participant resonated with it. renee commented, “the oscillation back and forth between stages is a ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 88 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 relatable experience” (renee 2023). five participants identified as being at stage five of the journey and described journeying through the wall in the past, mostly before coming to tbtsp. gabriel identified as fluctuating between stages three and four. she is exploring the productive life but recognizes that a lot of life right now is spent on the journey inward. taylor’s (2017) work on atonement is positioned in stage one: the beginning of a converted life, whilst the case study shows participants placing themselves between stages three and five, making this study beneficial in better understanding relational authenticity in later faith transitions of the christian. table 1 participants’ present stage on the critical journey (including the wall experience) 1. beginning 2. discipleship 3. productive life gabriel 4. journey inward gabriel 4a. wall experience prior to tbtsp daphne tricia gregory 4b. wall experience during tbtsp jill renee 5. journey outward jill renee daphne tricia gregory 6. love renee and jill both mentioned experiencing the wall during their time at tbtsp. renee discussed how the stressful period of the covid-19 lockdown in 2020 triggered a wall experience for her, causing oscillation between the journey inward of stage four and repeatedly hitting the wall. through the support of various friends in the community praying for her and offering prophetic words of encouragement in a timely manner, she learned to “stop letting my brain overthink things and simply surrender” (renee 2023). renee’s response prompts reflection on jamieson’s research and the large number of church departers who felt they didn’t have space in their churches to explore questions of doubt that often exist during the wall experience. when asked, all participants agreed they had the opportunity to discuss doubt at tbtsp, but not on a sunday morning. when challenging questions are raised, renee explained that individuals are graciously invited to discuss their questions in smaller groups where such questions are addressed with love and authenticity. ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 99 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 the self-assessed stage of the spiritual journey for participants in this study places them much further along than the initial conversion stage (stages three to five in comparison to stage one), which is the focus of taylor’s (2017) work. however, the participants’ advanced progression on the journey shows that christians can and do move towards and experience the relational authenticity taylor proposed. 4.2 church values and spiritual practices an important aspect of tbtsp is its values.2 the study revealed that the community’s core values are commitment to jesus, intentional relationships and authentic, meaningful connects with others. this can be viewed in table 2 below. this highlights how relational authenticity play a crucial role in spiritual practices that best support growth along one’s spiritual journey. table 2 participants’ resonance with church values value number of participants 1 2 3 4 5 6 jesus-centredness gospel-directed open-handed missionally faithful justice seekers relationally intentional authenticity gratitude love of planting churches everyone’s on mission shaped by the bible theologically considerate as seen in table 3, the study found worship, scripture exploration and gift expression to be key practices impacting congregants’ spiritual journeys. the relational 2 the big table values can be viewed at www.thebigtable.org.au http://www.thebigtable.org.au ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 1010 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 leadership model plays a key structural role in practice effectiveness and will also be discussed as significant. the interpretive key, however, is that the practices are most effective when exercised through the most important values. commitment to jesus and relational authenticity in community undergird each of these practices. it can be noted at this point that relational authenticity itself begins at the starting position of relationship with god through jesus (taylor 2017). without this relationship first, loving relationships within the community matter little towards authenticity. experiencing god’s love enables believers to love one another towards relational authenticity. table 3 participants’ esteem of practices for spiritual journey support spiritual practice number of participants worship scripture exploration gift expression prayer missional presence in the community 50-50 giving model 4.3 relational authenticity and community god’s mission is for us to be in community. though not an assessed practice, tbtsp’s community focus through ecclesiology and structures proves essential to all its spiritual practices. relational authenticity in community with genuine jesus-followers is foundational for this cultivation of community as highlighted in the commonly held values observed above. the results show god works in and through relationships on the spiritual journey. dining tables (groups of six to eight people meeting fortnightly for a meal), coffee tables (groups of two to three people meeting for a time of sharing and relationship building) and other informal gatherings organically create varying vulnerability within relationships. dining tables offer space to explore faith and doubt through diverse scripture interpretations, whilst coffee tables offer intimacy for exploring personal issues. gregory emphasized the role of others in challenging ideas and notions, commenting, “hearing what other people think, regardless of whether i agree or disagree, causes me to question my own opinion and this informs my faith” (gregory 2023). ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 1111 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 tbtsp’s structure seems to accomplish this and hence affirms its role to support spiritual growth amongst its congregants. it is important to note, however, the willingness of the participants to engage with one another in relational authenticity. as people commune organically and intentionally, relational authenticity is cultivated, encouraging acceptance and reconciliation between god, self and others. this supports people as they move through the different stages of the spiritual journey. for tricia, “being in community is the most significant thing to support for the spiritual journey” (tricia 2023). tricia reflected that a relationally intentional community is highly important to spiritual growth because disagreements and differences are highlighted, providing an opportunity to truly pursue love and reconciliation. this has forced tricia to learn healthy strategies for dealing with relationships, struggles and problems and has progressed her along her spiritual journey. gibbs and bolger (2006) note the challenge of building relationships on a deeper foundation in a culture where contractual and casual relationships prevail. yet, they assert that the family of god, when expressing itself through relationships rather than weekly meetings and events, can do this. “emerging church people commit to one another, and god, and that commitment is deep and lasting” (gibbs and bolger 2006: 97). this is the case for the participants of this study. renee expressed longing for solitude with god during seasons of hardship, but stated, “i don’t think that’s god’s design. i think god wants us to grow together and be a community of love and you can’t do that by yourself” (renee 2023). when reflecting upon previous big church experiences, where relationships were not intentionally cultivated, renee said, “people claimed to be your friend, but they didn’t show up when you needed it most” (renee 2023). given that renee journeyed through the wall during her time at tbtsp, these comments reveal how important community has been to her. 4.4 relational authenticity and worship worship was identified by all six participants as key to supporting their spiritual journeys. the participants described worship as a way of living, but recognized the service’s worship block, as an opportunity to connect in community as they intentionally seek god through music and song. participants highly rated meditating on the truths of god’s love in a safe space where everyone is together as important for faith building. for gabriel, “i look forward to worshipping the most. it’s the being together and singing to god i find moving. being so isolated from key people in my life is overcome by a strong sense of connectedness with my church community and god together” (gabriel 2023). while all churches worship together, participants felt that worshipping together in a community where the congregation is connected through relational authenticity was a unique dimension of tbtsp. it is reminiscent of gibbs and bolger’s ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 1212 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 description of worship in the emerging church as a “shared event that binds people together” (gibbs and bolger 2006: 93). callahan (2000) asserted that dynamic, corporate worship with a strong sense of belonging and community was essential for an effective church . liesch (2001) goes further and points out that colossians 3.16 and ephesians 5.21 instruct the church to sing to god and one another, teaching and admonishing one another . for liesch (2001), worshipping together in community is an instruction for spiritual growth and the church should embrace this. tbtsp aligns with liesch’s scriptural interpretation and its impact upon the congregation is evident. participants acknowledged that the worship block is always saturated with prayer by both the worship ministers and the congregation. open space and encouragement for the sharing of scripture and prayer make sure that worship is underpinned by relational authenticity, as jill illustrated. she recalled a time she wrote a song to god, heavily founded on scripture, called “rest”. jill, along with simon and the worship team, collaborated to finish the song, and she felt it was a special expression linked to the particular people at tbtsp. after recording it, they presented it at church and simon delivered a sermon that day connected to the lyrics of the song. jill articulated how encouraging this was to her; that it was not only her expression of faith toward god, but it had become everyone’s. 4.5 relational authenticity and leadership relational leadership refers to the paradigm that effective leadership involves the leader’s capacity to participate in and cultivate positive relationships within an organization (beard 2015: 175). like a servant leadership model, its emphasis, however, is on relationships, rather than just serving. a relational leadership church model is well-fitting in a relationship-based church because it reflects god’s triune relationship and god’s relationship with the church. this model encourages mutual submission and accountability between all. in a time where honesty, truthfulness, integrity and relationships are highly prized, for leaders to lead effectively it is necessary that authentic relationships are cultivated among those whom the leaders lead (breedt and niemandt 2013). tenelshof affirmed that this emphasis on relationship is necessary and posited that congregants must see and experience a level of authenticity and brokenness from leadership for spiritual formation to occur (barton et al. 2014: 304). tbtsp’s relational leadership model underpinned by values of relational authenticity created opportunity for this. at tbtsp, the relational leadership model was most evident in the way it undergirded other spiritual practices. tricia emphasized there is not a hierarchy in the leadership style and structures that do exist. every member was encouraged, if god was leading them, to share a word or pray for one another. permission to speak into one another’s lives was encouraged and practised. from my participant ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 1313 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 observations, this was obvious in the way every member was encouraged to share during the worship block; this extended even to a young child who shared a reflection on their faith. others spoke out scripture, words of encouragement and prayer for the congregation. the value of the relational leadership model was also highly evident in the glowing descriptions participants gave of the opportunities they had to express their spiritual gifts. this model leans into paul’s body theology (in rom. 12.4-8 and 1 cor. 12.12-27) that every member has a part to play, and jesus is the head of the people. daphne described the community as bolstering the value of its congregants and including them in everything. “everyone gets a chance. you don’t have to audition for anything or be the best. you just need to have a willing heart and that’s what counts the most” (daphne 2023). jill iterated that this nature of leadership provided a lot of space for people to flourish in their gifts and move into positions of organic leadership amongst the body, commenting that, “as long as people are mature, this generally works out quite okay” ( jill 2023). this reflected the good leadership cole (2010) speaks of, leadership not only about casting vision, but empowering others to find their own vision and release it . 4.6 relational authenticity and scripture at tbtsp, scripture is regarded as god’s revealed word to humanity. for tricia, being shaped by the bible is a key value. she believed it was extremely important to not get caught up in traditions or expectations, but to simply remain faithful to scripture. a part of this value was the way in which teaching and interpreting scripture was practised at tbtsp, with a strong emphasis on conversation. sunday mornings generally offer a sermon, and scripture also features in worship through lyrics as well as general proclamation amongst the congregants. the church organized regular panels and interviews with congregants to explore scripture and personal testimonies. the dining tables were also places for scripture study and discussion. tricia commented that it was through the relational aspects of tbtsp that scripture often became alive to her. “a word is spoken in season, by someone i am in relationship with, becoming a part of who i am” (tricia 2023). jill highlighted how congregants are encouraged to come to their own conclusions on what scripture is saying and how to apply it to life, rather than adopt a dogmatic view. renee expressed a similar theme and highlighted how tbtsp does not shy away from difficult portions of scripture that congregants may have different perspectives on. “i really appreciate that in our church you’re allowed to have your own view on certain things, but we do have key tenets of faith that keep us all connected and on the same page” (renee 2023). as a pastor at tbtsp, simon expressed his willingness to engage in open conversation when confronted with opposing interpretations of scripture, seeking dialogue ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 1414 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 rather than giving a dismissive response. gregory recalled a conversation with another congregant where they disagreed over a particular interpretation of scripture. through conversation they recognized their misalignment, but acknowledged they still loved and valued one another as members of the family of god. it is here we see commitment to relational authenticity. the congregants chose to be open and honest in their dialogue, even beyond comfort for the purpose of relational authenticity. to continue successfully in this way for thirteen years is commendable, something gabriel believed was due to the maturity of the congregants. “there’s not an expectation that everyone would interpret things the same according to a set doctrine. that could get a little bit muddy, but it seems to work in our context because people are quite mature in their faith” (gabriel 2023). tbtsp’s acknowledgment that the core tenets of faith were non-negotiable, but minor doctrine was open to interpretation affirmed the central importance of this notion in relation to the success of this model. 5 implications for the church moving forward for church leaders seeking to establish new expressions of church that support congregants on their spiritual journeys, there are some implications found through this case study. developing an ecclesiology that focuses on the church being a people formed in christ, together with an emphasis on providing safe spaces for people to develop relational authenticity with each other, will organically support people during various stages of their spiritual journey, especially through seasons of doubt and crisis. this in turn will support people in becoming their authentic selves. wholeness through restoration in relationship with god, self and others will be more closely achieved and the church’s mandate more closely fulfilled. leaders recognizing that relational authenticity in shared life (beard 2015), is beneficial throughout the spiritual journey is key to fulfilling god’s mission of reconciliation and wholeness. participants’ reflections, particularly during the wall experience, highlight the importance of authentic relationships through faith transitions. my findings show the congregants identified as being between stages three and five further along than those in taylor’s (2017) work on atonement. this underscores the ongoing role relational authenticity has in supporting christians in their spiritual formation. leaning into taylor’s work reminds us of the crucial role being authentic in relationships with others is, for both pre-converts and more mature believers. for church communities, this will look like a commitment to cultivating relational authenticity through open conversation and dialogue and being respectful of others’ views, whilst holding common tenets of faith. this will come with a recognition that jesus is the head of the church, and leadership functions best in open, ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 1515 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 honest, authentic relationships, which allows for brokenness – even from leadership themselves. to practically cultivate relational authenticity, church leaders should encourage diverse spaces for community to congregate and for the organic cultivation of intimate, authentic relationships. tbtsp is a community centred around jesus, concerned with creating authentic relationships, characteristics viola (2009) asserts are necessary for flourishing . it is a “body of believers who are committed to one another in community and centered around jesus” (the big table, 2010) where growth can take place in transparent, non-judgmental spaces. in line with callahan’s (2000) suggestions, tbtsp emphasizes small, strong congregations. this community is less about busy church programmes, but the cultivation of church family to live faith fully in their daily lives, demonstrated through communal meals, scripture sharing, prayers and reliance on the holy spirit for guidance. scholars like barton and tenelshof have suggested the church support its congregants’ spiritual journeys by providing wise and loving structures (barton et al. 2014: 292–311); structures that are demonstrated at tbtsp through its dining and coffee tables along with other organic meeting groups. one suggestion by bass and copeland (2010) for effective church support today, is to revisit ancient practices in fresh inventive ways . this is practised by tbtsp through their dialogical approach to scripture and open worship with space for all to participate. this mutual accountability and love at tbtsp has provided a safe community to discuss grey areas of faith and to live authentically enabling them to grow in their relationship with christ and progress along the spiritual journey together. a further implication for the church is for church departers. this study affirms that safe, loving, authentic church communities do exist and that, whilst the church may have its imperfections, it is continually held and led by jesus, the author and finisher of the christian’s faith. it can be a place of refreshment and nourishing. churches who hold space for congregants on all stages of their journeys, even when their faith is challenged and doubts prevail, are communities christians can become their authentic selves, knowing they are loved and belong. this will ultimately keep them in fellowship – a place they are encouraged to remain. 6 in conclusion in a time of fake news and ai, where the line between false and real is thwarted by obscurity and ambiguity, authenticity is longed for. relational authenticity is a movement toward becoming one’s authentic self through loving relationships, which flow from the source who is love, namely god. this case study helps the church, god’s family, to understand and appreciate that the journey toward wholeness and authenticity is found in open and honest relationships, cultivated in safe spaces, ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 1616 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 where god’s children can truly be themselves with one another; regardless of their stage on the spiritual formation journey through and beyond seasons of doubt and crisis. relational authenticity, in community, worship, scripture exploration, and relational leadership is key to supporting one another on our spiritual formation journeys. not falsely or by imitation, but as our true selves and through loving relationships with god and each other. approval for this research was granted by the university of divinity, by following its ethics review and approval procedures. before commencing the research, i secured site permission and obtained informed consent from all participants. each participant was informed that they could raise any questions or concerns with the researcher at any point and were provided with the contact details for the human research ethics committee. additionally, all research participants were entitled to keep a copy of any participant information form and/or participant consent form associated with this research project. these are available from the researcher upon request. about the author sarah oliva recently completed her master of theological research through the university of divinity, melbourne australia. her minor thesis was a case study of the big table, south perth and explored the question of how independent community churches best support their congregants on their spiritual formation journeys. contact: sareoliva@gmail.com. references barton, ruth haley, diane j. chandler, siang-yang tan, et al. 2014. “spiritual formation in the church”, journal of spiritual formation and soul care 7 (2): 292–311. https://doi. org/10.1177/193979091400700212. bass, dorothy c., and m. shawn copeland. 2010. practicing our faith: a way of life for a searching people. the practices of faith series. 2nd ed. jossey-bass. beard, christopher. 2015. “missional discipleship: discerning spiritual-formation practices and goals within the missional movement”, missiology: an international review 43 (2): 175. https://doi. org/https://doi.org/10.1177/0091829614563059. breedt, jacob j., and cornelius j. p. niemhandt. 2013. “relational leadership and the missional church”, verbum et ecclesia 34 (1): 1. https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc143388. callahan, kennon l. 2000. small, strong congregations: creating strengths and health for your congregation. jossey-bass. cole, neil. 2010. church 3.0: upgrades for the future of the church. jossey-bass. demarest, bruce. 2008. “reflections on developmental spirituality: journey paradigms and stages”, journal of spiritual formation and soul care 1 (2): 149–67. https://doi. org/10.1177/193979090800100203. gibbs, eddie, and ryan k. bolger. 2006. emerging churches: creating christian community in postmodern cultures. spck. mailto:sareoliva@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.1177/193979091400700212 https://doi.org/10.1177/193979091400700212 https://doi.org/https:/doi.org/10.1177/0091829614563059 https://doi.org/https:/doi.org/10.1177/0091829614563059 https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc143388 https://doi.org/10.1177/193979090800100203 https://doi.org/10.1177/193979090800100203 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 1717 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19862 guignon, charles. 2004. on being authentic. routledge. hagberg, janet, and robert a. guelich. 2005. the critical journey: stages in the life of faith. 2nd ed. sheffield publishing. jamieson, alan. 2002. a churchless faith: faith journeys beyond the churches. spck. liesch, barry. 2001. the new worship: straight talk on music and the church. 2nd ed. baker books. martin, maurice. 2002. “developing faith in a postmodern context”, canadian mennonite   (10): 8–9. https://www.proquest.com/magazines/developing-faith-postmodern-context/docview/ 228295789/se-2?accountid=152376. taylor, lynne. 2017. “toward relational authenticity: the experience of atonement in christian conversion today”, colloquium 49 (1): 31–47. the big table. 2010. “the big table: who we are.” accessed 8 march 2023. https://thebigtable.org. au/who-we-are/the-big-table-is/ the big table. 2021. “rest.” accessed 18 september 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app= desktop&v=ns9k1w7n9vu. viola, frank. 2009. finding organic church: a comprehensive guide to starting and sustaining authentic christian communities. david c. cook. https://www.proquest.com/magazines/developing-faith-postmodern-context/docview/228295789/se-2?accountid=152376 https://www.proquest.com/magazines/developing-faith-postmodern-context/docview/228295789/se-2?accountid=152376 https://thebigtable.org.au/who-we-are/the-big-table-is/ https://thebigtable.org.au/who-we-are/the-big-table-is/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=ns9k1w7n9vu https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=ns9k1w7n9vu ecclesial futures 2025 – volume 6 – issue 1 12 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22184 a r t i c l e doi: 10.54195/ef22184 christian empowerment and secularity: introduction to a research idea michael domsgen abstract this paper explores the challenges facing christian churches in germany amid increasing secularization and societal change. key issues include the loss of institutional self-evidence, financial instability due to declining church membership, and the erosion of trust following abuse scandals. in response, the concept of empowerment is examined as a theological and pedagogical approach to fostering individual and communal agency. drawing from interdisciplinary perspectives in community psychology, social work, disability studies and critical pedagogy, the study highlights how empowerment can create new pathways for engaging with the christian message. research at the ces focuses on religious communication, missional church development, and church theory in secular contexts, aiming to enhance the relevance of the gospel through empowerment-driven approaches. keywords: empowerment, secularity, germany, community psychology, social work, disability studies, critical pedagogy, gospel 1 introduction currently, much is in motion – even in matters of religion. this unsettles many people, including the churches, even though, in principle, it is not a new phenomenon. from a broader historical perspective, change itself appears to be a constant. the developments currently observable in rebus religionis in germany can aptly be described using the term “changed self-evidence”. what was long considered normal in the field is no longer the case for a significant part of the population. these processes are by no means linear; indeed, they often unfold in divergent ways. while the traditional churches face a perceptible loss of relevance unprecedented in recent history, other religious groups – primarily because of migration – are gaining significance. christianity is experiencing a dramatic decline in relevance, both in germany 13 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22184 13 and in much of the western world. this decline is especially evident in its societal influence. for a long time, christian religion functioned as the defining medium that shaped collective perceptions of reality. however, this has undergone a marked transformation. the christian worldview, once dominant or at least influential, has become one perspective among many. 2 the church in germany is currently facing difficulties the existing forms of an institutionalized church are increasingly reaching their limits and coming to an end. these developments are not new and have been accompanying the mainline churches in germany for a long time. however, at least three things are new: the money is running out: first, the number of people leaving the church has increased significantly. for the first time, this has led to a significant drop in church taxes. this shakes the financial foundations of the church’s work. cases of sexualized violence shake the church: secondly, cases of sexualized violence raise questions about the harmful and usually unaddressed negative power dynamics within the church. these questions affect not only the church’s structure but also its proclaimed message. a victim of sexual violence said to me: “did god watch when this happened to me? and if he did watch, what kind of god is that? or did god look away when this happened to me? but if he did look away, what kind of god is that?” this unsettles the substantive dimension of the church’s work. loss of self-evidence and relevance: thirdly, these events are embedded in a broader development that shapes germany and large parts of the western world, which can be described with the keywords “loss of self-evidence” and “loss of relevance”. christianity has lost significant influence. it is no longer the medium that, more or less unquestioned, shapes the perception of reality. instead, it has become one option among many. this shakes the societal dimension of church work, because today’s dominant medium is secular, and christianity must prove itself within this context as well. these three developments are so fundamental that previously unquestioned certainties are shaken. it also becomes apparent how fragile and diverse learning paths are. approaching the christian faith is no longer a matter of course for most people. it must be initiated and – just as importantly – repeatedly re-initiated throughout one’s life. faith no longer comes naturally. moreover, the supportive cultural factors that could long be relied upon in this process are increasingly losing their influence. this is a challenge that has been given little consideration within german practical theology. at least two overarching questions arise: first, how can the communication 14 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22184 14 of the gospel succeed under the current conditions of secularity, and secondly, how can people have meaningful experiences of relevance with the gospel? it is particularly important to understand what encourages people to shape their lives as christians independently and to use their strengths in solidarity with others. against this background, christian forms of communication such as praying, blessing, being blessed, celebrating and acting should be incorporated. 3 a question from jesus as a source of inspiration the fundamental direction can be biblically/theologically focused on the synoptically transmitted question of jesus, “what do you want me to do for you?” (mk 10.51; mt. 20.32; lk. 18.41). here, the counterpart is seen as a conversation partner. their voice is given space, and their desires and needs are carefully inquired. this basic attitude must be upheld. at the same time, it must be embedded in the broader orientation associated with the gospel. it is not just about self-improvement and increased autonomy in the general sense, but rather about a specific and unique form of self-discovery. this self-discovery is defined by the relationship between humans and god, a relationship in which the human is no longer the same but will be transformed. “he gets out of himself in order to come to himself” (meyer-blanck 2012: 411). the direction associated with this can be described as an event that uplifts and reorients people. sometimes it emerges as a disruption of the previous frame of reference. this perspective points to questions of empowerment. 4 in search of conversation partners how can the challenges outlined above be addressed and reflected upon in practical theological terms? the guiding question lies openly on the table: how can approaches be opened which go beyond assumed self-evidence, predefined meanings and anticipated resonances? what does an empowerment-related perspective offer to this discussion? these questions are not unique to christian-motivated communication processes, and it is a promising endeavour to listen to other fields and discourses in order to learn for one’s own questions and challenges. other disciplines also operate within this reference framework, where empowerment plays a crucial role. under this concept, one finds discourses offering a multitude of interesting ideas and suggestions. here, the image of the table might be helpful: the problems are laid bare on the table, and the empowerment-related discourses bring inspiring dialogue partners into the conversation. the concept of empowerment introduces us to broader discussions that point to diverse receptions and perspectives. on the one hand, it 15 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22184 15 connects to educational theories, which offer preliminary reflections on learning processes beyond the realm of self-evident assumptions. on the other hand, it opens theological discourses that explicitly address questions of power and focus on marginalized groups. however, as with any reference to non-theological discourses, critical inquiries arise. they cannot be elaborated here but must be taken seriously. they point out that these are not simply adaptations but interpretative mediations between the disciplines (domsgen 2019, 354–67). what can we learn from this? 5 impulses and stimulations from empowerment discourses i write this as a theologian and have theological theories in my head, such as the communication of the gospel. it reminds me of the dialogical nature of the gospel. and it points me to different forms of fulfilment. ultimately, it is about allowing ourselves to be touched by the life, work and fate of jesus of nazareth. three basic modes play a role here: learning, celebrating and helping. by talking about god, i introduce a dimension that does not simply dissolve into other discourses. at the same time, we can learn a lot from this about the communication of the gospel. 5.1 expanding the possibilities to determine your own life for example, we can learn from community psychology. julian rappaport introduced empowerment as a concept in the 1980s to determine the research-driven interest. as a minimal definition of this concept, he describes the goal “to expand opportunities for people to determine their own lives” (rappaport 1985: 269). there is no single solution but many solutions, differing regionally and depending on the conditions in various places, contexts and neighbourhoods. questions of how to live a good live are thus contextualized. the community and the relevance for communal living come into focus. this relates with the discussions about communicating the gospel, because the processes of learning, celebrating and helping are communal ones. questions of an individual person (e.g. concerning relevance) cannot be separated from the community of people that individual is part of. 5.2 describing the direction the theory of social work also features a well-developed discourse on empowerment. for professionals working in this field, the direction set by the empowerment concept is particularly significant. both personal and structural spheres of possibility and ability must be taken into account. this can be summarized with georg bucher in the term pair of befähigung and bevollmächtigung, which could best be translated 16 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22184 16 as enablement and empowering in the sense of structural authorization. religious impulses also need experiences of resonance and relevance, both on an individual as well as on a structural level. they can only be achieved within the framework of participation. 5.3 supporting self-determination, co-determination and solidarity the concrete implications of this, particularly the importance of self-directed processes in developing life-management capacities, can be explored in the discourse of disability studies. the overarching educational goal here is to “support and develop the ability for ‘self-determination, participation and solidarity’” (theunissen 2003: 79). it is essential to refer to strengths and resources to counteract the often encountered perspective of deficit. this points to something very important, while at the same time, it must be noted: “empowerment can only be realized where experiences of powerlessness are not dismissed as unreal” (liedke 2013: 264). 5.4 structural aspects play a significant role here in critical pedagogy, particularly engaging with the works of paulo freire, such questions about the connection between education and cultural, social and especially economic structures are bundled and focused on the term “empowerment”. questions of power are addressed here, as well as those concerning encouragement and dealing with conflicts. in his dissertation, georg bucher has analysed the discourses mentioned here in an excellent way and made them fruitful for religious education (bucher 2021: 228–326). the potential of this approach is not yet fully explored, notably when focusing on church theory and church development. more conversation partners must be included. at the same time, interesting and important aspects are already emerging. 6 impulses concerning church theory and development empowerment addresses questions of life conduct. it aims at assistance, that enables people to trust their own strengths and shape their lives independently. in short: it is about enabling and authorizing. it requires specific abilities and competences on one hand, as well as strength, power and courage on the other. ultimately, the goal is to explore how possibilities and abilities can be expanded for people to live self determined lives. how can this be made fruitful for religious education and practical theology? how does it fit into the communication of the gospel? very stimulating for this is the method of the “interpretative vermittlung”, which can be translated as the method of interpretative mediation strongly advocated by karl 17 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22184 17 ernst nipkow (nipkow 1978: 211). this approach avoids aiming for either identification or harmonization between theological and non-theological disciplines. instead, it asks: what relevance do theological and non-theological perspectives have for their respective practical contexts? we try to bring theological and non-theological perspectives into conversation. from the lens of empowerment discourses, we reflect on theological considerations and learn much about assisting in the communication of the gospel. for instance, we ask:  how do christian communicative practices sustainably support people in their lives? or: how can the opportunities of an individual’s development be described in light of the perspectives embedded in the gospel? conversely, from theological considerations, we engage with empowerment discourses and raise critical questions about the concept of empowerment. for example, we might ask: where does resource orientation reach its limits? how can an overemphasis on the strength’s perspective be avoided? the overall focus is on empowerment as a description of the directional sense of the communication of the gospel. people should be addressed in their developmental possibilities concerning the perspectives inherent in the gospel. thus, the focus is also on the inner and outer vulnerability inherent in humans, demanding empowerment in terms of support. the starting point is the fundamental human capacity for agency and freedom. ultimately, the gospel reveals itself as something that lifts people up and reorients them. for this to happen, specific abilities and competencies are required, including intrapsychic ones like confidence and courage and structural ones like power. empowerment looks at both the personal possibilities in form of the individual’s resources, as well as at the structural possibilities in form of the resources available. in both dimensions, a practical-theological perspective can and must explore both general and specifically christian resources. 7 what do we research at the ces? the centre for empowerment studies is part of the martin-luther-university in halle and this context has something to do with the research topics and questions we are dealing with. halle is the second biggest city of the state of saxony-anhalt in central germany. in halle, 8% of the population belong to the evangelical church and 4% are catholic. so, 88% of the inhabitants are non-affiliated. in saxony-anhalt 85% of the people are non-affiliated.4 this can be described as a highly secularized context and 4 ökumenischer kirchenatlas, bevölkerung und religionszugehörigkeit, at www.oekumenischerkirchenatlas.de (10.05.2025). http://www.oekumenischer-kirchenatlas.de http://www.oekumenischer-kirchenatlas.de 18 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22184 18 this environment, we work in, is one major reason why we deal with the topics and questions outlined in this article. the research at ces happens at three research units, each focusing on different parts of the programme. 7.1 research unit for religious communication and learning processes (rkl) rkl focuses on studying how non-religious people connect with religious and church activities. we investigate these questions with qualitative-empirical work and reconstruct approaches and learning paths of religiously non-localized people to religious/ church frameworks and offers. for instance, currently we are researching how mostly “non-affiliated” students and their parents perceive blessing ceremonies in halle/saale, offered by the catholic and protestant churches as a “celebration of turning point” from childhood to adolescence (project manager: helene utpatel). we recently finished a project on how non-religious educators approach religious pedagogical elementary education (project manager: ariane schneider). 7.2 research unit for missional church and community development (mkg) the mkg researches under the theological perspective of the missio dei (god’s mission) in the field of church innovation and renewal processes in secular contexts. the unit is involved in the scientific support of both the erprobungsräume (spaces of trial) of the evangelical church of central germany and the inititiave missionarische aufbrüche ( initiative for missionary ventures) of the evangelical lutheran church of saxony. the mkg works primarily in an evaluative manner, using the dialogue and learning function of evaluation to learn from and with the local actors how the church can develop under predominantly secular conditions. additionally, the unit offers longterm training for missionary pastors in saxony and conduct various schools for full-time and volunteer church staff. the training and schools aim to encourage engagement with various topics (contextual mission, innovation and exnovation, impact orientation) and to enable participants to communicate the gospel in a context-sensitive manner. 7.3 research unit for church theory and congregational development: ecumenism and knowledge transfer in the global lutheran context (köw) the köw works on how church and parishes can be thought of and shaped in the con text of secularity. this involves looking at other denominational and cultural contexts: – what can we learn from churches and parishes in other highly secularized countries on how to deal with the widespread loss of religious socialization in an emerging minority situation? 19 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22184 19 – where are our existing notions of church and community challenged by ecumenical and international perspectives? where do new think tanks emerge and theoretical as well as practical aspects clear up that can contribute to empowerment in and through the church? topics such as need orientation, reduction of barriers, and fluid forms of participation and involvement come into focus. 8 outlook the initial reactions to our initiatives have been very positive. it is especially the sense of direction named in empowerment that has attracted a lot of interest. how people can gain strength and courage through engagement with the gospel is very significant for those working in the church, whether they are volunteers or professionals. the expectations placed on us are often very high, sometimes too high. it is important to look at things realistically. empowerment does not exist as a master plan to solve all or even most of the current problems. however, engaging with the discourses under this term offers many stimulating ideas that enrich practical theology as well as religious pedagogy and can be further developed. realizing this potential and reflecting on it in the interplay of theory and practice is a worthwhile task. the ces is happy to contribute to this. about the author michael domsgen studied theology in halle, jena, bern, kiel and tübingen from 1987 to 1993. he completed his doctorate in halle in 1997 with a thesis on religious education in eastern germany. in 2004, his habilitation was with a thesis on family and religion. he has been professor of protestant religious education at martin luther university since 2006. in 2023, he founded the centre for empowerment studies, of which he is scientific director. main areas of research: religious education in secularity, religious education theory of the family, theory of protestant empowerment, church-theory. contact: michael.domsgen@theologie.uni-halle.de references bucher, georg. 2021. befähigung und bevollmächtigung: interpretative vermittlungen zwischen allgemeinem priestertum und empowerment-konzeptionen in religionspädagogischer perspektive, grundlegung und exemplarische durchführung (aprth 81). leipzig. domsgen, michael. 2019. religionspädagogik (leth 8). leipzig. liedke, ulf. 2013. menschenbilder und bilderverbot: eine studie zum anthropologischen diskurs in der behindertenpädagogik. bad heilbrunn. mailto:michael.domsgen@theologie.uni-halle.de 20 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22184 20 meyer-blanck, michael. 2012. “ekstase und bildung: evangelium und evangelien” in bernhard dressler and harald schroeter-wittke (eds), religionspädagogischer kommentar zur bibel, leipzig, 404–12. nipkow, karl-ernst. 1978. grundfragen der religionspädagogik. band i: gesellschaftliche herausforderungen und theoretische ausgangspunkte. 2nd ed. gütersloh. rappaport, julian. 1985. “ein plädoyer für die widersprüchlichkeit: ein politisches konzept des ‘empowerment’ anstelle präventiver ansätze”, vpp 17 (2): 157–278. theunissen, georg. 2003. erwachsenenbildung und behinderung. impulse für die arbeit mit menschen, die als lernoder geistig behindert gelten (heilpädagogische handlungsfelder in schule und sozialer arbeit 2). bad heilbrunn. michael domsgen christian empowerment and secularity: introduction to a research idea ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 2 105 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20162 b o o k r e v i e w doi: 10.54195/ef20162 root, andrew, and blair d. bertrand. 2023. when church stops working: a future for your congregation beyond more money, programs, and innovation grand rapids, mi: brazos press isbn: 978-1-58743-578-2 reviewed by felix eiffler andrew root and blair bertrand wrote a book about the crisis of the church in the west (especially in the usa). but their identification of the crisis differs from the way the ecclesial crisis in the west is mostly described: it’s not primarily about shrinking church attendance, reduced financial resources or a lack of innovative potential. to highlight those issues (attendance, money, innovation) shows a deeper problem of the church in the west: it is deeply shaped by the secular age (chapter 1). to think that a smart ecclesial innovation could help deal with the challenges the church faces, reveals a secular approach to questions of church development. the two theologians state that the call for effective ecclesial innovation is already over 50 years old but hasn’t changed the church much for the better. they “do not believe that the cure for the secular age is some kind of new sacred age. that ship has sailed” (13). the cure is also not to fight against secularism, because the danger lies in fighting secularism with secularism. instead: “if you want a healthy church, you are going to need to imagine a cure that doesn’t depend on the secular age” (13). a secular imagination that affects most areas of societal and personal life (and that also affects many churches) is acceleration, and with it comes efficiency. root and bertrand identify resonance as the opposite of acceleration (chapter 2). the authors suggest “stop all the having and just be” (chapter 3). part of being church means waiting and this is the even deeper and older crisis of the church: waiting for god: “a waiting church is waiting for god, waiting for the spirit to move, and waiting to connect with god. our crisis becomes the crisis of god’s action. as we wait for god’s action, we open ourselves to god’s arriving by ministering to one another. in humility, we attend to our connections” (50). the church waits for god in 106 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20162 106 worship and prayer as means for resonance. the church does this as a community and not as individuals: “this waiting is all about this moment with these people” (55). root and bertrand point to the book of acts, where jesus calls the church to wait for god to act (chapter 4). so, waiting and praying together is basically the essence of being church: “the apostles wait; god acts. … the apostles act only because god moves them out of their waiting. yes, they go and do things, and they lead others in doing things, but they always return to waiting” (70). and thus “the stars of this story are god and the world” (74). this removes the church from the center of attention and the position of initial action. this waiting for god is described by root and bertrand as the real crisis of the church (chapter 5). why? because the church waits for a living god, she cannot control but is completely depending on god. this is the central idea of the book and thus it is worth a longer quote: the real crisis is encountering a living god who is god. god is real. god is god, and we are not. to encounter this real god as humans constitutes a crisis. we’ve become so focused on the crisis of decline that we deny or push aside the crisis that we are broken and sinful people, a weak church, who are called to wait for the god who is god to act in our midst. we come to think that waiting for a god who is god to act in the world is not a crisis worth our attention. we come to believe that the crisis of encounter with this living god is not something worth capturing our attention. this misguided assumption is the real cancer! (88) according to the real crisis of the church the important questions should be: how do we discern god’s action? how do we help our people experience, know, and follow this living god who acts? … how can we help our people encounter the living god in a secular age that blinds them to anything beyond the here and now? (88–9) instead of writing a mission statement the authors suggest finding a watchword (chapter 6), as a mutual task of a group of believers. a watchword is a “shorthand story of how these people in this moment have witnessed and encountered the living god in the world” (p. 108). a watchword is not static, but dynamic in the sense that it tells a story and helps to remember when and how god acted in a specific time and in this very place. thus, it is not only about finding a watchword but also clinging to it (chapter 7). at the same time watchwords usually are limited to a certain time, space and group of people, because god and life move on, and a new word is needed. to find it, an ongoing listening is required (chapter 8). 107 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef20162 107 the book makes a bold claim and offers a variety of reasons for it. some are more profound and convincing than others: the theological reminder that the church is a spiritual entity and not only a civic endeavor seems reasonable – especially in western contexts. but a general statement may miss the specific circumstances and challenges of a certain ecclesial context. although the book contributes a lot of helpful thoughts and insights for the churches across the globe, it cannot deny its north american origin. this does not reduce the importance of its claims, but it is something the reader should be aware of, because the sketched out minor crises might be different in different contexts. thus, the observation that the church is deeply shaped by secularism might be true for the church in the west. also is ecclesial decline first and foremost a western phenomenon? other contexts have other challenges, which the book is not referring to, such as limited civil rights for the christian minority, discrimination or even persecution or corruption as well as inappropriate political entanglements etc. in summary: the book offers its readers a critical perspective on the deeper layers of the current ecclesial challenges in particular (secularism) as well as in general (waiting for god to act). consequently, the book is not only relevant for western readers. about the reviewer felix eiffler, head of research unit missional church development at the center for empowerment studies, martin-luther-university halle-wittenberg. contact: felix.eiffler@theologie.uni-halle.de ecclesial futures 2025 – volume 6 – issue 1 40 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22190 a r t i c l e doi: 10.54195/ef22190 evaluation of ecclesial innovations as empowerment felix eiffler abstract the article introduces into the scientific evaluation of an ecclesial innovation programme initiated in 2015 by the evangelical church in central germany called erprobungsräume (spaces of trial). by doing this, the text sketches the german socio-religious context and discusses the term “ecclesial innovation”. the main part of the article offers and debates the key findings of the evaluation undertaken from 2016 to 2023. the results show how an institution like a german regional church can undergo a broad transformation and what can be learned by this example for innovative church development in general as well as for the scientific evaluation of such a process. finally, the article connects the evaluation of ecclesial innovation with the discourse on empowerment and outlines the potentials of more participative forms of empirical research as a kind of empowerment. keywords: ecclesial innovation, evaluation, learning process, secularity 1 introduction1 the missional church development research unit (forschungsstelle missionale kirchen und gemeindeentwicklung – mkg) at the centre for empowerment studies – christian empowerment in secularity (forschungszentrum christliches empowerment in der säkularität – ces) at martin luther university halle-wittenberg2 is engaged in the scientific evaluation of ecclesial innovation programmes of the lutheran-evangelical church of saxony and of the evangelical church in central germany. these efforts towards church innovation are taking place against the backdrop of increasing 1 the text was written with the support of deepl. 2 see www.ces-halle.de (11.4.24). http://www.ces-halle.de/ 41 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22190 41 societal secularity. with the so-called erprobungsräume (spaces of trial), the evangelical church in central germany (evangelische kirche in mitteldeutschland – ekm) is looking for ways to be a church in new expressions that is welcoming people who have had no contact at all with the church or the gospel or no contact for a long time.3 the majority of people living in the territory of the former german democratic republic (where the ekm is located) do not belong to any church, denomination or religious community. as far as statistics and surveys show, only very few of these non affiliated people have any kind of private religious practice (ekd 2023a: 42–67 and 20–22).4 this secularized majority of society in turn exerts an influence on the religious minority (as “atmospheric pressure”, müller, pollack and pickel 2013: 144). in view of the results of the sixth church membership survey (ekd 2023a: 16–39) and the consistently high number of people leaving the protestant and catholic church in recent years (ekd 2024),5 the area of former west germany is also increasingly developing into a secular society and so the german society as a whole (see bertelsmann-stiftung 2022). on the other hand, do the results of the religion monitor 2023 show that “the majority of the german population can still be considered at least partly religious: two thirds of those surveyed classify themselves as at least moderately or somewhat religious; three quarters at least believe in god, even if their faith is not very pronounced. the findings, therefore, do not reveal a clearly secularized society” (bertelsmann-stiftung 2022: 4). but if one compares the religion monitor’s results from 2013 with those from 2023 the general societal trend points towards a growing secularism in germany. the proportion of people who state that they were brought up religiously has fallen from 45% to 38%. at the same time, belief in god has become less important: in 2013, 47% said they believed in god very or quite strongly – this dropped to 38%. the same applies for prayer: the proportion of the population who pray daily has fallen from 23% to 17% (bertelsmann-stiftung 2022: 3). according to the slightly more recent sixth church membership survey, this applies only for 11% of the population and in contrast 47% never pray at all (ekd 2023b: 18). this survey shows, that “a large majority of the population (68%) consider themselves neither religious nor spiritual.” (ekd 2023a: 25). the evaluation and scientific monitoring of efforts to develop missional, contextual and innovative forms and new expressions of church should help to learn and better understand how a shrinking former so-called people’s church (volkskirche) can 3 both churches belong to the evangelical church in germany (evangelische kirche in deutschland – ekd). 4 in east germany, 73% of people can be described as secular. 5 in 2023 some 380,000 people left the ekd. 42 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22190 42 develop sustainably under the conditions of secularity. this is not only a task for the church in eastern germany, but for the whole country and beyond for large parts of europe (bertelsmann-stiftung 2023: 1–3). 2 a brief history of erprobungsräume in central germany the erprobungsräume (epr) were initiated in 2015. they were preceded by the realization that the previous efforts to organize the church had reached their limits and that the structures, as well as the legal and organizational framework conditions, were proving to be increasingly dysfunctional in the face of progressive dismantling. this realization was accompanied by an ecumenical learning, which was inspired by processes of missional and ecclesial innovation in france, the united kingdom and the netherlands (herbst 2006). finally, a synodal discussion process lasting several years (2009–12) was carried out on the future contours of congregational and church development. the ekm was founded in 2008 through the merger of two formerly independent churches. the result of the discussion process was a twofold strategy: to continue the merger process that had already begun and at the same time to try out new approaches (elhaus et al. 2024: 91–4; elhaus and hein 2023: particularly 56–66). in 2015, the erprobungsräume programme was launched, which, according to § 1 of the epr regulations (as of 2020), pursues two goals: on the one hand, “new forms of congregation in a secular context [and] other social forms of church are to be tested”. on the other hand, the projects are “important for the future development of the church” (ekm, 2020b). this dual objective makes the eprs exciting in terms of church theory, as they are not only about local trials and experiences, but also about the question of what conclusions the entire church, as a learning organization, draws from the insights of the eprs. the topics and levels of possible conclusions are diverse and concern, for example, the allocation of financial resources, the organization of employment and service relationships as well as questions of church law. the ekm’s willingness to learn from the individual eprs regarding the overall church strategy reflects a learning attitude on the part of the church leadership, which has recognized that it is not just individual initiatives that are operating in trial mode, but the church as a whole. in this way, the ekm promotes the diffusion of the experimental approach and, thus, also the emergence of new ecclesial social forms in the entire church. therefore, it fulfils a central criterion for innovation. the fact that the funding guidelines were adapted in 2020, and that church districts and parishes are now also supported in their experimental activities shows that this is successful (see elhaus et al., 2024: 95–101). this brings us to the topic of ecclesial innovation. 43 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22190 43 3 what do we mean by ecclesial innovation? according to tom kelley (2016: 18–41), there are various ways or occasions for innovation: the misuse of an object (“crazy users” or “rule breakers”), trying out something new and unfamiliar or just observing people. simon sinek adds dissatisfaction (or frustration) as a further resource for innovation, as it can open up the possibility of improving a product, a concept, a way of doing things, etc (sinek 2011: 1–7 and 38–50). by initiating the epr, the ekm has already demonstrated the potential of dissatisfaction for innovation: bishop ilse junkermann’s statement at the 2014 autumn synod that previous attempts to secure the life and ministry of the church had come to an end did not lead to resignation, but to a fresh start (elhaus et al. 2024: 105–6). in addition, trying out new paths offers the church the opportunity to ask important and groundbreaking questions, as it now has to do many things for the first time or in a completely new way. this provokes the kind of questions that someone who has been doing something for a long time rarely or never asks. questions like: how do people discover the beauty and relevance of the gospel for the first time? what can the church build on in communicating the gospel? what do people expect from the church? what do they fear? catholic theologians matthias sellmann and florian sobetzko describe the following pastoral-innovative three-step process: ideation + application + diffusion = innovation (sobetzko and sellmann 2017: 27–43 and 59–95). ideation is the idea, the new approach, the inspiration. sellmann/sobetzko emphasize that innovations are ideas and behaviours “that are perceived as new by the members of a social system, regardless of whether they are objectively new or not” (sobetzko and sellmann 2017: 64). consequently, an idea does not have to be absolutely new and original to form the starting point of an innovation. application describes the examination of whether the idea can be implemented, is suitable or makes sense at all. finally, diffusion (spreading) is required, i.e. the sustainable implementation of the new idea, the “penetration of the market”, so to speak. the english theologian michael moynagh writes: “innovation is the modification of the ‘rules of the game’ so that church develops in new ways” (moynagh 2017: 8). this quote makes it clear that an innovation does not only have to be new (at least in this context) but must be sustainable in order to be considered as innovation. andrew root and blair d. bertrand warn against seeing effective innovation as the solutions to the church’s current challenges and problems. they discover in it the transfer of a secular paradigm to church development (root and bertrand 2023: 1–13). in doing so, they point to an important fact: innovation is not an end in itself but should serve to enable the church to communicate the gospel with as diverse a range of people as possible under changing (and increasingly secular) conditions. to do this, the church must acquire new knowledge, try out new steps and learn 44 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22190 44 from the experiences of others. in this sense, we are talking here about ecclesial innovation. efforts to innovate are in no way a substitute for a spiritual process of repentance and revival. innovation does not replace the work of god’s spirit, but i am convinced that the holy spirit can (and might) use innovative action to awaken and renew his church. 4 evaluation of church innovation – key findings from 2016 to 2023, fifteen selected eprs were evaluated by the sozialwissenschaftliche institut der ekd (institute for social science of the ekd – si) and the institut zur erforschung von evangelisation und gemeindeentwicklung of the university of greifswald (research institute for evangelism and church development – ieeg). from 2022, the mkg research unit has taken over the tasks of the ieeg. the research team (philipp elhaus, felix eiffler, tabea fischer, michael herbst and niko labohm) summarized the results of the first evaluation as follows: “missional outward orientation and contextual reference as well as lived spirituality in various forms are the strengths of the erprobungsräume” (elhaus et al., 2024: 102). this makes it clear that the eprs investigated partially live up to their own claims. the eprs were evaluated on the basis of seven guiding criteria: (1) in them, the church of jesus christ comes into being anew; (2) they transcend the logic of the mainstream church in at least one of the following places: parish, full-time pastoral ministry, church building; (3) they reach the unreached with the gospel and invite them to follow christ; (4) they adapt to the context and serve it; (5) they involve volunteers in a responsible position; (6) they open up alternative financial sources; (7) spirituality plays a central role in them (ekm 2020a: §1; see also schlegel 2021: 30–6). the eprs evaluated fulfilled four out of seven criteria (2, 3, 4 and 7). they form different ecclesial expressions that are organized both interparish and transparish. five types can be identified: (1) church “reloaded” (volunteer-based and socio spatially oriented); (2) youth culturally oriented forms between network and church formation; (3) network-shaped christian communities that offer experiences of a liquid church; (4) new church spaces (e.g. at schools); and (5) forms of conviviality with a communitarian core (e.g. housing projects in panel buildings) (elhaus et al. 2024: 102–3). amongst the initiatives are – a social start-up;6 6 https://pixel-sozialwerk.de (25.04.2025). https://pixel-sozialwerk.de/ 45 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22190 45 – a form of monastic community of young families living in a former monastery;7 – housing projects with groups of christian families and individual christians living in panel buildings and developing ways of being church with those living next to them;8 – two middle-aged female musicians, who visit elderly people, sing songs and spend time with them; – an organ academy;9 – different social-diaconal projects;10 – a social-cultural project, where kids and youth are trained in the field of art and creativity;11 – a co-working space for entrepreneurs and start-ups;12 – as well as various forms of new expressions of church;13 – and many more.14 most of the eprs evaluated succeed in communicating the gospel to people who are both unchurched and non-churched. in addition, the majority cooperate with (church and non-church) partners in the social space. finally, lived spirituality is a resource: “the central role of spirituality forms the common mark of the projects and expresses their catholicity as well as their public representation as a protestant church” (elhaus et al. 2024: 102). at the same time, there are also weaknesses: only some of the eprs evaluated succeeded in acquiring alternative funding and for “half of the projects, the fundraising criterion proved to be dysfunctional” (elhaus et al. 2024: 103). the participation of volunteers in responsible positions takes place, but there is room for improvement and falls short of the expectations of the criteria. after all, a third of the eprs examined are led on a voluntary basis. since 2023, the si has carried out an annual monitoring of all eprs (as far as possible) and the results of the first survey from september 2023 supplement and expand the picture of the first evaluation. concerning the acquisition of alternative funding, it can be seen that – contrary to what the results from the first round initially suggested – a larger proportion of the eprs surveyed (n=32) do succeed in finding 7 https://800-jahre-kloster-dambeck.de (25.04.2025). 8 https://www.senfkorn-stadtteilmission.de and https://www.stadtteilleben-gotha.com/community (28.04.2025). 9 https://www.orgel-akademie.de/willkommen.html (25.04.2025). 10 https://www.eckstein-stendal.de and https://jesus-projekt-erfurt.de (28.04.2025). 11 https://www.villa-wertvoll.de (25.04.2025). 12 https://gruenderhaus.bartho.org (25.04.2025). 13 https://www.herzschlag.me/start.html (25.04.2025). 14 https://www.erprobungsraeume-ekm.de/die-initiativen/ (25.04.2025). https://800-jahre-kloster-dambeck.de/ https://www.senfkorn-stadtteilmission.de https://www.stadtteilleben-gotha.com/community https://www.orgel-akademie.de/willkommen.html https://www.eckstein-stendal.de/ https://www.villa-wertvoll.de/ https://gruenderhaus.bartho.org/ https://www.herzschlag.me/start.html https://www.erprobungsraeume-ekm.de/die-initiativen/ 46 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22190 46 alternative sources of funding. this also applies to the involvement of volunteers: seven eprs are run entirely by volunteers, eight have volunteers involved in their leadership and a further eight have subdivisions managed by volunteers. these results are confirmed by a study on the impact orientation of the epr, which the mkg conducted in spring 2024 under the direction of tabea fischer. the results on finances and volunteering are more of a by-product of the survey but offer a helpful addition to the monitoring results. 21 eprs took part in the survey on impact orientation.15 of these eprs, only one receives more than 45% of its finances from the eprs fund. in 11 of the eprs surveyed, more than half of the available funds do not come from church sources, but from different foundations, private donors and public funds. the team composition also presents a heterogeneous picture: more than half of the [surveyed] eprs (n = 11) stated that they tended to be organized on a full-time basis (with voluntary support), the second largest group (n = 5) affirmed that they tended to be organized on a voluntary basis (with full-time support), and two eprs each described themselves as being organized entirely on a voluntary basis or entirely on a full-time basis. (fischer, tabea and eiffler 2024: 6). an interesting finding about criteria 3 and 5 is that people from the target group are part of the team in two thirds of the eprs surveyed. overall, the first evaluation has shown that criterion 1 is more difficult to fulfil than expected. there are probably various reasons for this, not least the fact that the term “church of jesus christ” (german gemeinde i.e. congregation) is complex – both theologically and in terms of church law (see hermelink 2018). the evaluation makes it clear that the development of new expressions of church is demanding and takes longer than expected, so that “the ekm would be well advised to make the first the seventh criterion and thus follow the anglican logic of fresh expressions of church, which places the new form of church at the very end of the missionary process” (elhaus et al. 2024: 105–6). at the same time, the diversity of ecclesial expressions that have emerged under the epr label shows that the “potential of the projects to foster new expressions of church is considerable” (elhaus et al. 2024: 102). 15 regarding the sample, tabea fischer writes: “as participation in the survey was voluntary and therefore not random, it can be assumed that the sample cannot be considered representative of the population of the eprs: if eprs who found the topic interesting or relevant were more likely to participate in the survey, the results would be biased in favor of impact orientation. [...] the results of the survey should therefore not be classified as representative and generalizable, but rather as exemplary and exploratory, whereby the patterns and correlations found nevertheless point beyond the data.” (fischer 2024: 3). 47 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22190 47 5 evaluation of church innovation as an ecclesial learning process the dual objective of the epr (see ekm 2020b: §1) identifies the potential of the epr for the whole church and assumes that the insights gained at project level are not only relevant for this specific context and its framework conditions but can also be used strategically at church level and offer insights for theory of church development. the very fact that the church is having the process of testing extensively and permanently evaluated and scientifically monitored shows the church’s self-image as a learning organization that is – in contrast to the logic of an institution – not just given, but is in the process of becoming and (further) developing.16 this corresponds to the organizational logic of the church and michael herbst discovers an assistance function of the institution, which supports the church as an organization in trying out new forms of ecclesial expressions (elhaus et al. 2024: 108–9). to this end, the institution provides human and financial resources and offers a legal framework that opens up opportunities and helps to circumvent some laws in certain areas – as provided by the ekm’s testing act (erprobungsgesetz), which was passed by the synod in november 2023 (ekm 2024. michael domsgen points out that the assistance function of the church goes beyond testing: “it aims to support the communication of the gospel in various social forms” (domsgen 2021: 38). like innovation, the church as an institution does not have an end in itself but is intended to help communicate the gospel. that is its purpose, function and task. concerning the results of the first evaluation, herbst mentions two aspects of the epr that are relevant for church-wide action: 1. the eprs show that “even relatively large and old institutions can at least partially reinvent themselves and have the courage to experiment” (elhaus et al. 2024: 104). an institution that acts in this way fulfils its mission and supports individual christians in sharing their faith in a variety of ways and under changing conditions, and in bearing witness to what they have “seen and heard” (acts 4:20). 2. the eprs “show the way for a much smaller and poorer protestant church to be a witness to the gospel in the future, to be close to the people and to try out life in faith together with them” (elhaus et al. 2024: 104). the church is changing, but that does not mean that it ceasing to exist, nor that it can no longer fulfil its mission. the eprs show that even a smaller and poorer church has the mission to “proclaim the message of god’s free grace to all people” (barmen 6). in this sense, the protestant church is and remains the people’s church (volkskirche). 16 “the evaluation clearly shows that and how the program level sees and acts as a learning organization. intensive process observation, reflection loops, a culture of feedback and the ability to take criticism as well as follow-up management characterize the process of the past seven years. the central role is the assistance function for the processes in the project” (elhaus et al. 2024: 100). 48 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22190 48 6 evaluation of church innovation as a scientific learning process the willingness to learn not only characterizes the church in its efforts around the epr, but also concerns the scientific research. in the first phase (2016–23), the research was more of a (summative) evaluation in the narrower sense, which used the seven criteria to examine the extent to which the eprs evaluated live up to their self-imposed standards, what helps them to do so (success factors) and where challenges arise. the partners involved (ekm, si and mkg) used the conclusion of the first evaluation phase to evaluate the evaluation itself. it became clear that an adapted approach was required, as the challenges were diverse and their possible management complex: “instead of a broad-based ‘all-round evaluation’, future research should be leaner, more flexible and more dynamic, and take a more formative or responsive approach” (elhaus et al. 2024: 112). this makes it possible to react better to current developments and changes as well as to results. this requires intensive and intentional communication between the various stakeholder groups and all persons and levels of action involved (see döring and bortz, 2016: 981–3). in view of these framework conditions, the si and mkg teams have focused on the “dialogue and learning” function of evaluation (döring and bortz, 2016: 987).17 the significance of this function has become increasingly important over the course of the first phase and it is now to be considered methodically and structurally in the second phase. in terms of methodology, further research is to become more diverse and will from now on consist of three elements: a) annual monitoring based on the seven criteria, b) an annual focus study with changing focal points, and c) an accompanying reflection on the findings in terms of church theory. in addition, new structures and formats for dialog and discussion are created and used: – in an annual workshop, the results of the monitoring and focus studies are discussed and interpreted as well as conclusions are drawn for further support. – the reporting system is adapted so that the results are accessible to the management and program level as well as the local initiatives. – the results are regularly presented and discussed in the form of presentations and short texts at various levels of the church (e.g. church administration and synod, steering committee and advisory board as well as the projects). – a representative of the steering committee is a member of the cross-institutional evaluation team. 17 the other functions are: optimization, decision-making, legitimation, insight. 49 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22190 49 – the extent to which further education formats such as the winter schools can be further developed and used as spaces for dialog and learning is also being examined. the development outlined above shows that the evaluation of the epr has been developed into a comprehensive scientific support that takes into account both the complexity of the subject matter and the associated need for a multi-perspective approach. it also reflects the realization that learning processes are necessary at all levels: project development, church management, and scientific reflection. 7 evaluation of church innovation as empowerment the scientific support described above also shows an effort to empower people involved in the church at all levels. the research, which is geared towards dialog and learning, gives a voice to those who are involved locally in the projects or in church leadership. their experiences are collected, arranged and processed. the experiences and findings on the ground can be used to learn something for other contexts and similar circumstances. practical knowledge and approaches to solutions can be found locally and should be made visible and accessible through the evaluation. this acknowledges the skills of the local actors and enables them to make their own contribution to church development that goes beyond their specific location. by publishing the results, the local and contextual learning outcomes are in turn fed into the wider church theory discourse, which further increases their scope and enables their critical examination and further development. during an evaluation, the question of objectives and assessment criteria cannot be avoided. by forcing these questions, evaluation stimulates discussion, creates new spaces for dialogue and brings different perspectives into conversation with each other. this helps to ask important questions, like: – what goals are to be achieved through an innovation programme? – do the formally explicit objectives match the implicit objectives of the programme’s participants? how are these goals pursued in the programme and project reality? – how are they adapted if necessary? – what are suitable strategies and steps to achieve them? these questions need to be negotiated discursively, especially in the case of emergent programs that are designed for testing and therefore only become constituted during implementation. by asking about the actors involved, bringing them into dialogue with each other and taking their different perspectives seriously, evaluation empowers the groups of actors involved to participate in shaping and developing the church. 50 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22190 50 we know from learning theories that feedback is a prerequisite for learning processes. we learn from the consequences of our actions. in the course of an evaluation, this feedback is bundled under certain aspects and reflected into the entire church in the form of results – both at project and programme level. this enables everyone involved to reflect on their actions and, if necessary, adapt, readjust or optimize them. the potential for empowerment of an evaluation as scientific support could be further developed in the direction of practice-based research or even participatory research (von unger 2014). according to hans moser, practice-based research is a “scientific endeavor that is located at the interface between the scientific and practical system and aims to find mutual connections and makes them fruitful” (moser 1995: 9). sociologist hella von unger describes participatory research as follows: participatory research is a generic term for research approaches that explore and influence social reality in partnership. the aim is to understand and change social reality. this dual objective – the involvement of social actors as co-researchers and measures for individual and collective self-empowerment as well as empowerment of partners – characterize participatory research approaches. (von unger 2014: 1) in participatory research approaches, different interest groups and stakeholders are involved in the research to varying degrees of intensity and comprehensiveness. according to j. bradley cousins and elizabeth whitmore, three dimensions of participation can be distinguished: a) control of evaluation process (from researcher controlled to practitioner controlled), b) stakeholder selection for participation (from primary users to all legitimate groups), c) depth of participation (from consultation to deep participation). (cousins and whitmore 1998: 10-17; von unger 2014: 13–50). the desired empowerment has a dual perspective: in addition to involving practitioners in the joint learning process and the utilization of local skills, participatory research also endeavours to empower co-researchers, enabling them to critically and reflectively perceive their own practice, obtain feedback and further develop and improve their own work. 8 conclusion to summarize, it can be said that scientific-evaluative accompaniment of church innovation processes offers a variety of learning opportunities that are relevant in 51 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22190 51 terms of church theory, church leadership and congregational development. in view of the current multilayered challenges of the protestant church, this approach to the church’s situation offers the opportunity to develop constructive contributions that are based on both empirical-practical and theoretical-discursive foundations. the scientific research of ecclesial innovation makes thus its own contribution to theory formation. theologically, an exciting perspective can be discovered in this: “what if god creates something new during decline – and we are part of it? what if we not only experience an end (we undoubtedly do!), but also a beginning?” (elhaus et al. 2024: 111). the church as creatura verbi is not dependent on external structures but is renewed in the midst of the profound change of these very structures (root and bertrand 2023: 37–80). about the author dr felix eiffler is head of the research unit for missional church development at the centre for empowerment studies – christian empowerment in secularity at the martin luther-university halle-wittenberg (ger). he also works as ordained pastor in the evangelical church in central germany. contact: felix.eiffler@theologie.uni-halle.de references bertelsmann-stiftung. 2022. die zukunft der kirchen – zwischen bedeutungsverlust und neuverortung in einer vielfältigen gesellschaft: ergebnisse des religionsmonitors 2023 – eine vorschau. gütersloh: gütersloher verlagshaus. available at https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/fileadmin/files/ projekte/51_religionsmonitor/religionsmoni_kompakt_final2.pdf (28.04.2025). ———. 2023. religion monitor brief: europe’s religious landscape: faith and religious diversity in an era of rapid change. gütersloh: gütersloher verlagshaus. cousins, j. bradley, and elizabeth whitmore. 1998. “framing participatory evaluation”: new directions for evaluation: understanding and practicing participatory evaluation 80: 5–23. domsgen, michael. 2021. wie weiter mit der kirche? fünf theologische spotlights im theater der grundlegung und handlungsorientierung von kirche. evangelische theologie 81 (1): 25-39. döring, nicola and bortz, jürgen. 2016. evaluationsforschung in döring nicola and bortz jürgen (eds.). 2016. forschungsmethoden und evaluation in den sozialund humanwissenschaften. berlin/ heidelberg: springer-verlag, 5th ed.: 975–1036. ekd. 2023a. wie hältst du’s mit der kirche? zur bedeutung der kirche in der gesellschaft: erste ergebnisse der 6. kirchenmitgliedschafsuntersuchung. leipzig: evangelische verlagsanstalt. available at https://kmu.ekd.de/fileadmin/user_upload/kirchenmitgliedschaftsuntersuchung/pdf/kmu6_ auswertung_eva_2024_web_final.pdf (21.12.2024). —––. 2023b. wie hältst du’s mit der kirche? zur bedeutung der kirche in der gesellschaft: erste ergebnisse der 6. kirchenmitgliedschafsuntersuchung, elektronischer anhang 2: tabellen-anhang mit grundauszählungen differenziert nach konfessionszugehörigkeit. leipzig: evangelische verlagsanstalt. available at https://kmu.ekd.de/fileadmin/user_upload/kirchenmitgliedschaftsuntersuchung/ pdf/anhang_tabellen_grundausz%c3%a4hlungen_der_6._kmu.pdf (21.12.2024). mailto:felix.eiffler@theologie.uni-halle.de https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/fileadmin/files/projekte/51_religionsmonitor/religionsmoni_kompakt_final2.pdf https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/fileadmin/files/projekte/51_religionsmonitor/religionsmoni_kompakt_final2.pdf https://kmu.ekd.de/fileadmin/user_upload/kirchenmitgliedschaftsuntersuchung/pdf/kmu6_auswertung_eva_2024_web_final.pdf https://kmu.ekd.de/fileadmin/user_upload/kirchenmitgliedschaftsuntersuchung/pdf/kmu6_auswertung_eva_2024_web_final.pdf https://kmu.ekd.de/fileadmin/user_upload/kirchenmitgliedschaftsuntersuchung/pdf/anhang_tabellen_grundauszählungen_der_6._kmu.pdf https://kmu.ekd.de/fileadmin/user_upload/kirchenmitgliedschaftsuntersuchung/pdf/anhang_tabellen_grundauszählungen_der_6._kmu.pdf 52 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22190 52 ———. 2024. “mitgliederzahl und kirchensteueraufkommen 2023 niedriger als im vorjahr: netto gesamtaufkommen an kirchensteuern 2023 um 5,3 prozent gesunken: erwartungen an kirche trotz abnehmender kirchenbindung hoch.” available at https://www.ekd.de/ekd-veroeffentlichtmitgliederzahlen-2023-83806.htm (08.05.2024). ekm. 2020a. “förderrichtilinie für den fond ‘erprobungsräume’.” available at https://www. kirchenrecht-ekm.de/document/47197 (23.04.2024). ———. 2020b. ordnung “erprobungsräume”. available at https://www.erprobungsraeume-ekm. de/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/20200928_erprobungsraeumeo_2.0-rechtsfoermig.pdf (22.04.2024). |———. 2024. “6. tagung der iii. landessynode der evangelischen kirche in mitteldeutschland vom 22. bis 25. november 2023 in erfurt, drucksachen-nr. 8.3/4b: beschluss der landessynode zu top 8.3 kirchengesetz zur erprobung neuer strukturen.” available at https://www.ekmd. de/asset/7f3ed1f8tigjgndstbwlbg/ds-08-3-4-b-erprobungsgesetz.pdf?ts=1700940406818 (21.12.2024). elhaus, philipp, and uwe hein. 2023. “kirche innovativ gestalten?” in georg hofmeister, gunther schendel and carla j. witt (eds). 2023. kirche neu denken – kirche erproben: auf der suche nach neuen formen kirchlichen lebens. baden-baden: nomos: 55–80. elhaus, philipp, et al. 2024. “das erproben erproben: die evaluation der erprobungsräume in der evangelischen kirche in mitteldeutschland”, in sandra bils et al. (eds). 2024. erprobung empirisch: resultate und reflexionen im kontext der erforschung landeskirchlicher innovationsund erprobungsräume. göttingen: vandenhoeck und ruprecht: 91–126. fischer, tabea, and felix eiffler. 2024. “wirkungsorientierung: eine erhebung in den erprobungsräumen der evangelischen kirche mitteldeutschlands: ergebnisbericht.” available at https:// ces-halle. de/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/mkg-fokusuntersuchung_wirkungsorientierung-in-epr_ ergebnisbericht_ed.pdf (20.12.2024). herbst, michael. 2006. mission bringt gemeinde in form: gemeindepflanzungen und neue ausdrucksformen gemeindlichen lebens in einem sich wandelnden kontext. neukirchen-vluyn: neukirchener verlag. hermelink, jan. 2018. “‘gemeinde’ – oder lieber doch nicht? die ‘fresh expressions of church’ markieren alte und neue probleme mit dem gemeindebild”, praktische theologie 53 (1): 38–43. kelley, tom. 2016. the art of innovation: lessons in creativity from ideo: america’s leading design firm. 2nd ed. london: doubleday. moser, heinz. 1995. grundlagen der praxisforschung. freiburg i. br.: lambertus. moynagh, michael. 2017. church in life: innovation, mission and ecclesiology. london: wipf and stock. müller, olaf, detlef pollack and gert pickel. 2013. “religiös-konfessionelle kultur und individuelle religiosität: ein vergleich zwischen westund ostdeutschland”, kölner zeitschrift für soziologie und psychologie 65: 123–48. root, andrew, and blair d. bertrand. 2023. when church stops working: a future for your congregation beyond more money: programs, and innovation. grand rapids: baker books. schlegel, thomas. 2021. “kircheninnovation: merkmale der vor-ort-erprobungen” in thomas schlegel and juliane kleemann (eds). erprobungsräume: andere gemeindeformen in der landeskirche. leipzig: evangelische verlagsanstalt leipzig: 21–36. sinek, simon. 2021. start with why: how great leaders inspire everyone to take action. london: pengiun. sobetzko, florian, and matthias sellmann. 2017. gründer*innen handbuch: für pastorale start-ups und innovationsprojekte. würzburg: echter verlag. von unger, hella. 2014. partizipative forschung: einführung in die forschungspraxis. wiesbaden: springer verlag. https://www.ekd.de/ekd-veroeffentlicht-mitgliederzahlen-2023-83806.htm https://www.ekd.de/ekd-veroeffentlicht-mitgliederzahlen-2023-83806.htm https://www.kirchenrecht-ekm.de/document/47197 https://www.kirchenrecht-ekm.de/document/47197 https://www.erprobungsraeume-ekm.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/20200928_erprobungsraeumeo_2.0-rechtsfoermig.pdf https://www.erprobungsraeume-ekm.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/20200928_erprobungsraeumeo_2.0-rechtsfoermig.pdf https://www.ekmd.de/asset/7f3ed1f8tigjgndstbwlbg/ds-08-3-4-b-erprobungsgesetz.pdf?ts=1700940406818 https://www.ekmd.de/asset/7f3ed1f8tigjgndstbwlbg/ds-08-3-4-b-erprobungsgesetz.pdf?ts=1700940406818 https://ces-halle.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/mkg-fokusuntersuchung_wirkungsorientierung-in-epr_ergebnisbericht_ed.pdf https://ces-halle.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/mkg-fokusuntersuchung_wirkungsorientierung-in-epr_ergebnisbericht_ed.pdf https://ces-halle.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/mkg-fokusuntersuchung_wirkungsorientierung-in-epr_ergebnisbericht_ed.pdf felix eiffler evaluation of ecclesial innovations as empowerment 1 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19868 doi: 10.54195/ef19868 a r t i c l e ecclesial futures 2025 implementation of the mixed ecology in church of england diocesan strategies andrew dunlop abstract the mixed ecology is a term that has come to denote both traditional and new forms of church mutually flourishing alongside one another. since 2021 it has been part of the vision and strategy of the church of england. the extent to which mixed ecology thinking permeates diocesan strategy varies. strategies which originally flowed from the separate streams of church planting and fresh expressions of church now exhibit similar qualities. i argue that diocesan strategies were converging towards those that could be described as “mixed ecology” even before the national strategy was adopted, and suggest that these strategies and the national vision play a vital role in amplifying good practice and creating the active partnership between groups that the mixed ecology requires to thrive. this article is based on a survey of diocesan strategies, vision statements, and publicly available documentation in church of england dioceses. keywords: mixed ecology, church of england, strategy, vision, church planting, fresh expressions in 2021, a new vision for church of england was adopted. it was to become simpler in governance and structure, humbler in working with others, and bolder in its outworking and proclamation of what god has done through christ, all shaped by the five marks of mission. these were to be enacted through three strategic priorities: a church of missionary disciples, a church where the mixed ecology is the norm, and a church which is younger and more diverse (cottrell 2021). the second of these was of particular interest to me as i have been following the development of fresh expressions of church and the mixed ecology throughout my ordained career – as curate, new-build pioneer, college lecturer, and now in a diocesan role. on the one hand, that the mixed ecology had become enshrined into church of england vision was a declaration that this – and the variety of ecclesial forms that come with the 2 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19868 2 mixed ecology – was how the church should be. on the other hand, as this paper argues, it simply formalized in the vision what was happening in the dioceses anyway. the language of “mixed ecology” is a development of the phrase “mixed economy”, describing areas where new and traditional forms of church and other missional ventures work together in an area to form a varied ecclesial landscape. “mixed economy” was first coined by rowan williams while he was archbishop of wales, but gained wider traction whilst he was archbishop of canterbury through its inclusion in the mission-shaped church report (church of england 2004). the report promoted church planting and fresh expressions of church – defined as contextual forms of church intended for those who did not previously attend church. more recently, the preference has been for an ecological rather than economic metaphor.1 whilst the phrase “mixed ecology” hasn’t been defined in detail, the work of recent writers all agree that a varied ecclesial landscape or ecosystem of new and traditional forms of church, fresh expressions, church plants, and missional activities is intended (perrin and olsworth-peter 2021; olsworth-peter 2024; foulger 2024). in defining a mixed ecology, one could take a “lowest common denominator” approach which consists of different forms of church or missional communities simply co-existing near each other. this is not a good definition, and is arguably no different from how the church operated in any age. a preferable definition emphasizes a partnership (e.g. church of england 2004: iv; müller 2019: 252) between the new and traditional, for mutual learning, training, resourcing, networking, support, the sharing of good practice and ideas, and more. although the mixed ecology has attracted critique from some circles within the church of england as undermining the parish system (billings 2021; milbank 2023), i contend, and argue elsewhere in a wider study of the mixed ecology in a local context (dunlop 2025), that the mixed ecology at its best is a fulfilment of the parish system, not an undermining of it. there is no space to develop that here, so in this paper i argue that the convergence of diocesan visions towards the mixed ecology sets the landscape for an active partnership between the elements in the ecosystem to be created. as part of this wider study, between 2018 and 2022 i undertook a survey of the vision and strategies of 40 of the 42 dioceses in the church of england through their 1 the preference for ecological over economic reflects jesus’ use of metaphors and the sense of different aspects of an ecology existing together for the benefit of the whole, in contrast to fiscal/financial models. those writing about the transition (e.g. passmore 2020) usually fail to note the theological aspect to the word “economy” by writers that influenced rowan williams, such as vladimir lossky (1976). 3 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19868 3 website data and publicly available documentation.2 i found that, despite a variety of language and approaches to mission and ministry, there was a general convergence towards strategies that could be described as mixed ecology with an intention to having a mutuality or active partnership between groups. this convergence highlights a complex relationship between diocesan and national vision, and the activity of practitioners on the ground. money made available for mission and church planting ventures from the church of england’s strategic development fund (sdf) and its successor the strategic mission and ministry investment board has undoubtedly enabled dioceses to be more proactive in setting an ecclesial landscape. in 2019, sabrina müller wrote: the mixed economy has become one of the implicit ecclesiological self-understandings of the church of england in the last 15 years. (müller 2019: 252) i argue in this paper that with diocesan visions converging to mixed ecology ways of operating, this ecclesiological self-understanding has now become explicit and is beneficial for the establishment of mutual partnerships of different churches, missional ventures, and worshipping communities. this study should be read in conjunction with will foulger’s research from the centre for church planting theology in durham, conducted after the national vision was announced (foulger 2024). his consisted of reviewing the publicly facing material in 11 dioceses alongside interviews with one key person in each diocese. he found that the language of “mixed ecology” was “ubiquitous” across the dioceses and that all were reluctant to use the word “church” to describe the “new things” that were being started, although there was much variation in what language to use. for the bulk of this paper, i examine the language and strategy before 2021. an overview of the direction of travel before 2021 before the national strategy, diocesan strategies fell into three general categories: those which clearly articulated a vision for the mixed ecology/economy and used language that had arisen from the fresh expressions discussion, those whose vision is clearly something else, and those who are promoting a variety of strategic approaches. the most clearly articulated visions for a mixed ecology came from the dioceses of carlisle, chelmsford, ely, leicester, oxford, southwell and nottingham, st albans, 2 due to the nature of their geographies and their separation from the mainland, the dioceses of europe and of sodor and man were discounted from this investigation. 4 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19868 4 and winchester. these dioceses unapologetically used language that emerged from the conversation around fresh expressions of church. there is not space to describe each in detail, so i limit this discussion to two. the first diocese to develop a mixed economy vision, including contextual forms of church, was leicester, who began in 2005: a central part of our calling as a diocese is to see as many growing and maturing fresh expressions (new) churches in 2030 as we have continuing (parish) ones, led by a network of over 600 licensed pioneers. (diocese of leicester 2018b) to this end, they appointed pioneer development workers for an initial five-year term (using an sdf grant) to promote and resource fresh expressions across the diocese, and to be deeply involved in one location. further sdf funding of £5.34 million supported the development of six resource churches – larger churches or church plants intended to plant again (diocese of leicester 2018a). the diocese of carlisle established a shared strategy with methodist and united reformed churches to create intentional mission communities (diocese of carlisle et al., 2014). every church was to be part of one of these clusters, which were to contain at least one fresh expression alongside a network youth church. their visualization of such a community, discussed below, offers a practical outworking of mixed economy/ecology thinking. at the other end of the spectrum, the diocese of chichester’s vision for mission did not include the mixed ecology or relate to it explicitly. there is no mention of fresh expressions, church planting, mixed ecology, or resource churches. this is not to say no vision for mission exists, simply that the mixed ecology of traditional and new forms of church working alongside each other is not a stated goal. instead, they focus on the inherited church being ‘a christian presence in every community’ (diocese of chichester 2020), which is a received mantra commonly used about church of england parishes.3 references to ‘reimagining ministry’ in their strategy brochure and bishop’s charge refer to encouraging lay ministry and developing ‘confidence in clergy,’ although, from the public documentation, it is ambiguous as to what this entails (diocese of chichester 2015; ‘diocesan vision for growth’ 2016). they do, however, articulate the need for ‘apostolic partnerships’ in areas of new housing and deprivation, although little detail is given to the structure of these 3 ‘a christian presence in every community’ was at one time the main strapline on the church of england website (see foulger 2018, 12). it persists in recent years on websites, proposals, and academic articles (cf. seeley 2019; nye 2021; ‘the church: a christian presence in every community’ n.d.; diocese of chelmsford n.d.). 5 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19868 5 (diocese of chichester 2020). it is important to note that chichester has a significant resource church in st peter’s, brighton which itself has planted multiple times, and has received sdf money directed at outreach, evangelism, social justice, and training (diocese of chichester 2021; ‘st peter’s brighton – bright city’, n.d.). so, despite chichester’s vision and strategy being the least explicit in terms of articulating a mixed ecology, even theirs reveals a mixed approach to mission and ecclesiology within the diocese. their strategy, therefore, might indicate a cautious response to the intentions and perceived ecclesiology of the churches in the diocese, rather than a rejection of missional ecclesiological ventures. all the other dioceses had a vision which, to a greater or lesser extent, included aspects relating to the mixed ecology, even if the language wasn’t employed. this could be through centrally funded creation of new worshipping communities, encouragement of parishes to innovate locally, or the planting of resource churches. the variety of language being used before 2021 gravitated towards ‘mixed ecology’ since then (see below). only the diocese of winchester still used language of the mixed economy in their vision statement as of 2023,4 whilst ely diocese used multiple terms including “blended”‘, “mixed ecology” and “mixed economy”.5 the language of fresh expressions was known and used in many dioceses, albeit recognizing that it could be difficult for some (diocese of birmingham, n.d.). demonstrating convergence to the mixed ecology there is a sense that each diocese was using the language and strategy that reflected the existing direction of travel of the churches in that diocese and perhaps, therefore, had the greatest pragmatic chance of success.6 it is discernible, however, that despite the multiplicity of approaches, a common convergence can be noted towards models that could be described as mixed ecology in some way. although this convergence is ecclesiological in nature and may result in a landscape of ecclesial communities across parishes or deaneries that bear some similarities to one another, it would be unwise to call this an ecclesiology as it encompasses multiple local ecclesiologies 4 their vision statement remained consistent from 2018 and was correct as of 7 august 2023 (diocese of winchester, n.d.). a few documents on their website did reference ecology in 2022 (diocese of winchester 2022a; 2022b) but these have since been removed. as of october 2024, there was no mention of either mixed economy or mixed ecology on their website. on the other hand, the diocese of st edmundsbury and ipswich has had a consistent vision since 2016, yet their website vision pages did not mention mixed economy’ in 2020 but does in 2024 (diocese of st edmundsbury and ipswich 2020; 2024). 5 see, for example, diocese of ely 2019a; 2019b; 2021. 6 the question of what constitutes success is a pertinent one and is something i deal with in my earlier work (dunlop 2018). 6 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19868 6 and there is often a lack of theological articulation.7 the common convergence is most noticeable in pictorial representations that some dioceses have produced, but is also clear in proposals for some resourcing church projects, as discussed below. neither the fresh expressions organization nor the mission-shaped church report offered a pictorial representation of what the mixed economy/ecology might look like. mission-shaped church simply summed up the mixed economy in the phrase: …a variety of integrated missionary approaches is required. a mixed economy of parish church and network churches will be necessary, in an active partnership across a wider area, perhaps a deanery. (church of england 2004, xi)8 there is much variation in how this phrase has come to be understood and depicted in individual diocesan approaches. carlisle diocese’s vision for mission communities indicated one possible outworking of mixed ecology thinking. their proposal was ecumenical and operated across a deanery with several congregations existing alongside one another (see fig. 1 for the fictionalized example of the flockton mission community: diocese of carlisle, n.d.). within this setup there were several established congregations of different denominations alongside new contextual church communities and missional ventures. some of these are connected to the traditional congregations, whilst others operate across a network or wider area. however, all were encouraged to remain connected to other local churches for mutual benefit. a 2019 church army report into fresh expressions in carlisle diocese stated: while previously [fresh expressions of church] sought growing into ‘three-self’ responsibility, self-reproduction, self-financing and self-governing, a healthy interdependence is now encouraged, with traditional parish churches and fresh expressions of church learning from and supporting each other. (church army research unit 2019, 7) according to this report, based on quantitative research, this approach had some success in engaging with those who did not otherwise come to church, stating that one out of every four people who attend church in the diocese attend only a fresh expression of church (church army research unit 2019, 14). 7 developing a single ecclesiology for the mixed ecology is unhelpful in an organisation such as the church of england. in my doctoral work i proposed a framework of ecclesiological instincts, rather than an ecclesiology (dunlop 2025). discussion of this is beyond the scope of this paper. 8 more recently, olsworth-peter produced a diagram of the mixed ecology set upon an axis from attractional to contextual groups (olsworth-peter 2024, 29). 7 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19868 7 figure 1 the diocese of carlisle example mission community (diocese of carlisle, n.d.) likewise, the diocese of liverpool put together an ambitious strategy to revitalize the church in the industrial town of wigan. transforming wigan hoped to see 20,000 people on the “journey” of faith by 2022, in both traditional and fresh expression congregations (‘strategy: about transforming wigan’, n.d.). twenty-nine parishes were reorganized to create seven new parish hubs, each with their own hub leader and associate, to support one another to plant five new worshipping communities each year (see churchwigan.org). the hubs were also connected to one another through the overarching project (see fig. 2,9 where the triangles represent different forms of gathering within the hubs). clergy were authorized to exercise their specific ministry gifts across the whole team. this vision was a distinct departure from the traditional parish system, despite the forming of new super-parishes. a mixed ecology vision (although the diocese tended not to use this term) of traditional and new congregations working alongside one another is evident in this strategy. the 9 for the image source, see https://churchwigan.org/abouttwigstrategy.php. http://churchwigan.org https://churchwigan.org/abouttwigstrategy.php 8 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19868 8 reorganization resulted in the creation of 63 new worshipping communities including 29 “significant expressions of church” (hutton 2023: 28–30), involving somewhere between 750 (hutton 2023: iv) and 1500 (diocese of liverpool, n.d.) new regular attendees. however, parish churches, impacted by the pandemic, continued to see a steep decline in attendance and finances, resulting in closures (hutton 2023: 31–2). in her apologetic for the parish system, alison milbank decries the transforming wigan project and offers anecdotal stories about the disgruntlement of some local clergy, the disengagement of the laity, and added bureaucracy limiting face-to-face time (milbank 2023, 40–41). whilst it should be noted that the pandemic certainly affected numbers (cf. perrin and olsworth-peter 2021: 46–50), the transforming wigan results perhaps indicate that it is vital to attend to the mixed ecology ideals of creating “active partnership” for mutual benefit in developing such a project. figure 2 transforming wigan hubs some dioceses were pursuing strategies prioritizing the establishing of resource churches – a church plant or revitalization, inspired by the holy trinity, brompton (htb) model, intended to plant again and resource the area around it (see thorpe 2021). their visions also appeared to converge towards a mixed ecology of different church communities. during a training session with the diocese of sheffield, thorpe presented a vision of what a traditional parish actively engaging with its community could look like (see fig. 3; thorpe 2018). note that this is an image of what an engaged parish church could look like, not a resource church; but there are clear overtones of the mixed ecology in the variety of church communities in different places within the parish that are suggested. such a church could become a resource church by having the distinct intention of planting and resourcing other parishes around it to do the same (see fig. 4). 9 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19868 9 there are many types of church plants – all are needed figure 3 a church-planting church: slide from ric thorpe’s presentation to the diocese of sheffield (thorpe 2018) figure 4 a resource church: slide from ric thorpe’s presentation to the diocese of sheffield (thorpe 2018) 10 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19868 10 the implications of these images from thorpe’s presentation are threefold. first, they affirm the integrity and importance of the parish church to be the anglican centre for all those that live within the parish. the vicar still maintains the cure of souls of those who live in her parish. however, second, there is no indication that one service of worship in the church building is sufficient. the parish church is to be a missional church, serving all sections of society that happen to exist within its boundaries. therefore, chaplaincy, planting, and new worshipping communities based outside of the church building will be required, creating a mixed ecology. whilst this is far reaching within the parish, a third implication is the assertion that mission within the parish alone is not sufficient. churches that can reach beyond the parish boundary to resource, encourage, or revitalize mission work in another area should do so, although thorpe adds that this should be done in partnership with dioceses, as part of their wider strategy (thorpe 2021: 9–10). here, a mixed ecology of active partnership between churches and groups is seen as beneficial to mission within the parish and, in partnership with the diocese, for enabling missional work elsewhere. a specific outworking of this resource church strategy could be seen in the diocese of truro through the transforming mission strategy (diocese of truro n.d.; 2018). the diocese covers the english county of cornwall which is rural and coastal. the most populated town, falmouth, is home to only 22,000 people, with a further 5000 students based at nearby penryn on the joint campus of falmouth university and the university of exeter.10 the mission strategy of the diocese, transforming mission, was made possible through sdf money and aimed to see six or seven new resource churches planted or designated across cornwall over five years. resourced through a new vicar who led the project, a pioneer minister, a student worker, a café manager, a worship pastor, and operations support, they aimed to reach families and students and see new congregations planted in cafés and on the student campus. there were different styles of church community across the hub including two existing parish churches (one in the anglo-catholic tradition – www.allsaintschurchfalmouth.co.uk), a new church plant (www.newstreetchurch.org), a pre-existing church-café community, and further student outreach. by 2022, phase 2 was under way in camborne, truro, st austell and liskeard with similar aims (diocese of truro, n.d.). again, the visualization of such a missional project leans towards a mixed ecology, with multiple churches, christian communities and mission initiatives working together (see fig. 5). similar rural projects exist in other parts of the country, such as the potting shed resource church in the diocese of southwell and nottingham (https://www. thepottingshedchurch.org/about-us). in these cases, some expectations and forms 10 data estimated in 2015 to exclude the outlying villages (matthews 2017). university figures estimated from 2016 (https://www.fxplus.ac.uk/build). http://www.allsaintschurchfalmouth.co.uk http://www.newstreetchurch.org https://www.thepottingshedchurch.org/about-us https://www.thepottingshedchurch.org/about-us https://www.fxplus.ac.uk/build 11 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19868 11 of ministries were identified in advance. in truro, the café and student campus were key. other aspects of the ministry could be discerned contextually by the planting team/pioneers after the project has begun, giving a clear direction but leaving space for ecclesial imagination and missional responsiveness. figure 5 a visualization of the transforming mission falmouth project (diocese of truro, 2018) convergence of pioneer and church planting approaches fresh expression thinking and traditional church planting, as evidenced in the htb-style church plants or resource churches, are stereotypically understood to have different starting points. fresh expressions are expected to arise from a context after a period of listening, through a process that is often referred to as the 12 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19868 12 serving-first journey (moynagh 2017: 45). because worship arises from the context, styles can vary and are sometimes creative or innovative. those that engage contextually to form fresh expressions of church are called pioneers. traditional church plants, following what has been described as the worship-first journey (moynagh 2012: 206), usually start with a larger number of existing christians gathering for worship in a new area, often replicating the style of the sending church. in the case of htb church plants, this is usually evangelical-charismatic,. from this central service, momentum is built, and the congregation reaches out in mission to draw people into the church, and to faith. so, these demonstrate two seemingly different starting points to mission. i say “seemingly” here as there are clearly similarities between the two approaches too. fresh expressions require a small group of committed christians, usually with some links to what might be described as a “sending” church, to commit to engage contextually in an area. likewise, although ‘worship-first’ church plants usually replicate a style of church, there are often contextual adaptations, particularly if these plants are in a differing socio-economic context to the sending church. whilst describing the circumstances in which the models are used as “contrasting”, moynagh notes the nuances and the over-generalizations of using any models to describe reality (2012: 206). diocesan strategies indicate a convergence of both these approaches into something resembling a mixed ecology encompassing many different forms of worshipping community operating supportively across an area. it is clearly discernible that thorpe’s and truro’s models have developed from traditional church-planting methods, rather than fresh expressions thinking. it is also clear that contextual methodologies influenced them too, hence i have likened them to mixed ecology approaches. in each case there is a central church (the resource church) out of which imaginative and pioneering ministries emerge. this marks a difference between these resource church models and the mixed ecology approaches of, say, leicester or carlisle dioceses or transforming wigan which are more fluid across an area. in practice, however, thorpe’s resource church model does not deviate too far from the way in which most fresh expressions are started in relation to the missional ventures that happen within the parish. only relatively few fresh expressions begin from diocesan initiatives external to the parish; most are started by a parish discerning a local need (lings 2016: 191–2). many fresh expressions continue to have a close relationship with the parish from which they sprang (lings 2016: 101), some with the intention that they may never become entirely independent churches. mixed ecology language is flexible enough to encompass the variety of missional activity and worshipping communities that spring out of a central church such as through resource church models, as well as to include fresh expressions and traditional churches that find themselves co-existing in an area after a more pioneering “ground-up” starting point. from both these starting points, the convergence towards mixed ecology thinking can be seen, 13 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19868 13 and in many cases there is a central parish church that is either planted from or offers ongoing support to the new worshipping community. what the national vision has done although there is clearly much more that can be said about the mixed ecology, i have limited myself in this article to demonstrating a convergence to a mixed ecology approaches over the last 10–15 years, before “mixed ecology” became part of the national church of england strategy. to conclude, i will highlight three areas of relationship between the national vision, diocesan visions, and the general direction of travel, and why these are significant. first, in terms of diocesan vision, foulger points out that the language of ‘mixed ecology’ is now ‘universally accepted’ across the dioceses he surveyed, with the term being employed in the interviews he conducted (foulger 2024: 34, 71). i am not going to contradict this, but i have found that the use of the phrase in vision statements, publicly facing documentation and websites is still relatively uncommon, even if the values or shape of the mixed ecology are clear. the phrase is being used more frequently, however, in descriptors of diocesan departments and in advertisements for key roles (e.g. diocese of carlisle 2024; diocese of oxford 2024). in this regard, the national vision has provided normative internal language for the dioceses in how they understand their visions and the direction of travel they are on, but, perhaps rightly, the language is not used in more public-facing material. in other words, the values of mixed ecology are becoming more pervasive due to the national vision. second, there has been a blurring of language and approach in terms of pioneer and planter. pioneers, who started contextual fresh expressions, tended to be trained in contextual approaches (e.g. serving-first) locally or nationally through initiatives of the fresh expressions organization, or through lay or ordained pathways at theological colleges, whereas planters tended to be trained in the htb planting style of “worship first”. whilst my statements here are over-generalizations, my intent is to emphasise the contrasting contextual starting points, and different networks of support that the two groups had. now, there is less of a distinction between the two as pioneers and planters are trained in both contextual and planting methods, and networks such as ccx include those innovating church in a variety of ways. foulger, drawing on an independent review of sdf money, notes that dioceses tended to focus on plants in their funding bids, rather than fresh expressions (strategic investment board 2022: 33; foulger 2024: 71). the report makes recommendations on increasing the diversity of projects funded (strategic investment board 2022: 9). foulger rightly claims that mixed ecology language can help hold together the need for larger resourced church plants, with smaller fresh expressions or worshipping communities that often emerge from the work of a parish. its inclusion in the national vision 14 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19868 14 emphasises the importance of a variety of new things to be started, including but not limited to large church plants. both pioneers and planters fit into this as there is less distinction between the two ways of working. my third aspect to note is that the relationship between the national, diocesan, and local visions and practice is and will always be complex. i have noted the direction of travel of the diocesan visions towards a mixed ecology way of thinking, but these visions would have been influenced by several factors. innovative missional work by practitioners in the 1990s found its way into the mission-shaped church report, which further influenced national thinking, strategy, and structure through bishop’s mission orders and the funding of the fresh expressions organization. this organization, often supported by dioceses, amplified “fresh expressions” thinking by sharing stories, offering training, support, and points of connection to more would-be practitioners, thus affecting local practice. local practice influenced national concern which in turn further affected practice. similarly, the church-planting initiatives of a relative few, notably htb, in the 1980s and 90s then became part of the strategy for the diocese of london which then overflowed into other dioceses. the designation of national funding for dioceses for new missional ventures also brought diocesan strategy to the fore as it forced dioceses to ask missional questions of their strategy in order to be eligible for it. these strategies and funding then affected the ecclesial landscape on the ground. moynagh rightly asserts that either top-down or bottom-up approaches alone would not have been sufficient for the mixed ecology to thrive. diocesan intervention amplifies good practice, gives training and helps people see the possibility for local contextual missional ventures (moynagh 2017: 99ff.). the national mixed ecology vision also holds these things together; genuine contextual missional innovation still needs to come from the ground up, from those who know and work in their communities. the national vision and consequently diocesan visions and strategies for the mixed ecology must recognise this complexity in relationship and seek to unearth the missional energy for localities to find and support the best course of action for a context. this may be by funding something big and new, but equally should be simply through local connection and training of people together to engage appropriately with their context. in this way, the initiative rests with the local practitioners, with diocesan support, and can give rise to truly contextual missional ventures. diocesan strategy can have a role in amplifying these voices which, in turn, may then influence future diocesan vision or funding bids. in the above, i have described a convergence to a mixed ecology landscape in the vision and strategies of the dioceses, and through a convergence of language and approach between fresh expression and church planting methods. the convergence in the vision and strategies of dioceses was occurring even before the 2021 national vision was agreed by synod. these took various forms, arose from both pioneering and resource church planting initiatives, and have been called a wide variety of things, but the general sense of direction was clear. 15 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19868 15 i suggest that this convergence of diocesan visions towards the mixed ecology accentuates and encourages the connections or ‘active partnership’ vital to making it thrive. a mixed ecclesial landscape, whatever one may call it, is necessary to the mission and ministry of the church in contemporary society, and the active partnership is vital for mutual learning, resourcing, supporting, and growth. therefore, that dioceses are actively encouraging mixed ecology in a way that isn’t the lowest common denominator of different groups co-existing, leans towards creating resourcing, support, and structures for local connection as well as opportunities for wider training, connection, sharing of stories and support. this is the amplification phase that moynagh talks about in his innovation framework (moynagh 2017: 112–13). as stories are shared, innovation and creativity are fostered in others which, with the right support, leads to new things. although the ideas need to be local and contextual, the diocese plays a role in shaping the structures that foster imagination. therefore, the convergence of diocesan vision is important to the development of the mixed ecology – it emphasizes the active part both between the diocese and the new thing, and between different expressions of church in an area. about the author rev. dr andrew dunlop is the director of mission and ministry development for the diocese of rochester in the church of england. his previous roles include lecturing in pioneer ministry, church planting, mixed ecology, and theological reflection at ridley hall, cambridge, and cranmer hall, durham. he has had ministry experience in a city centre church in plymouth, and as a pioneer minister in northampton. andrew’s research interests centre around the mixed ecology, how it is understood locally, and implemented at a diocesan and national level. he has recently completed a phd on this subject, doing empirical research using theological action research, through the university of roehampton. contact: andrew.dunlop@rochester.anglican.org references billings, alan. 2021. ‘what the c of e can learn from the police’. save the parish (blog). 24 september. https://www.savetheparish.com/2021/09/25/what-the-c-of-e-can-learn-from-the-police/. church army research unit. 2019. ‘an audit of fresh expressions of church: diocese of carlisle’. 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practice. london: scm press. ———. 2017. church in life: innovation, mission and ecclesiology. london: scm press. müller, sabrina. 2019. ‘fresh expressions of church and the mixed economy’. international review of mission 108 (2): 241–56. https://doi.org/10.1111/irom.12282. nye, william. 2021. ‘the church of england: some personal reflections on structure and mission’. ecclesiastical law journal 23 (2). https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ecclesiastical-law-journal/ article/abs/church-of-england-some-personal-reflections-on-structure-and-mission/8cd47119d591cb65dcfe0a2f0003e2c5. olsworth-peter, ed. 2024. mixed ecology: inhabiting an integrated church. london: spck. https://spckpublishing.co.uk/mixed-ecology. ‘our life in christ: the bishop’s charge 2015’. 2015. diocese of chichester. https://www.chichester. anglican.org/bishops-charge/. passmore, richard. 2020. ‘mixed ecology a language of protest since 2011?’ sunday papers – the supplement (blog). 8 october. http://www.sundaypapers.org.uk/?p=3992. perrin, ruth, and ed olsworth-peter. 2021. ‘the mixed ecologists: experiences of mixed ecology ministry in the church of england’. focussed study 2. the living ministry research project. london: church house. https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2021-05/ focussed%20study%202%20-%20the%20mixed%20ecologists.pdf. seeley, martin. 2019. ‘gs misc 1224 ministry for a christian presence in every community’. https:// www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2019-06/gs%20misc%201224%20ministry%20 for%20a%20christian%20presence.pdf. ‘st peter’s brighton – bright city’. n.d. https://stpetersbrighton.org/bright-city/. strategic investment board. 2022. ‘independent review of lowest income communities funding and strategic development funding’. church of england. https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/ default/files/2022-03/irls-final-report-2.pdf. thorpe, ric. 2018. ‘sheffield diocesan development day: church growth, church planting and resource churches’. sheffield, october 6. https://www.sheffield.anglican.org/strategy-launch. ———. 2021. resource churches: a story of church planting and revitalisation across the nation. london: the gregory centre for church multiplication. https://www.cranmerhall.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/new-things-final-1.pdf https://www.cranmerhall.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/new-things-final-1.pdf https://www.churcharmy.org/articles/516318/what_we_do/research_unit/fresh_expressions_of.aspx https://www.churcharmy.org/articles/516318/what_we_do/research_unit/fresh_expressions_of.aspx http://archive.org/details/mysticaltheology0000loss http://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/town-cornwall-highest-population-answer-365330 http://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/town-cornwall-highest-population-answer-365330 https://doi.org/10.1111/irom.12282 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ecclesiastical-law-journal/article/abs/church-of-england-some-personal-reflections-on-structure-and-mission/8cd47119d591cb65dcfe0a2f0003e2c5 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ecclesiastical-law-journal/article/abs/church-of-england-some-personal-reflections-on-structure-and-mission/8cd47119d591cb65dcfe0a2f0003e2c5 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ecclesiastical-law-journal/article/abs/church-of-england-some-personal-reflections-on-structure-and-mission/8cd47119d591cb65dcfe0a2f0003e2c5 https://spckpublishing.co.uk/mixed-ecology https://spckpublishing.co.uk/mixed-ecology https://www.chichester.anglican.org/bishops-charge/ https://www.chichester.anglican.org/bishops-charge/ http://www.sundaypapers.org.uk/?p=3992 https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2021-05/focussed%20study%202%20-%20the%20mixed%20ecologists.pdf https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2021-05/focussed%20study%202%20-%20the%20mixed%20ecologists.pdf https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2019-06/gs%20misc%201224%20ministry%20for%20a%20christian%20presence.pdf https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2019-06/gs%20misc%201224%20ministry%20for%20a%20christian%20presence.pdf https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2019-06/gs%20misc%201224%20ministry%20for%20a%20christian%20presence.pdf https://stpetersbrighton.org/bright-city/ https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2022-03/irls-final-report-2.pdf https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2022-03/irls-final-report-2.pdf https://www.sheffield.anglican.org/strategy-launch ecclesial futures 2025 – volume 6 – issue 1 98 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23526 b o o k r e v i e w doi: 10.54195/ef23526 cavanaugh, william t. 2024. the uses of idolatry new york, ny: oxford university press isbn: 978-0-19-767904-3 reviewed by scott j. hagley it is difficult to attend a football game at lambeau field in green bay or anfield in liverpool and not recognize the tell-tale signs of religious enthusiasm. sportscasters call these cathedrals to sport and capital “hallowed ground” in reverence to the storied histories of these two clubs. fans throw themselves into certain liturgies, learned by imitation and repetition and passed on from generation to generation: singing the songs, drinking the beers, dressing in the colours, carrying totems for luck and good fortune. and when steven girard hits a strike from 35 yards out to win in stoppage time, or aaron rogers heaves a sixty-yard pass into the back corner of the endzone with seconds on the clock, tens of thousands of people are thrust into the kind of revelry usually reserved for the sawdust trail. for all our interest in the “secular west” and our age of “disenchantment”, the signs of religious commitment are present for those with eyes to see. in the uses of idolatry, william cavanaugh explores the intense religiosity of our secular age, arguing that we willfully misunderstand the current moment by using terms like “disenchantment” to talk about late modernity. as anfield or amazon or resurgent nationalisms demonstrate, we live in an age of misenchantment, not disenchantment. drawing together durkheim and augustine, cavanaugh reminds us that we are, in fact, worshipping creatures who cannot help but create rituals and liturgies to integrate and organize our social life according to particular social goods. that we no longer do this by way of explicit religious communities does not change the functional religiosity of things like consumer capitalism and nationalism. for cavanaugh, “disenchantment” serves a polemical purpose, creating a sense of discontinuity between modern and pre-modern societies and flattering us with stories of rational progress. but a closer look at our theories of modern disenchantment makes such polemics harder to sustain. cavanaugh turns to max weber’s theory of rationalization and charles taylor’s framing of the immanent frame to 99 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23526 99 show how the enchanted nature of human society is never able to be written out of the story. weber, for instance, uses rationalization to describe the migration of religious belief form one realm to another. capitalism, shaped by puritan “inner worldly aestheticism” empties the world of meaning, trading ends for means and giving us over to the impersonal forces of the market and technology – the “iron cage” of modernity. weber, cavanaugh notes, does not use “death of god” language, but rather describes modernity as a new form of polytheism. the old gods are resurrected – apollo become capital (41). as with former polytheistic eras, we are pushed and pulled by forces beyond our control, with the difference being the impersonality of modern bureaucracy and technology and capital flows, along with the possibility of choice. but make no mistake, weber found the “border between enchantment and disenchantment” hard to defend (43). cavanaugh concludes: “an exchange has taken place, whereby god has been depersonalized, reduced to merely immanent and impersonal forces of human creation, while the most mundane and rational processes and institutions have been divinized … enchantment and disenchantment are inextricably entangled” (47). cavanaugh identifies a similar tension in charles taylor’s work, arguing that taylor is unable to maintain the binaries that describe our current age as secular, such as belief/unbelief, religious/nonreligious, immanent/transcendent. drawing from emile durkheim’s functionalist theory of religion, cavanaugh shows how taylor’s account ignores modern religious activity that falls outside the bounds of religious belief. capitalism and nationalism, for example, exhibit a durkheimian religious function, but no discernible belief in god or gods, and so they fall to the side of taylor’s account. secularization, cavanaugh argues, “is the very invention of the religious/ secular binary and the process by which certain things got labeled religious and others did not” (99). for “it is not religion that has declined, but christianity” (102). because our world is misenchanted rather than disenchanted, idolatry offers a useful framework for thinking about the nature of christian practice and theology in two different ways. at the most basic level, idolatry describes the objective worship of false gods in modern life. working with the biblical tradition and augustine, cavanaugh explores the corrupting nature of idolatry, misdirected desire that distorts our sense of self, god and world. here cavanaugh echoes traditional jeremiads against the evils and dangers of idolatry. but idolatry offers a second, more nuanced frame for thinking about modernity. not all idolatries are created equal. turning to jean-luc marion’s phenomenology of the idol and his notion of “splendid idolatry”, cavanaugh places nationalism and consumerism on the continuum of idolatries. while nationalism certainly distorts our relationship with one another and god, it contains a “splendid” dimension as well. as a type of “splendid idolatry”, nationalism draws us out of ourselves and cultivates in us a desire for something greater than the self, an urge to give ourselves to something transcendent. consumerism, however, does the 100 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23526 100 reverse. it offers a self-enclosed and enclosing form of idolatry, a hall-of-mirrors that leaves one worshipping the self, or the image of the self. those familiar with cavanaugh’s other works on capitalism and nationalism, such as being consumed and migrations of the holy, will not be surprised that the book ends with a meditation on the sacraments and incarnation. the consequence of misenchantment, he argues, is not materialism but rather a form of disembodiment, an attempt to escape from the world of things and our existence as creatures. in cavanaugh’s view, the incarnation affirms god’s solidarity with creation, offering the possibility that what is created can be icon and not only idol. the sacraments – distinguished from principles of sacramentality – place us within the story of god and god’s people and on the continuum between idol and icon. they are given by god, a concrete place in which god gives of godself, but they are also a practice we give ourselves to, thus speaking in a kind of “‘middle voice’, in which humans are neither simply active nor passive in the face of god’s action” (375). idolatry, in the end, “can be healed only by encounter with the living god … [for] to worship the incarnate god is to participate in god’s kenosis; rather than grasp god, we allow ourselves to be poured out in the encounter with god, to receive the presence of god as a gift” (382). in many respects, the uses of idolatry introduces important and troubling lines of inquiry into the tired “post-christendom” discourse. by subverting well-worn accounts of weber and taylor, he shifts attention away from declining church attendance to what he calls the “migrations of the holy” in western contexts. and by interrogating late modernity with a thick understanding of idolatry, he affirms the importance of christian worship and sacramentality in this misenchanted time. but it is also here, in considering the sacraments, where cavanaugh becomes the most predictable and perhaps the least demanding of his readers when considered against the “splendid” and “unsplendid” idolatries of nationalism and consumerism, or of pop culture and sports fandom. the rise of violent ethno-nationalisms in the united states and europe within and amid christian communities affirms cavanaugh’s basic insight regarding idolatry and late modernity. however, the fact that this is happening, not only among evangelicals and pentecostals, but also within catholic and orthodox communities characterized by the type of sacramentality to which cavanaugh appeals, raises new questions about the conditions of possibility for encountering the living god, and what faithful witness to this god looks like in our misenchanted time. about the reviewer scott j. hagley, associate professor, pittsburgh theological seminary. contact: shagley@pts.edu mailto:shagley@pts.edu reviewed by scott j. hagley cavanaugh, william t. 2024. the uses of idolatry ecclesial futures 2025 – volume 6 – issue 2 104 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23612 a r t i c l e doi: 10.54195/ef23612 unity and diversity among ghana’s new prophetic churches: a comparative study of vida bethel prayer ministry and believers worship centre eric manu abstract neo-prophetism has gained significant visibility in contemporary ghanaian christianity. it is a dominant pentecostal strand, giving birth to several composite ministries in the country. given this multiplicity, it has become challenging to understand the underlying complexities of these prophetic churches. the article compares two prominent, neo-prophetic churches in ghana – the vida bethel prayer ministry (vbpm) and believers worship center (bwc) – to identify their unity and diversity. the paper draws on vbpm and bwc’s teachings, recorded sermons and members’ experiences. this shows both a consensus in the beliefs and practices of the ministries yet also variations in activities shaped by selected ministries. the paper highlights how the shared yet diverse characteristics of prophetic churches not only strengthen religion but also provide members with varied feelings and experiences regarding their neo-prophetic faith. keywords: prophetism, unity and diversity, prophetic church, pentecostal mission, comparative study, ghana 1. introduction the themes of unity and diversity in christianity have received considerable scholarly attention. thompson (1963) and gifford (2015) have highlighted the tendency to assume that all aspects of christianity are already known, an assumption challenged by numerous studies. for instance, a history of christian sects and denominations observes that the nestorian church (or church of the east) shares the episcopal governance, doctrines and use of the nicene creed common to other oriental churches (evans 2023: 244). this same assumption extends to pentecostal christianity, prompting gifford’s 2015 examination of the pentecostal christianities of olukoya and oyedepo in nigeria – a concern that similarly motivates the present study. 105 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23612 105 the term “unity” refers to the state of oneness, being whole or joined together, whereas “diversity” signifies discord or multiplicity. although these concepts are contrasting, they are not necessarily oppositional. in this article, the phrase “unity and diversity” refers to the coexistence of shared elements and distinct differences within a group. it describes how different prophetic churches can maintain their uniqueness while contributing to a common whole. this duality forms the basis for examining how individual expressions contribute to a collective identity without undermining their uniqueness. considering this, speculation about the specific nature and influence of contemporary african prophetic movements is precarious. studies that engage in such speculation lack a complete understanding of the complexities of play. as gifford argues, “many simply assume we all know what we are dealing with [when talking about ghanaian and african pentecostalism], and move immediately to speculate on political effects, social roles, statistical trends” (gifford 2015: 115). considering that such conjectures often misinterpret the beliefs of african pentecostals, we should clarify their actual principles. to achieve this, i compare the spirituality, religious teachings and rituals of ghana’s neo-prophets, focusing on vida mensah’s vida bethel prayer ministry (vbpm) and stephen adom kyei-duah’s believers worship center (bwc), to identify their points of unity and diversity. this comparison is necessary for understanding that different prophetic churches can retain their unique identities while collectively contributing to a unified whole – especially in beliefs, doctrinal emphasis and spiritual practices – as a lens for understanding the global pentecostal faith. the prophetic church is a branch of african pentecostal christianity that emphasizes the prophetic aspect of neo-pentecostal theology. it places particular emphasis on a ministry grounded in god’s voice and interpreting his message. this distinct focus sets it apart from other conventional pentecostal groups (white & pondani 2022; tsekpoe 2019). in ghana, this strand of christianity has existed for over two decades. prophetic churches are recognized for their prophetic healing and deliverance, problem diagnosis, spiritual warfare and guidance, religious products and consultations (kgatle 2023: 2; manu 2023; aryeh 2019; olukoya 2014; omenyo & atiemo 2006; goll 2004). believers use religious products that are accessible during church services and consultations to support spiritual warfare and guidance. what sets this strand apart, beyond its vitality and media appropriation, is the founders’ adoption of the label “prophet” as part of their self-identity. one such ministry is the vida bethel prayer ministry, located in aprade in the ashanti region of ghana. founded in the 1990s by prophetess mrs vida osei mensah, this ministry offers a valuable case for exploring how individuality and collective identity coexist within the broader neo-prophetic movement. a second notable ministry is the believers worship center, which traces its beginnings to the founder’s missionary work in ilorin, kwara state, nigeria, in 1988. prophet kyei-duah 106 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23612 106 then decided to organize a small group of believers to form the believers ministry (bm). the prophet relocated to adansi obuasi in the ashanti region of ghana, where he established the bwc. in 2010, the church was inaugurated in kumasi anwomaso, where it had its religious services for two years. in march 2012, the church moved to its first building at kenyase-adwumam, which is currently its headquarters. this ministry, like vbpm, presents a distinct expression of neo-prophetism while contributing to the shared ethos of the movement. vbpm and bwc are neo-prophetic denominations. their categorization suggests that they should have similar practices, beliefs, roles and effects, which rule out variations between them. they have extensive following and inimitable prophetic practices that influence both their followers and the ghanaian christian community. today, they attract public interest and dominate religious contexts in ghana. with the advent of covid-19, the influence of vbpm and bwc has expanded widely through media production, specifically television, facebook and youtube. while ministries share some elements, they also display peculiar traits and influences, particularly through their teachings and prophecy. this underscores the need to explore the unity and diversity of christian denominations. although denominational differences can at times be divisive, they have the potential to enrich the church’s mission by encouraging diversity, broadening its reach and promoting inter-denominational collaboration. given the controversies surrounding gender roles in traditional christian leadership, the choice between prophetess and prophet-led ministries are important. significant differences exist between females and males in terms of religious and social experiences, psychology and biology. female-led ministries constitute a minority of ghana’s prophetic movements and are generally under-discussed in global pentecostal scholarship. these reasons make the selection of the vbpm and bwc important. unlike other pentecostal groups, mensah and kyei-duah do not like writing spiritual messages in books. this is typical of prophetic church leaders in ghana. however, many of their sermons and teachings are recorded and put on social media platforms, such as facebook and youtube, probably for reachability. therefore, these platforms, among other sources, serve as the basis for the subsequent discussion. information gathered about the churches commenced in 2020 in the heat of the covid-19 lockdown when i followed them in the media; several visits were made to the ministries afterwards. this study employed a qualitative research approach through the use of a case study method. data was collected from key church leaders and ordinary members of vbpm and bwc in kumasi through face-to-face interviews and participant observation, conducted between february 2022 and august 2022. formal verbal consent was obtained from research participants to uphold their right to make informed 107 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23612 107 decisions, a clear and practical method of consent in this situation where literacy issues made written consent impractical. the paper outlines the distinctive characteristics, religious services, practices and teachings of the vbpm and bwc, providing a basis for exploring the unity and diversity between the two ministries. 2. vida bethel prayer ministry according to vida mensah, vbpm began as a prayer camp to address “spiritual problems” such as illness, poverty, divorce and spiritual marriages believed to be caused by evil spirits. the church was named “bethel”, meaning “house of god”, to reflect god’s miraculous presence at vbpm, drawing inspiration from the biblical city’s spiritual significance (cf. brodsky 1990; rainey 2006). it upholds orthodox christian beliefs in the trinity –god the father as creator, jesus as god’s only son, and the holy spirit as the source of all spiritual gifts (charisma) sustaining the church. the core religious practices of the vbpm include the administration of anointing oil and holy water for healing, exorcism and prosperity. mensah teaches that evil spiritual forces directly influence human life. like other contemporary prophets, the prophetess also appears to present a microcosmic view of the world by focusing on the familial origin of her followers’ problems. believers often become aware of these harmful influences through deliverance and counselling sessions. prophecy is one of the pillars of the ministry that the founder believes has ensured its survival. individual counselling sessions attract many people to join and participate in the ministry. 2.1 specific characteristics the vbpm shares several characteristics that set it within and outside the prophetic church enclave in ghana today. vbpm has as its motto: gyedie mu ahoɔden, which literally means “strong in faith” (as described by paul in romans 4.20 about abraham’s faith in god). this motto urges a believer to remain strong (faithful to god) amid life’s challenges. the church has as its symbol a globe, a cross, and a dove flying over a bible. this logo is explained by the prophetess as signifying god’s words, the salvation of jesus christ on the cross, and the power of the spirit of god for the salvation of the world. a significant feature of the church is its focus on the will of god, which the prophetess believes is divinely revealed to her. another specific trait of vbpm is its mission. the mission of the church is to change the lives of people worldwide. the church has a vision to ensure that all people hear the word of god and gain an understanding of god’s love, promises and salvation. the global nature of the mission and vision of the vbpm has ensured that leaders 108 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23612 108 (apostles and pastors) of the church function as the wheel (the vehicle or primary instrument) for god’s love and salvation to the world. unlike some prophetic churches, the vbpm does not sell (religious) items such as holy water, anointing oil, spiritual cream, spiritual handkerchief, pen and mirror to church members. they are acquired during counselling and church services from nearby shops. other members may also bring items from their homes. aside from the items that church members acquire during counselling (spiritual direction), no other items are sold to members by the prophetess. this sets vbpm apart from other existing prophetic pentecostal/charismatic churches that appear to engage in the “commercialization of religion” (shi & pande 2023; andrew 2021). the figure below illustrates the common items obtained and used by church attendees. figure 1 photo of religious items acquired during counselling by members of vbpm. an additional feature of vbpm is its single-storey accommodation facility located on the church premises, 30m from the church. this facility hosts church members whom the prophetess, after counselling, directs to pray at the church for a few days. this is to say that church members/clients who lodge in the facility do so according to the instructions of the prophetess. some church members lodged in the facility for three days, others for one week, and a few for a month. they lodge in the facility without making any payments. while there, morning and evening prayers are organized for them apart from their private prayers. 109 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23612 109 2.2 church services the church organized three services per week. they hold these religious services on sundays, tuesdays and thursdays. in addition to these services, other online events aim to spread god’s word and salvation through jesus to all, regardless of nationality, faith or location. the church transmits a significant proportion of its services on paradise tv, a channel that it owns. thus, they evangelize church members at home and, simultaneously project the church’s presence in the public sphere through electronic media. in this category were “grace hour” and “word and prayer time”. all church services encourage active participation, but in this section, special emphasis is placed on the thursday counselling and prayer service, which is the largest and most significant among all the religious gatherings at vbpm due to its prophetic nature. the thursday service, which is in two parts, begins with a counselling session that starts at 6:00 am and usually closes at 11:00 am. however, the session may conclude earlier or later depending on the number of church members present. similar to other prophetic churches, counselling is an important feature of vbpm. this attracts many people to church. at the church on thursdays, all persons – young, old, sick, healthy, mentally challenged, pregnant and unemployed graduates – are seen coming for counselling. the prophetess sits in a designated room on the left side of the altar, listens to the problems of the counsellee, and provides a spiritual direction or guidance (akwankyerɛ). spiritual direction is a neo-pentecostal religious practice, which involves the interpretation and remediation of a spiritual problem by a person perceived to have stronger spiritual power. as the counsellee enters the room, he/she drops an offering in a bowl on the right side of the seat to which he/she sits. the counsellee’s seat is located directly opposite the prophetess. the counsellee is welcomed by the prophetess. as part of the greeting (welcome), the prophetess discloses god’s purpose for the believer’s life in the coming days. this is followed by asking about the purpose for which the client has come to see the prophetess. after the narration of the purpose (which is usually a spiritual or physical problem), the prophetess directs the believer on what to do to receive a breakthrough using common items such as toffee, oil, water, salt, naphthalene balls, shea butter and lemons. the items were purchased from the church. the counsellee receives a chit as proof of payment. the item is given to counsellees close to the thursday service. the second part of the thursday service is the healing and deliverance prayer. this service reflects the strong prophetic character of the vbpm. this is because it showcases the experience of divine power through prophetess mrs vida mensah for a vast number of attendees. as in other services of the church, the sermon is an important segment of the thursday service. it is accompanied by prayer points that specifically touch on the spiritual needs and requests of church members. the prayer appears to take a significant portion of the entire sermon and church services 110 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23612 110 in general. owing to intermittent prayer, the sermon lasts for approximately two hours. during this time, many prophetic directions are given, and healing and deliverance are believed to be experienced by church members. immediately following the sermon is “harvest time”. during this time, church members are directed to “sow a seed” for a breakthrough, a practice prevalent in many contemporary ghanaian churches, particularly neo-pentecostal ones. this practice, which can trigger spiritual and physical benefits, is encouraged due to its connection to believers’ prosperity. seed sowing amounts range from gh¢50 ($3.13) to gh¢300 ($18.75) as of october 2024. the harvest is then followed by a testimony, an important segment of the healing and deliverance prayer service. the testimony represents thanksgiving and appreciation for god’s work, allowing the power to perform more of his grace and giving hope to others awaiting breakthroughs. this segment takes a considerable amount of time due to the number of church members involved. thursday service ends with blessings of items brought by church members, as instructed by the prophetess, including food, non-food items, paraphernalia and money. the foregoing highlights vbpm’s prophetic identity, shaped by its spiritual focus which is evident in the activities, teachings and practices of the church. these elements together underscore how the church significantly embodies the mission of god within ghanaian pentecostal christianity. 3. believers worship centre now that we have explored vbpm, we turn our attention to kyei-duah’s believers worship centre. kyei-duah describes the bwc as the “philadelphia movement” (rev. 3.7–13), representing holy nationals of the biblical city of philadelphia in present-day turkey. the bwc professes belief in the trinity and, as a prophetic church, highlights healing and deliverance through holy spirit-inspired miracles. kyei-duah’s sermons focus on god, satan, bewitchment, humanity’s link to evil and liberation. his teachings trace god’s origin to three spiritual powerful beings who came together to form the trinity: god the father, god the word, and god the holy spirit – three divine persons in one god. the first being’s power was in wind, the second’s in water, and the third’s in fire. their union caused these elements to merge, producing a great explosion known as a thunderstorm. this doctrine diverges markedly from the conventional biblical conception of god, giving rise to contentious debates within ghana’s christian community. kyei-duah teaches that satan is the source of evil, a thief who steals human “glory” to corrupt lives. those who make pacts with evil for wealth lose their souls to him, which are then used for demonic purposes. he adds that witches and other 111 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23612 111 non-christian spirits continually attack believers’ prosperity. the indicators of being bewitched include any hindrance to fulfilling your divine destiny, such as always being “almost there” but never arriving (gifford 2015: 116). in ghana, witchcraft is a deeply rooted belief system due to the community’s ability to provide a public space where witchcraft is essentially recognized and, at the same time, effectively dealt with using ritual techniques (gifford 2001: 324). this has both cultural and spiritual significance. kyei-duah teaches that bewitchment is real and believers must engage in prayer, deliverance, and the use of religious items for protection. he emphasizes staying “under his care” by displaying his image, which symbolizes spiritual covering—a practice now common among both bwc members and non-members. below is a commonly used image of the prophet by his followers: figure 2 image of prophet kyei-duah used by a local food vendor in kumasi. 3.1 specific characteristics this section examines six specific characteristics of bwc – its motto, mission, vision, dress style, offertory practice and religious products – highlighted for their significance among many other features. the believers worship center has as its motto “justice, mercy, honesty”. according to the tenets of the believers worship center, the church is the final manifestation of god’s church/kingdom through his prophet, stephen adom kyei-duah. the church has as its emblem a globe, bible and dove with green leaves in the beak. the mission of the church is to empower believers to take complete control of their lives through direct worship and communication with the lord jesus christ. this 112 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23612 112 mission has ensured that the church supervises both the spiritual and physical lives of its members aiming to make them worthy of being children of god and promoting self-dependence. according to kyei-duah, the church has a priority to eliminate its members’ over-dependence on religious leaders for solutions to problems that have impoverished many christians through extortion as they seek deliverance. related to the mission is the vision of attaining “true worship of god, which is in truth and in spirit with a mind absolutely free of association of life occurrences to witches and supernatural beings, and losing focus of god is eliminated from people’s mind”. this purpose significantly sets bwc apart from other churches. another trait that sets members of the bwc from their prophetic counterparts is their dress codes. the church’s foundation on piety and love of god has ensured that members put on dresses that befit a child of god. the church prohibits wearing indecent clothes (short and transparent) that instigate lust and sexual immorality among attendees. women within bwc are not exposed to hair. they cover their heads as prescribed by apostle paul in 1 corinthians 11.2–16. again, they do not wear makeup or artificial and polished nails. as a model for church members, the prophet is often depicted wearing a long robe and a tallit (prayer shawl), which he typically covers his head with. men ware not expected to wear female clothing. they adopt a dress code that goes far beyond worldly pleasure. the purpose is to portray jesus christ, their leader and mentor. in addition, brothers (pastors) wear white robes, similar to a cassock. they remain pure and dedicated to the church’s course. this has become paradigmatic for some young prophets and prophetic churches, contributing to bwc’s success in ghana. beyond the believers’ mode of dressing, a notable aspect of the church is that the offertory is discretionary. members give to god based on what he has done. offering boxes are placed at different places on the church premises, where members willingly deposit their offerings. this happens after church service. unlike the vbpm and several others, the bwc does not designate a specific day for counselling sessions for its members; instead, this is conducted privately. the final distinguishing feature is the church’s range of religious products. whereas religious items in mensah’s ministry are typically self-sourced and organic, a distinguishing characteristic of bwc is its widely recognized, distinctive, processed, well-packaged and church-branded religious items. the church sells these religious items, including “grace water”, “grace soap”, “grace oil”, “grace powder”, “grace cream”, “second chance (yesu mogya – blood of jesus),” and “grace sobolo”. the yesu mogya (blood of jesus) is a mixture of natural herbs in a transparent plastic sachet that is to be applied to the body or taken after mixing it with water or food. this indicates that the content of the yesu mogya is not the actual blood of jesus but a representation of it. the prophet explained that all items work based on faith and righteousness. the prices of these items range from gh¢10 to gh¢30 ($0.63 –$1.88). 113 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23612 113 figure 3 photo of religious items purchased by members of bwc. the above items were purchased by the church members of the bwc. these religious items are used for spiritual and physical purposes. for instance, “grace sobolo”, which is typically sold during and after a church service, is used for healing purposes. many people purchase it due to testimonies of healing from diseases such as diabetes, stroke, hepatitis and cancer. the “grace soap”, “grace powder” and “grace cream” are used during and after bathing for cleansing and spiritual protection. moreover, the “grace water” is used for blessing. these religious items have an enormous impact on the people who purchase them. these effects are often seen during testimonies given by persons who have used any of these religious items. all the items in figure 3 are recommended by the leaders of the church for whatever needs are brought by church members. however, a church member can decide whether to buy any of them. 3.2 church services the believers worship center offers a range of church services and activities. on sundays, the most crowded anointing and breakthrough service is at 10:00 am; the healing, deliverance and prayer service is held on wednesdays; and the second chance and prayer service is on fridays. there is also a special healing and deliverance service on the last wednesday to friday of each month. most of the church’s religious activities are transmitted through second chance television (sctv) and radio which the bwc owns. on bwc’s media platforms are two important services, the sunday live service and and the prayer hour. these services are broadcast (sometimes live) on second chance tv, youtube, and facebook. the wednesday service is emphasized in this section of the paper due to its significance among bwc’s religious services and its notable standing within the ghanaian prophetic community. 114 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23612 114 the wednesday service is a prayer, healing, and deliverance service in a church that begins with prayers and worship led by a brother. believers bring religious items, which are not intended to cure diseases or spiritual problems alone but to assist in praying for success and protection. the service lasts approximately 30 minutes, followed by a period of songs of praise that lasts 15–25 minutes. the most extended session of the wednesday service is the sermons, where the prophet raises prayer points to remind believers of regular prophecies. the sermon then transitions into a healing and deliverance service, where the prophet remains on his altar to cast out demons and illnesses. kyei-duah, an eighth-generation prophet with a close relationship with god, often refers to heaven as his home of origin and uses extra-biblical accounts to explain known passages. the prophecy in the bwc mandates that church members purchase specific religious products for daily life protection and spiritual accomplishments. at times, the prophet instructs believers to smear or spray themselves with a purchased religious item for renewal and deliverance from spiritual bondages. ushers pass through the congregation with these tems. the session concludes with a prayer led by the prophet, followed by congregants reciting the lord’s prayer, and the service comes to a close. moreover, members are taught to give offerings based on what god has done for them, much as in sunday services. this discussion of the bwc highlights its engagement in diverse religious teachings and practices that embody the contextual expression of god’s mission within the ghanaian prophetic movement. its prophetic character, among other aspects as observed above, reflects the contextual adaptation of god’s mission within the ghanaian prophetic landscape. 4. unity and variation in ghana’s prophetic churches in the foregoing discussions, we have seen how events in both mensah and kyei duah’s ministries reveal several traits characteristic of neo-prophetism. this section attempts to compare the principles of these ministries, drawing attention to their unity and diversity. the comparison here centres on the ministries’ beliefs in the doctrine of the trinity, the existence of satan and demonic entities, and their practices of prophecy, healing, deliverance and the use of media. in the previous discussions, we observed how both ministries hold that god is the unity of three persons. they believe and teach that god the father is the creator of the universe and all humanity possesses power over all things, and that he saves the world through his son, whom the virgin mary conceived, died, rose on the third day and offered salvation through him alone. the doctrine of the trinity not only serves as a central christian affirmation of god in the vbpm and bwc. instead, its position echoes udnes’ (2023: 65) argument that there may be a meaningful connection 115 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23612 115 between the doctrine of the trinity and present-day pentecostal ecclesial practices. a critical engagement with the doctrine of the trinity presents current pentecostals with an opportunity to shift their attention momentarily from traditional spokespersons, suggesting that an understanding of the trinity as both ontologically and functionally relational in vbpm and bwc supports the promotion of cohesion among congregants. furthermore, teachings on the presence of satan or evil/demonic entities reflect both the vbpm and bwc’s awareness of cosmic battles in which believers are continually involved. the sermons of the founders of both ministries not only highlight how demonic entities such as witches/wizards, marine agents, and other non-christian spirits such as family deities can seize believers’ destinies and livelihoods, but also offer their followers strategies to break free from these forces. methods such as the use of religious items, deliverances, prayers, and spiritual guidance were employed within the ministries. from the teachings, we see the way neo-prophetics interpret victory and freedom in god in terms of the subversion of evil and suffering in the hope of transforming believers’ destinies (quayesi-amakye 2015: 64). the concept of evil and liberation in neo-prophetism is not new to followers and founders of ghanaian new prophetic churches, since it originates from (akan) primal cosmology, which stresses the spiritual roots of problems. related to the awareness of cosmic battles, the themes of prophecy, healing, and deliverance feature regularly in both mensah and kyei-duah’s ministries. they cover a sizeable portion of the ministries’ religious services. the churches share teachings on combating evil entities by employing rituals, such as deliverance and prayer, to guide followers toward spiritual liberation. to reiterate, in vbpm and bwc, prophecy plays a crucial role in the liberation, sustenance and overall physical and spiritual protection of attendees. that the prophetess and prophet are regarded as the ones who foretell the future, acting as a bridge between attendees and the divine realm is widely recognized. prophecies in both ministries mandate that church members purchase specific religious products. further, the purchase of religious items is a common practice in ghana’s prophetism often tied to seeking miraculous solutions (cf. omenyo & atiemo 2006; baëta 1962: 3). however, there is a distinction in the religious products purchased by members of the ministries. while the products in bwc are church-branded and sold exclusively by the church, vbpm often instructs its members to obtain the items from external sources, and they are not branded. the main aim of the items in the ministries was protection and well-being. breaking free from the shackles of satanic entities and familial spirits, therefore, necessitated the acquisition of different religious products. despite this distinction, the religious products illustrate the pentecostal message and facilitate the mission of the church which centres on evangelism, fellowship, discipleship and community service as expressions of god’s mission that 116 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23612 116 extends beyond the church to all areas of life (manu 2025, 107; aarde 2016: 285; niemandt 2015; bassham 1980: 57). according to niemandt (2015: 2–3), the missional nature of the church provides an important clue to the relationship between a missional church and society. it also emerged that the media is a powerful tool utilized by prophetic churches for their religious services and activities. different religious services and activities are broadcast on modern and traditional media platforms owned by the ministries: second-chance television and paradise television stations. a significant feature of neo-prophetism in ghana is the use of media, often described in addition to other factors as a reason behind the popularity of many churches today (manu, sarfo & antwi 2023; ibrahim 2023; asamoah-gyadu 2015). both traditional and social media platforms feature numerous advertisements by these prophets, inviting people to attend their programs and church services (quayesi-amakye 2013). the challenge, however, is that in seeking public recognition, some prophets actively pursue strategies to maintain a constant personal presence in the public eye. meanwhile, this pursuit of self-visibility often comes at the expense of god’s mission, which is intended to challenge society with the truth. this may underscore the need to reorient the prophetic church leader toward the missio dei through a renewed missional imagination. despite the above, one of the interesting aspects of the use of contemporary media by bwc and vbpm is that its impact extends far beyond the confines of pentecostal christianity. a key observation is that the missions of vbpm and bwc align in their efforts to transform followers through the media. both ministries actively utilise media to expand their influence, employing television and social platforms to popularize prophetic christianity. thus, the use of the platforms to broadcast religious activities has become a major tool in the rise and popularity of vbpm and bwc. today, ghana’s prophetic mission has become a familiar aspect of christian culture that permeates non-christian homes, mainly due to the influence of the media (de witte 2018; de witte 2012; asamoah-gyadu 2005). the increasing mediation that has occurred in ghana’s prophetic arena has played a significant missional role by serving as a vital tool in expanding god’s kingdom and fulfilling the church’s mission. in the wake of this growth, it is also inappropriate to overlook contentions that ensue during mass mediation forms in the ghanaian neo-prophetic religious scene. these paradoxical dynamics have shaped ghana’s neo-pentecostal christianity and the practice of mass mediation, which play a central role in designing the religious public sphere (benyah 2018; meyer 2005: 294; hackett 1998). a crucial insight is that prophetic church-media relations support the church’s primary mission as outlined in the great commission. through media engagement, these churches similarly extend their reach and reinforce their spiritual influence. 117 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23612 117 5. conclusion this article has examined the unity and diversity among one of africa’s strands of pentecostal christianity: prophetic churches. it has discussed the beliefs, teachings, practices, and organizational structures of the vida bethel prayer ministry and the believers worship centre, highlighting the unity and diversity between them. the paper’s exploration of unity and diversity holds significance not only for ghana but also for global pentecostal christianity. within ghanaian pentecostalism, such comparisons help illuminate the unique characteristics of each prophetic church by highlighting both their oneness and differences. this leads to a deeper understanding of the faith, reveals emerging trends, encourages engagement with diverse pentecostal perspectives, and fosters coexistence. similarly, comparing the prophetic churches in the global pentecostal context helps appreciate the diversity of tradition, worship style, doctrines and governance. given that the christian church, unified by the core belief in jesus christ and deeply divided along denominational lines (cf. youvan 2024: 1), comparing vbpm and bwc is essential for global theological insight, encouraging growth, and understanding how the gospel is lived out across contexts. notably, the study demonstrates that grouping vbpm and bwc under the category of prophetic highlights a sense of oneness. at the same time, a key contribution of the research lies in its exploration of gender leadership within ghana’s prophetic christianity, where female-led ministries remain relatively few. while traditionally male-dominated, contemporary prophetic churches are witnessing women’s emergence as pastors and prophetesses, often pioneering new ministries and engaging in community service. nevertheless, challenges remain in attaining full gender equality within church structures. this gender disparity highlights an important yet often overlooked dimension of prophetic christianity that this paper has examined. beyond gender disparity, their internal organizational structures also reveal important oneness. both churches operate within hierarchical frameworks led by their founders, with bwc additionally incorporating roles such as secretaries and treasurers. while prophetic churches share core elements, they also exhibit notable diversity in practice and organizational structure, challenging the assumption of uniformity within the movement. diversity also exists in members varied experiences and expressions of a shared core belief. this supports the view that distinct ghanaian prophetic churches preserve their unique identities while simultaneously contributing to the broader pentecostal movement. this reflects the view that, within major religions, different denominations function in a complementary relationship (kalin 2011: 473). 118 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23612 118 note “sobolo” is the name of a local juice made from dried hibiscus plant. acknowledgements the author extends gratitude to the leaders and ordinary members of the vbpm and bwc for their responses to this work. my sincerest gratitude goes to rev. fr. prof. john k. opoku, prof. victor selorm gedzi, and rev. fr. prof. emmanuel kojo ennin antwi, who supervised my phd thesis, from which this article was developed. i extend my heartfelt gratitude to rev. dr. michael f. wandusim of the centre for religion and modernity, universität münster, for his valuable feedback on this study. about the author eric manu is a lecturer in the department of religion and human development at the kwame nkrumah university of science and technology (knust), ghana. he holds a phd in religious studies, with his doctoral research examining the impact of ghana’s neo-prophetic christianity. his scholarly interests include the history, mission, and future of pentecostal christianity; the influence of pentecostalism on individuals and communities; and the intersections of african pentecostalism and development. his recent work explores neo-pentecostal approaches to healthcare and poverty reduction in ghana. orcid: 0009-0001-0935-2868. contact: emanu.cass@knust.edu.gh references aarde, t. 2016. “the relation of god’s mission and the mission of the church in ephesians”, missionalia 44: 284–300. andrew, d. n. 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religious space: the case of neo-prophetism in ghana”, ghana bulletin of theology 1: 55–68. quayesi-amakye, j. 2013. “ghana’s new prophetism: antecedents and some characteristic features”, journal of australasian pentecostal studies, available from http://aps-journal.com/ aps/index.php/aps/article/view/125/122. quayesi-amakye, j. 2015. “prophetism in ghana’s new prophetic churches”, journal of the european pentecostal theological association 35 (2): 162–73. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004281875_006 https://www.google.com.gh/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22jim+w.+goll%22 https://doi.org/10.1111/rec3.12452 https://doi.org/10.1111/rec3.12452 https://doi.org/10.38140/at.v45i1.7946 http://aps-journal.com/aps/index.php/aps/article/view/125/122 http://aps-journal.com/aps/index.php/aps/article/view/125/122 120 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23612 120 rainey, a. f. 2006. “looking for bethel: an exercise in historical geography”, in confronting the past: archaeological and historical essays on ancient israel in honor of william g. dever ed. seymour gitin, j. e. wright and j. p. dessel. eisenbrauns, pennsylvania: penn state university press, 269–74. shi, f., and k. pande. 2022. “commercialization at religious sites: who cares and why?” current issues in tourism 26 (14): 2284–2300. available from https://doi.org/10.1080/13683500.202 2.2085546. thompson, e. p. 1963. the making of the english working class. london: gollancz. tsekpoe, c. 2019. “contemporary prophetic and deliverance ministry challenges in africa”, transformation 36: 280–91. udnes, ø. 2023. “trinitarianism and pentecostal ecclesial practices: a review of a hierarchical model of the trinity”, scandinavian journal for leadership and theology 10: 65–81. https:// doi.org/10.53311/sjlt.v10.103. white, p., and s. pondani. 2022. “church-franchise: missional innovation for church planting and leadership mentorship in neo-pentecostal and neo-prophetic churches in africa”, religions 13 (8): 698. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13080698 youvan, d. 2024. denominational divides: examining key issues that split the christian church. 10.13140/rg.2.2.31619.72485. https://books.google.com/books?id=oyearm8yobqc&pg=pa270 https://doi.org/10.1080/13683500 .2022.2085546 https://doi.org/10.1080/13683500 .2022.2085546 https://doi.org/10.53311/sjlt.v10.103 https://doi.org/10.53311/sjlt.v10.103 https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13080698 ecclesial futures 2025 – volume 6 – issue 2 90 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23037 a r t i c l e doi: 10.54195/ef23037 the indigenous provenance of missio spiritus and the expansion of african pentecostalism mookgo solomon kgatle abstract missio spiritus has been theorized and conceptualized as part of the broader mission of the triune god but not emphasized as an indigenous force within the context of african pentecostalism. this article aims to accentuate the indigenous provenance of missio spiritus in the growth of african pentecostalism. this is achieved by highlighting the indigenous provenance, defined as accounting for indigenous people, their culture and communities when studying the work of the holy spirit, in each aspect of missio spiritus such as the spirit of witness, the spirit of redemption, the spirit of life, and the spirit of creation. the accentuation of the indigenous provenance of missio spiritus contributes toward the broader understanding of the expansion of african pentecostalism. keywords: indigenous provenance, missio spiritus, holy spirit, pentecostalism, indigenous knowledge system, world christianity, pentecostal missiology, creation 1. introduction pentecostalism is the movement that emphasizes the direct relationship with god through the work of the holy spirit. hence, pentecostals across the world believe in the baptism of the holy spirit with other pneumatic experiences such as speaking in tongues, prophecy and healing. the theology of the holy spirit has become the main hallmark of the pentecostal movement. it is for the same reasons that pentecostals in africa and elsewhere in the world are known as people of the spirit. the pentecostal movement continues to grow in the african continent with pentecostal churches in their different strands planted in most african cities, towns and villages. it is no longer a debate that pentecostalism is one of the fastest-growing christian traditions in the world christianity with a great shift of this growth from the global north to the global south, particularly in the last quarter of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first (bediako 1995; anderson 2013; kalu 2013). the african continent is playing a major role in this shift within the context of missions 91 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23037 91 and world christianity. recent statistics put african pentecostalism at more than 200 million believers and followers which is more than 10% of the 1.4 billion population in the continent (wariboko 2017). predictions indicate that these numbers will continue to increase given the rapid growth of the pentecostal movement in the twenty-first century in africa. all these developments require a proper inquisition into the rationale behind the growth of african pentecostalism. what could be the reasons behind this rapid growth of the pentecostal movement in africa? how do we reflect on these dynamics as missiologists within african christianity or even world christianity? this is a valid research question that i seek to answer in this article. in a quest to understand the rationale behind this growth, this article explores the significant role of the spirit in african pentecostalism through the missio spiritus as a theoretical framework. the main contribution is the emphasis on the indigenous forms of missio spiritus as a driving force behind the growth of african pentecostalism. the article is divided into five main sections. in the first section, i seek to introduce pentecostalism as the mission of the spirit since its early inception. the second section is a discussion on missio spiritus as a theoretical framework including its different aspects such as the witness of the spirit, the redemptive spirit, the spirit of life, and the spirit of creation. in this section, i will demonstrate the research gaps in these aspects, particularly the indigenous provenance of the missio spiritus. in the third section, i define the term indigenous provenance in the context the pentecostal movement in africa, to account for indigenous people, their culture and communities in studying the work of the holy spirit and point to its connection to missio spiritus. the same is used to formulate the framework of the indigenous province of missio spiritus. in the fourth section, the significant role of the indigenous provenance of missio spiritus in the growth of the pentecostal movement in africa will be highlighted. the last section explains how this role changes how pentecostal missiologists understand missions and world christianity. the section also seeks to highlight how the accentuation of the indigenous provenance of missio spiritus contributes to the broader understanding of the growth of african pentecostalism in the present and for the future as well. the next section introduces pentecostalism as the mission of the spirit. 2. pentecostalism as the mission of the spirit the pentecostal movement is known as the mission of the spirit. the theology of the spirit has been at the centre of the pentecostal movement since its inception (yong 2005). in addition, the theology of the spirit is the fundamental teaching in the pentecostal movement. the same theology of the spirit plays a role in the pentecostal mission in africa and elsewhere in the world. both the biblical and the contemporary accounts of the pentecostal movement are characterized by the works of the spirit. in the biblical account, the lukan-acts pentecost narrative demonstrates the 92 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23037 92 role of the spirit in mission and its expansion from one region to the other (menzies 1989). however, within african pentecostalism, there is a need to emphasize this role, particularly its indigenous provenance. acts 1.8 and acts 2.1–4 show that the beginning of the pentecostal mission was activated by the holy spirit when believers were baptized and empowered by the same spirit. the focus here is not just on speaking in tongues but on the power to witness to others. this baptism and empowerment of the spirit gave the believers the ability to be witnesses in their locality and to other regions of the world. hence, the early church of the apostles grew to many thousands of believers because the empowerment of the holy spirit made it possible for the expansion of the mission work. as believers of the early church were filled with the holy spirit, they saw a need to minister the word to others and reach out to many people. therefore, the holy spirit in the early church became the driving force for the expansion of the mission. this expansion was mainly because the apostles of the early church were able to minister relevantly to the different contexts through the work of the spirit. in other words, they were able to apply the mission of the spirit in the local contexts. i will later demonstrate that the same work of the holy spirit empowers believers in africa for the expansion of the pentecostal movement on the continent. in the contemporary pentecostal movement, particularly looking at the azusa street revival in los angeles, united states of america, the revival was characterized by pneumatic experiences such as spirit baptism, speaking in tongues and other miraculous manifestations (hollenweger & macrobert 1988; menzies & menzies 2000; althouse 2003). the manifestations of the spirit at azusa street resulted in thousands of new christians worldwide between 1906 and 1916 (hayford & moore 2006). the azusa street revival followed the same path of the biblical pentecost narrative that was characterzsed by pneumatic experiences that expanded the pentecostal mission (robeck 2017). these attracted people from all regions of the world to camp at azusa to experience the revival that grew to become one of the most important and influential revivals in the history of the pentecostal movement (anderson 2006). however, with the expansion of this revival, i would still contend that it relied upon the ability of pentecostals from around the world to apply the mission of the spirit in their local contexts. similarly the ability of african pentecostals to reach out to people in the local context because of the empowerment of the holy spirit needs to be emphasized. in the south african context, the pentecostal movement has connections with the azusa street revival in two ways. first, its pioneer, john g. lake had been part of the azusa street revival through his meeting with william seymour (anderson 2006: 107). john g. lake arrived in south africa together with thomas hezmalhalch after having experienced the spirit baptism from azusa street revival. the role of the spirit was applied relevantly to the south african context and churches like the apostolic faith mission of south africa with more than 1 million members continue to grow in the twenty-first century. second, the same experiences that happened in 93 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23037 93 the azusa street revival also happened in south africa with the likes of john g. lake at the forefront of these experiences. this means that the same pneumatic experiences that occurred in the azusa street revival also happened in the bree street revival in johannesburg, south africa (kgatle 2016). many people could move from different provinces in south africa to gather at bree street revival for healing, and other pneumatic experiences. from bree street, the pentecostal movement began to spread to other cities in south africa attracting many followers and planting many churches. moreover, many other pentecostal churches were started by african pioneers in many provinces of south africa. but the role of the holy spirit has indigenous elements in every context where pentecostalism finds itself. these elements need to be highlighted in the context of missions and world christianity. in the next section, i discuss the missio spiritus as the relevant framework in demonstrating the role of the holy spirit in the expansion of african pentecostalism. but in doing so, i will also demonstrate the gaps in the indigenous elements of this framework. 3. framing a missio spiritus approach in the context of pentecostalism missio spiritus, which means the mission of the spirit, is a relevant framework for this article in investigating the role of the spirit in the growth of african pentecostalism. thinane (2021:4) says that “missio spiritus can be described as a latin theological expression referring to the total participation of god the spirit in the fulfilment of the purpose of missio dei.” however, i would argue that such participation depends solely on the application of the missio spiritus in a specific local context, thus recognizing the indigenous provenance of the same. the mission of the spirit refers to the work done by the spirit within the different roles in the trinitarian mission. in other words, as much as there is the mission of god and the mission of christ, there is also the mission of the spirit. all these missions are important in the mission of the church in the twwenty-first century. bosch (1991) also referred to the role of the holy spirit in mission. other scholars such as mcquilkin (1997) walked in his footsteps in demonstrating the role of the holy spirit in mission. however, they have not demonstrated the indigenous provenance of this role particularly in the expansion of african pentecostalism. by indigenous provenance i refer to taking cognizance of the indigenous or even native people, their culture and indigenous communities when studying the work of the holy spirit (weaver 2001; coates & coates 2004; sissons 2005). wonsuk ma (2017) and julie ma (2015) have also published extensively on the role of the holy spirit in mission particularly in the pentecostal movement. however, i would still contend that a gap exists in demonstrating how this role functions in the expansion of african pentecostalism. in other words, how can the missio spiritus be understood in terms of its indigenous provenance in the expansion of pentecostalism is a research area that deserves exploration in missions and world christianity? 94 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23037 94 allan anderson (2005) does not call this a missio spiritus but uses the concept of a pneumatocentric mission as part of the aspects of the pentecostal mission. by a pneumatocentric mission, anderson refers to conducting a mission as having been directed or sent by the holy spirit. the holy spirit plays an important role in instructing the people engaged in missions through dreams or visions. it is only after receiving such an instruction that a pentecostal missionary will begin to conduct the mission. this element according to anderson is what differentiates the mission of the spirit from other missions. the mission of the spirit is very much focused on pneumatology, that is, the work of the holy spirit. the same spirit that was released on the day of the pentecost as recorded in luke-acts as the “missional spirit” in the sense that the spirit activates the believers to begin the work of missions. elsewhere in his works, anderson (1991) cf anderson (2018) has emphasized the role of the holy spirit in doing a mission that connects to the mission of the spirit. in these works, anderson also pointed out that africans are people of the spirit, hence the mission of the spirit is common among african pentecostals. therefore, anderson comes very close to what i want to achieve in this current study. however, since anderson did not speak directly about missio spiritus and its link with the expansion of african pentecostalism, the current study remains worthwhile. speaking of missio spiritus and its link to pentecostalism, yong (2011) theorized missio spiritus in three acts, meaning, the spirit of creation as the first act, the spirit of redemption as the second act, and the spirit of the eschaton as the third act. the research gap remains in working with each act to illustrate its indigenous provenance in the expansion of african pentecostalism. mæland expanded on these by listing at least four aspects of the missio spiritus, namely the spirit of creation, the spirit of life, the spirit of redemption and the spirit of witness, pointing out that as to the spirit of mission, what is highlighted in the document is namely the spirit in creation, the creator spirit, and to a lesser extent the spiritus of redemption/re-creation and consummation/eschaton. it is the spirit of life, the breath of life, the ruach elohim, hovering over the primordial chaos, being the breath of human beings, who are placed center stage. (maeland 2013: 142) all these four aspects are discussed here within the theoretical framework of a missio spiritus. there might be other aspects of the missio spiritus such as the spirit of the eschaton as highlighted by yong but the focus in this article shall be on the four that are highlighted by mæland. in each aspect of the missio spiritus, i seek to demonstrate the gaps to highlight the value of the indigenous provenance of this framework. first, missio spiritus refers to the spirit of creation, which means that the mission involves not only human beings but also the creation and its creatures (yong 2019). 95 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23037 95 in the creation narrative in genesis, there is already evidence of the spirit hovering upon the face of the waters. this demonstrates that the spirit was always involved in the creation and environmental experience from the beginning (yong 2015). this aspect of the spirit of creation reminds us that god himself is not only the god of heaven but also the god of nature and the environment. padilla (2016) explains that this is one aspect of the mission and world of christianity that we cannot ignore, that is, the role of the holy spirit in giving power to life and the environment. therefore, a call to embrace the spirit of creation is a call to embrace care for god’s creation and people. the pentecost narrative gives evidence of the spirit taking part in the affairs of the people and also how people began to relate with one another after receiving the baptism of the holy spirit. through the power of the holy spirit, god is calling all creation to himself for the redemption and restoration of all. even in this aspect, it is still very important to demonstrate the indigenous value of the spirit of creation and the elements of indigenous knowledge in the missio spiritus help us understand the spirit of creation. many african pentecostal churches have begun a journey of not only evangelizing to non-believers but also taking part in the development of their nations, as in the building of schools, universities and clinics in countries like nigeria and ghana, which i suggest is the reason for the expansion of the pentecostal movement in the continent. the second aspect of missio spiritus is the spirit of life whereby the holy spirit is defined as the one who gives life to the believer. right from genesis, it was the spirit that gave life to the human being when the same was just the dust of the earth. god breathed into the human and the human became a living soul. the pentecost narrative also demonstrates that the spirit’s baptism brings life into the believer through the holy spirit. according to kaunda (2017), the mission of the spirit is a relevant approach to the transformation of lives. god sent his son jesus christ into the world for the transformation of the lives of the people. similarly, god sends his spirit into the believer so that they might receive life and transformation. in john 6.63 jesus told his disciples “it is the spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. the words that i speak to you are spirit, and they are life.” this means that when the spirit of god is upon the life of the disciple, they can receive life and transformation as opposed to life in the flesh (gal. 5). the contribution i seek to make in this current study is the role of the spirit of life in transforming lives in different contexts. life transformation as emanating from the spirit of life cannot be generalized but rather applied to a specific context. by life transformation here one refers to the changes that can be seen in the life of the believer through the same spirit empowerment. in addition, the spirit of life refers to how believers through the holy spirit play a role in socio-economic issues and socio-political issues. thus, in framing the missio spiritus, there is a great need to contextualize the transformation of believers in missions and world christianity. again, this is the strength of the pentecostal movement in africa 96 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23037 96 where spiritual service including the songs and sermons are meant to bring transformation to both believers and unbelievers in attendance, thus, contributing to the growth of pentecostalism. the third aspect of the missio spiritus is the spirit of redemption, which means that the holy spirit plays a major role in the redemption of the people of the world. the spirit has a role to play in the salvation of the lost people in the world. redemption is not only defined as the work of christ but also as the work of the holy spirit. as much as it is christ who died on the cross of calvary, the holy spirit has a role to play in the fulfilment of the same redemption. in addition, the holy spirit plays an important role in redemption because as much as the spirit of god hovered upon the waters, humanity lost that connection with god with the fall of humanity. yong (2011: 358) showed how the redemption of humanity does not only involve the salvation of the soul but the connection with god through the work of the holy spirit. consequently, the spirit plays an important role in the reconciliation between humanity and their god as much as the mission of christ does. similarly, the pentecost narrative should be understood in the same way as an event that happened in the quest to connect humanity back to god through the work of the holy spirit. jennings (2017) discusses the same point of how the holy spirit forms intimacy or communion between god and humanity and amongst humanity. however, there is a need to expand knowledge in understanding the role of the spirit of redemption in helping people in different contexts. this expansion includes exploring how the spirit of redemption functions not only for the salvation of the soul but also in healing and deliverance in the african context. this is similar to green’s (2014) holistic salvation which includes biblical liberative paradigms. for me, this is the indigenous provenance of the spirit of redemption within the framework of missio spiritus. in other words, african pentecostals do not define redemption as a process of being free from sin alone. rather, redemption brings healing and deliverance, becoming very practical in the daily challenges that africans face in their lives. the last aspect of missio spiritus is the spirit of witness, also known as the spirit of evangelization, which means that the holy spirit plays a role in witnessing or evangelizing those who need the gospel. although lesslie newbigin (1995) demonstrated how the holy spirit takes part in the mission activity of announcing the good news to the people about the work that christ has done on the cross of calvary, he does not demonstrate how that is achieved in local contexts. in acts 1.8, the purpose of the power that believers receive from the holy spirit is for the believers to become witnesses. in addition, in becoming witnesses to others, believers need the inspiration of the holy spirit. believers are involved in the praxis of evangelisation through the power of the holy spirit. this is possible when the holy spirit works relevantly in the specific local context in which the gospel is witnessed. in acts 10.38, “god anointed jesus of nazareth with the holy spirit and power, and … he went around 97 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23037 97 doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil because god was with him.” this means that even the work of evangelization that christ did was also possible because the holy spirit was upon him. it follows that whenever the holy spirit is upon the believers, they can do the work of mission. but even here the work of the spirit of witness is relevant to the situational needs of the people that jesus ministered to and healed. it is important to point out that in african pentecostalism, the spirit-empowered and the anointed does not refer only to the clergy. anyone who is filled with the holy spirit can become a witness, including women and children. this contributes toward the expansion of african pentecostalism, turning any believer into a witness because of spirit empowerment. 4. indigenous provenance of missio spiritus african pentecostalism has deep foundational roots in the african christian experience. this is seen in the ability of african pentecostalism to incorporate african cultural practices into their african christian experience (kalu 2008). in its practices, pentecostalism does not always borrow from the western forms of christianity but from the african cultural heritage (meyer 2004). bediako (1995) spoke of pentecostals in africa who do not even know about the azusa street revival but embrace the fundamental teachings of pentecostalism such as spirit baptism. asamoah-gyadu (2002) explained that this indigenous provenance is what made african pentecostalism able to bring transformation in people’s lives. anderson (2011) adds that this is possible through the working of the holy spirit among believers in african pentecostalism. therefore, in africa, the presence and power of the holy spirit are what bring transformation in the lives of the people (asamoah-gyadu 2014). in addition, african pentecostalism can familiarise itself with the local context in which it finds itself. therefore, african pentecostalism has been able to express itself relevantly in many african local contexts as opposed to western forms of christianity. anderson and tang (2005: 588) point out that “one of the main reasons for the phenomenal growth of pentecostalism in the past century has been its remarkable ability to adapt itself to different cultural contexts and give authentically contextualized expressions to christianity.” while western forms of christianity have failed to acknowledge the indigenous knowledge including cultural practices, african pentecostalism has been able to acknowledge the same without compromising the christian message. the indigenous provenance of pentecostalism is used in this study to formulate what i call an indigenous provenance of missio spiritus. this framework is developed here to specifically explore the role of the holy spirit in the expansion of african pentecostalism. this means that the four aspects of the missio spiritus as discussed above should be understood in the context of the indigenous force of african pentecostalism. this opens up a possibility of understanding firstly the 98 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23037 98 indigenous provenance of missio spiritus is relevant in the understanding of the use of the indigenous knowledge system on creation to propagate the gospel. secondly, the indigenous provenance of missio spiritus is a framework for the life-giving spirit whereby, as asamoah-gyadu and anderson pointed out earlier, the lives of african people are transformed and restored through the power of the holy spirit. thirdly, the indigenous provenance of missio spiritus affords us an opportunity to the able to understand the spirit of redemption beyond the confessional salvation to the salvation that touches the various aspects of life in african contexts. lastly, the spirit of witness informs the presenting of the gospel in forms relevant to the african people. this means that the spirit of witness in the indigenous provenance of missio spiritus is the spirit that enables gospel ministers or even missionaries in africa to minister a contextualized gospel rather than westernized forms of the gospel. through the same holy spirit, the gospel minister in africa can express the gospel in an indigenized way. the next section explains how the indigenous provenance of missio spiritus is relevant for understanding the expansion of african pentecostalism. 5. indigenous provenance of missio spiritus and the growth of african pentecostalism most african pentecostal churches have not yet pronounced on issues related to the creation and the environment. scholars such as golo (2014) and maseno (2017) indicate that pentecostals in africa have shown little concern for the environmental crisis and issues related to climate change in the twenty-first century. werner (2020: 51) adds that in ”many african (as well as other) churches the seriousness of the environmental challenges has not yet received attention.” in the south african context, churches such as the apostolic faith mission of south africa, the full gospel church, and assemblies of god have not yet pronounced on issues related to the creation and the environment. in western africa, churches such as the redeemed christian church of god and church of pentecost and many others are involved in various projects concerning development but not directly spoken about issues of environmental crisis and global warming. this is surprising since pentecostals in africa believe in the spirit of witness, the spirit of redemption and the spirit of life. what about the spirit of creation? some of the reasons for lack of engagement in environmental issues could include the influence of early classical pentecostalism in anthropocentric salvation rather than the salvation that includes both humans and non-humans. another reason could be the influence of classical pentecostalism focusing more on the imminent second coming of christ and evangelism than taking care of the environment. the pentecostal movement in africa can grow further if the issues related to the creation and the role of the spirit of creation in the same can be taken seriously. in this 99 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23037 99 way, the spirit of creation within the framework of indigenous provenance of missio spiritus can also add value to the growth of the pentecostal churches in africa. the african pentecostals are also strong on preaching that the holy spirit is the one that gives life to the believer. african pentecostal preachers emphasize social transformation and development, particularly in presenting the spirit as life-giving (freeman 2012). the holy spirit is not only introduced as the part of the trinity and divine but also as the life-giving spirit. the holy spirit is not only the supernatural power of god but also the one who transforms human beings. transformation here is defined as spirit empowerment able to change attitudes, behaviours, spiritual and other circumstances. in addition, african pentecostals preach personal and social development because they believe that spirit empowerment is able to bring spirit’s work into one’s financial circumstances. hence, african pentecostals emphasise the message of transformation. when the believer is transformed, they can transform the next person in their church or community. consequently, this transformation moves into the whole society which explains the impact of the african pentecostal mission. this means that the work of the holy spirit translates into the social aspects of the life of the believer. they believe that any spirit baptised person should see change in their lives after receiving the holy spirit. this message of the transformation through the holy spirit also plays a role in popularizing the pentecostal churches in africa. people believe that once they join such churches, their lives will change for the better because of being spirit-filled. therefore, the indigenous provenance of missio spiritus is relevant in understanding the role of the spirit of life as being able to transform the lives of africans in many african contexts. in african pentecostalism, the church is not only a place for fellowship but also a place of social transformation based on the work of the holy spirit. african pentecostals are also strong on the aspect of redemption which also includes the ministry of healing and deliverance. the evil spirits in african pentecostalism are confronted by the same spirit of redemption (onyinah 2002). this affords african pentecostalism the ability to respond to various challenges in life like misfortune, barrenness, witchcraft, bad luck, spells and others. they believe that these problems are caused by some spirits in the spirit realm and therefore the holy spirit becomes that force that is used to confront the same powers of evil in the spirit realm (anderson 2018). hence, anderson says that the pentecostal movement in africa should not only be seen in the continuity of the popular religion but in the confrontation of the same through the spirit of redemption. among many african pentecostals, it is believed that the spirit of redemption carries divine power to confront sickness, diseases and other problems. consequently, there is an emphasis on the ministry of healing and deliverance as part of redemption to confront the same problems being caused by evil spirits in the spirit realm. many africans do not have medical aid because of the failure of public health care in many african states. 100 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23037 100 so the pentecostal churches have become an alternative to the government’s failures. it is for this reason that pentecostal churches are growing to larger numbers and bigger churches in many african cities. for example in many african countries, rather than queuing at hospitals, they would go to a deliverance minister in pursuit of healing and deliverance. some do not go because they are sick but believe that the pentecostal message of healing can keep them healthy or give longevity. african pentecostals are very strong on expressing the gospel relevantly to the african people as inspired by the spirit of witness. african pentecostalism is known for its focus on reaching out to lost souls in every corner of their cities to preach the gospel to those who need it. the main aim of pentecostal evangelism is to plant churches around and in cities as inspired by the spirit of witness. one of the classical pentecostal churches, the apostolic faith mission in south africa, has adopted this model where they see themselves as existing in every city. thus, church planting according to anderson (2005: 37) is “a central feature of all pentecostal mission activity.” the point i am making here is that this is informed by the indigenous provenance of missio spiritus as discussed above. church and mission among african pentecostals are not separate entities but exist together because a well-established church should be engaged in the work of mission. hence, it is the task of these pentecostal churches to give birth to other churches in other cities in africa. they no longer depend on western missionaries for the planting of churches in africa but have become church planters on their own. similarly, many other pentecostal churches in sub-saharan africa believe in turning every follower into a witness to the world to minister the gospel in an indigenous way. therefore, the aspect of preaching to the world is not only for the clergy but for every believer who becomes a witness to the gospel of christ expressed in the african contexts. this aspect of witnessing to others has caused the pentecostal mission to grow in africa. this growth is informed by the way africans have embraced the mission of the spirit in reaching out to lost souls. 6. indigenous provenance of missio spiritus: rethinking missions and world christianity indigenous provenance of missio spiritus in the pentecostal mission changes the way we understand the missions and world of christianity. mission should not only be understood in the context of the mission of god and the mission of christ but also the missio spiritus. yong (2011: 361) puts it this way: “the spirit who empowered the son, and who was poured out upon and filled the apostles, is the same spirit who continues to accomplish the redemptive work of god in christ, and through the post-apostolic church.” the mission of the spirit has a role to play in the fulfilment of the mission of god and the mission of christ. it is for this reason that the mission of the spirit should not be ignored in missions and world christianity. thinane 101 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23037 101 (2021: 10) says that the missio spiritus becomes that bridge that helps us understand other missions. it is an approach in which the mission of god, the mission of christ, the mission of the church, and others can be articulated. however, scholars such as thinane, yong and bosch have not articulated the role of the indigenous provenance of the missio spiritus. my contribution here not only recognizes the mission of spirit in the missions and world christianity but also its indigenous contribution. the indigenous provenance of the mission of spirit deserves attention in demonstrating its role in the expansion of african pentecostalism. 7. conclusion this article explored the role of the spirit in the expansion of african pentecostalism using the missio spiritus as a theoretical framework. the various aspects of the missio spiritus such as the spirit of creation, the spirit of life, the redemptive spirit, and the witness of the spirit, were discussed in the context of african pentecostalism. however, the indigenous provenance of these aspects has not been explored in previous studies. therefore, the contribution of this article is the framing of the indigenous provenance of missio spiritus and its role in the expansion of african pentecostalism. therefore as emanating from an indigenous provenance of missio spiritus, the findings are: that african pentecostals are strong in ministering life, preaching redemption, and witnessing to other people. however, pentecostals in africa have yet to pronounce on issues related to creation. nonetheless, i argue that the spirit of life, the spirit of redemption, and spirit of witness make african pentecostalism grow in numbers. therefore, the indigenous provenance of missio spiritus remains the rationale behind the growth of the pentecostal movement in africa. this is important for mission research in understanding missions and world christianity in the twenty-first century. moreover, this is important in understanding the broader expansion of african pentecostalism in present and future studies. about the author mookgo solomon kgatle holds a phd in theology and is a professor of missiology at the college of human sciences, unisa. he is interested in the history, mission, and theology of african pentecostalism. he has published several peer-reviewed articles and books in the field. he is the founder and president of the southern african society of pentecostal studies. he is an nrf-rated scholar and appeared in the 2024 scopus list of the top 2% of scientists worldwide. he received visiting scholarships to the university of birmingham and oxford university (2020–23). he won several other awards including the unisa principal award for excellence in research (2024). contact: kgatls@unisa.ac.za mailto:kgatls@unisa.ac.za 102 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23037 102 references althouse, peter. 2003. spirit of the last days: pentecostal eschatology in conversation with jürgen moltmann. vol. 25. london: a&c black. anderson, allan h. 1991. moya: the holy spirit in an african context. pretoria: university of south africa. anderson, allan. 2005. “towards a pentecostal missiology for the majority world”, asian journal of pentecostal studies 8 (1): 29–47. anderson, allan. 2006. “the azusa street revival and the emergence of pentecostal missions in the early twentieth century”, transformation 23 (2): 107–18. anderson, allan. 2011. “the pentecostal gospel, religion and culture in african pperspective.” in boersma, owe (ed.), encounter beyond routine: cultural roots, cultural transition, understanding of faith and cooperation in development, hamburg: academy of mission: 65–70. anderson, allan. 2013. to the ends of the earth: pentecostalism and the transformation of world christianity. oxford: oxford university press. anderson, allan. 2018. spirit-filled world: religious dis/continuity in african pentecostalism. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. anderson, allan. and edmond tang, eds. 2005. asian and pentecostal: the charismatic face of christianity in asia. vol. 3. oxford: ocms. asamoah-gyadu, kwabena. 2002. “african pentecostalism and the changing face of christian mission.” mission studies 19 (1): 14–38. asamoah-gyadu, kwabena. 2014. “pentecostalism and the transformation of the african christian landscape.” in lindhardt, m. (ed), african pentecostalism: presence and iimpact of pneumatic christianity in postcolonial societies (vol. 15). leiden: brill: 100–14. bediako, kwame. 1995. christianity in africa: the renewal of a non-western religion. edinburgh: edinburgh university press bosch, david j. 1991. transforming mission: paradigm shifts in theology of mission. no. 16. maryknoll, new york: orbis books. coates, kenneth, and coates, ken s. 2004. a global history of indigenous peoples. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. freeman, dena. 2012. pentecostalism, and development: churches, ngos and social change in africa. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. golo, ben-willie kwaku. 2014. “the groaning earth and the greening of neo-pentecostalism in twenty-first-century ghana.” penteco studies: an interdisciplinary journal for research on the pentecostal and charismatic movements 13 (2): 197–216. green, j. b. 2014. why salvation? abingdon: abingdon press. hayford, jack w., and david s. moore. 2006. the charismatic century: the enduring impact of the azusa street revival. huntsville, alabama: warner faith. hollenweger, walter j., and iain macrobert. 1988. the black roots and white racism of early pentecostalism in the usa. basingstoke: macmillan press. jennings, willie james. 2017. acts. theological commentary on the bible. louisville, kentucky: westminster john knox press. kalu, ogbu. 2013. african christianity: an african story. department of church history, pretoria: university of pretoria. kalu, ogbu. 2008. african pentecostalism: an introduction. oxford: oxford university press. kaunda, chammah j. 2017. “making critically conscious disciples: a zambian pentecostal pneumato-discipleship missiology.” international review of mission 106 (2): 322–35. 103 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23037 103 kgatle, mookgo solomon. 2016. “the influence of azusa street revival in the early developments of the apostolic faith mission of south africa”, missionalia: southern african journal of mission studies 44 (3): 321–35. ma, julie. 2015. “the holy spirit in mission”, dialog 54 (2): 171–9. ma, wonsuk. 2017. “the holy spirit in pentecostal mission: the shaping of mission awareness and practice”, international bulletin of mission research 41 (3): 227–38. mæland, bård. 2013. “a free-wheeling breath of life? discerning the missio spiritus”, international review of mission 102 (2): 137–47. maseno, loreen. 2017. “prayer for rain: a pentecostal pperspective from kenya.” the ecumenical review 69 (3): 336–47. mcquilkin, robertson. 1997. “the role of the holy spirit in mission” in douglas mcconnell, the holy spirit in mmission dynamics 5. littleton: william carey. menzies, robert paul. 1991. the development of early christian pneumatology with special reference to luke-acts. sheffield: jsot press. menzies, william w. and robert p. 2000. spirit and power: foundations of pentecostal experience. grand rapids: zondervan. meyer, birgit. 2004. “christianity in africa: from african independent to pentecostal-charismatic churches.” annual review of anthropology 33 (1): 447–74. newbigin, lesslie. 1995. the open secret: an introduction to the theology of the mission. revised edn. london: spck; wm. b. eerdmans. onyinah, opoku. 2002. “deliverance as a way of cojnfronting witchcraft in modern africa: ghana as a case history.”asian journal of pentecostal studies 5 (1): 107–34. https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/ajps/ajps-05-1_107.pdf (accessed 4 nov. 2025). padilla, c. rené. 2016. “the holy spirit: power for life and hope”, in gene l. green, stephen t. pardue and k.-k. yeo (eds), the spirit over the earth: pneumatology in the majority world. grand rapids, michigan: eerdmans, 165–83. robeck, cecil m. 2017. the azusa st mission & revival: the birth of the global pentecostal movement. nashville, tennessee: harper christian. sissons, jeffrey. 2005. first peoples: indigenous cultures and their futures. london: reaktion books. thinane, jonas sello. 2021. “missio dei as the main project: project management model for mission of god’, pharos journal of theology 102 (2): 1–17. wariboko, nimi. 2017. african pentecostalism. oxford research encyclopedia of africa history. weaver, hilary n. 2001. “indigenous identity: what is it, and who really has it?” american indian quarterly 25 (2): 240–55. werner, dietrich. 2020. “the challenge of environment and climate justice. 1: imperatives of an eco-theological reformation of christianity in african contexts.” in öhlmann, philipp, wilhelm gräb and marie-luise frost (eds). african initiated christianity and the decolonisation of development: sustainable development in pentecostal and independent churches. abingdon: routledge: 51–72. yong, amos. 2005. the spirit poured out on all flesh: pentecostalism and the possibility of global theology. grand rapids, michigan: baker academic. yong, amos. 2011. “primed for the spirit: creation, redemption and the missio spiritus”, international review of mission 100 (2): 355–66. yong, amos. 2015. the missiological spirit: christian mission theology in the third-millennium global context. eugene, oregon: wipf and stock. yong, amos. 2019. mission after pentecost (mission in global community): the witness of the spirit from genesis to revelation. grand rapids: baker academic. https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/ajps/ajps-05-1_107.pdf https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/ajps/ajps-05-1_107.pdf ecclesial futures 2025 – volume 6 – issue 1 62 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22183 a r t i c l e doi: 10.54195/ef22183 fostering diversity in congregations: a practical framework for local churches to reflect and improve accessibility hanna kauhaus abstract diversity, understood as the extent to which the members of a group or organization differ from one another, is fundamental for the church, but often not given to a great extent in local congregations, at least not in the evangelical church in germany. this article wants to support practitioners in a diversity-oriented development process for their local churches. in the first part, the concept of diversity management is introduced and some ideas pointed out and adapted for congregational development. taking these basic ideas and additionally systematizing some suggestions from tools for diversity-oriented organizational development, in the second part a practical framework is presented. it has been created for identifying barriers and finding starting points for enhancing diversity in local protestant churches in germany. based on a model of four levels of accessibility and exclusion, the core is a framework of five areas of church activities in which unconscious barriers can be found regarding these different levels of accessibility. the aim is to help congregations to take some manageable steps to better include all who are already present and to become more accessible for others who are different in certain dimensions of diversity. keywords: diversity management, congregational development, inclusion and exclusion, accessibility, participation diversity is at the roots of the church (eckhold 2017: 12–13). on pentecost, when the apostle peter first got the courage and inspiration to preach the gospel of jesus christ, the listeners were a diverse crowd, having come to jerusalem from different nations and cultural backgrounds (acts 2.4-11). this is programmatic: from the very beginning, the church is built with an astonishing diversity of people (frey, 2014: 36). that mirrors the group of the twelve disciples and the larger group of jesus’ 63 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22183 63 followers, where cultural, economic, political, social and gender differences were struggled with, but somehow made less relevant by the charisma and teachings of jesus. there are passages in the new testament letters that can be understood as a plea for accepting diversity: “there is neither jew nor greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in christ jesus” (eph. 3.28, esv). the gospel is for everyone (mt. 28.20; 1 tim. 2.4). the eschatological perspective also emphasizes the diversity of those who will cherish god’s presence together (lk. 13.28; rev. 7.9). this biblical opening is a bit one-sided and maybe even naïve. within the same new testament scriptures, there are passages that speak of exclusion, of “in” and “out”, of the tolerable and the not tolerable, and of the struggles and developments regarding the norms and ground rules. is diversity to be allowed regarding circumcision? regarding the attendance of heathen festivities? regarding sexual activity? the interdependence of ethics and culture is only one of the difficulties when making these decisions. and even though the vision for inclusiveness and diversity regarding race, sex, culture, religious background, socio-economic or family status and other dimensions is remarkable, the inclusiveness is not all-encompassing. there are certain shared beliefs and ethics that raise boundaries between “in” and “out”, and at the same time these beliefs and ethics seem to serve as an anchor for unity – a unity that can then include many differences. and yet, even with these shared beliefs and ethics, unity in diversity might be more of an ideal than a reality (krieg 2017: 540–2) – at least when we jump into present times and walk into a sunday morning service in most churches in germany,1 or look at data on participation in church activities, or at correlations between a felt connection with church and the socio-economic status of church members (see below). surely there is diversity among churchgoers, but the chances for positive encounters or even for belonging are by no means equal – even though equal opportunities, inclusion and being a church for all are strong values for the protestant churches in germany (ekd 2015; https://www.landeskirche-hannovers.de/gesellschaft-undleben/zusammenleben/vielfalt, accessed on 29.04.2025). with this mixed background of new testament visions, current values that are broadly shared in church and society, and a few indicators of tensions and problems, i want to step into the topic of diversity in local congregations. “diversity” basically means “the extent in which members of an entity, such as a group or organization, differ from one another” (gonzales and zamanian 2015: 595). how diverse are local congregations typically? or: how homogenous is each of them? who is more or less likely to show up for any church activities? who, comparing those who are somehow 1 the focus in this article is on local churches of the evangelical church in germany (ekd). https://www.landeskirche-hannovers.de/gesellschaft-und-leben/zusammenleben/vielfalt https://www.landeskirche-hannovers.de/gesellschaft-und-leben/zusammenleben/vielfalt 64 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22183 64 involved in a congregation to all the local church members or even all the local people, is missing? these questions have been researched and discussed in the context of the evangelical church in germany (ekd) for some relevant dimensions where people differ from one another, especially in age ( jacobi 2024), sex (wunder 2024), milieus (schulz 2014; ahrens and wegner 2008), and educational and socio-economic backgrounds (kläden and wunder 2024). in the context of missionary church development, especially the dimension of (non)-religious upbringing has often been considered, and churches have been called to lower thresholds and remove barriers for those without a church background (herbst 2018: 180-89). regarding the dimension of (dis) abilities, there are lots of publications, usually connected to inclusion discourses (e.g. eurich and lob-hüdepohl, 2011; ekd 2022). the cultural and national background of people has received special attention in the discussions and projects of international churches (so-called “migrant” churches) and intercultural churches (etzelmüller and rammelt, 2022). all these different aspects and discourses can be linked to diversity,an umbrella term that can include lots of dimensions of difference. diversity can be used as a descriptive category – regarding any specific attributes, the range of diversity can be analysed and described. yet, diversity isn’t just a descriptive term. it also implies normativity, seeing diversity as a goal and a resource (grümme, 2017: 595–6). concepts of diversity emphasize the value of diversity. and they are linked to inclusion2 traditions, thereby pointing to questions of participation and belonging. therefore, when reflecting the diversity of local churches, two questions need to be considered together: what variety of people show up? and how well are those present actually included and given the chance to participate and contribute? if limited diversity is diagnosed for a local church congregation, how can they act upon that? how can a local church start a process of diversifying and ensuring that different people can fully participate? there are instruments that are used in diversity-oriented organizational development, like questions for self-evaluation and suggestions of how to work on communication, structures, hiring policies etc. some of these are also reflected in church policies and evaluation tools. in this article, i will first give a short introduction to diversity management, and ask what could be learnt from the main concepts for fostering diversity in congregations. based on that, a practical framework has been developed from diversity management concepts and instruments. this framework has two parts: one helps to reflect levels of inclusion or exclusion, and the other shows areas of accessibility and structures the process of recognizing biases and barriers. both parts will be 2 for an overview on the discourses on inclusion in protestant theology in germany see brunn 2021. 65 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22183 65 presented, with the aim of supporting practitioners in reflecting and taking some steps towards a diversity strategy that fits their profile. 1 diversity management: introduction and conceptual learnings for local congregations diversity management (dim) is a concept for actively dealing with diversity in an organization. it is used in profit and non-profit organisations (see bendl, hanappi-egger and hofmann 2012: 13–14). it comes from two traditions and combines them: one is the equal opportunities movement, the fight for social justice.3 this tradition is closely related to affirmative action and legal frameworks on equal opportunities. the other tradition, which comes directly from business management, is the realization that diversity is a vital resource for organizational performance (cox 1993). dim combines these two traditions and motivations. in theory and empirical research, there are different approaches and disciplines involved (see yadav and lenka 2020). from the beginning, it has a strong practical output, being used in consulting and training (bendl, hanappi-egger and hofmann 2012: 13). one reason for its increasing popularity is the “appeal of the idea that social justice and performance goals are not necessarily incompatible” (gonzalez and zamanian 2015: 595). since dim is often used in institutions and organizations in education, social work and politics, it might also have something to offer for the church, in so far as the church has, amongst others, an organizational dimension (hermelink 2011). if a church wants to deal positively with diversity and even increase diversity, what insights can it get from dim? dim appreciates diversity in itself, as being a great resource for the group or organisation. diversity helps both to complement and to challenge each other within a team or organization. this appreciation of diversity creates a proactive attitude. instead of just asking “what needs to change in the organization for the people that are already here?”, dim asks the question “what needs to change so that people want to join? and how can we attract people from those groups that are not represented equally in the organization yet?” dim focuses on group attributes rather than individual attributes (grümme 2017). this has the negative potential to reproduce stereotypes, but it can also be a necessary tool to think about accessibility and barriers for different people – even though each person is more than just part of different social groups (e.g. a woman, a mother, someone with migration background). taking group attributes into 3 for basic information on diversity management and its origins, see e.g. gonzalez and zamanian 2015; bendl, hanappi-egger and hofmann 2012: 12–13; aschenbrenner-wellmann and geldner 2021. 66 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22183 66 consideration might serve as an auxiliary structure, because it can help to imagine, research and spell out different perspectives. dim generally focuses on underrepresented and marginalized groups. for pragmatic and legal reasons, in organizational development it often focuses on those dimensions of diversity that are part of antidiscrimination law, like race/ethnicity, sex/gender, religion and worldview, disability, age or sexual identity (bendl, hanappi-egger and hofmann 2012: 12–14). but each organization has to decide which dimensions are especially relevant for exclusion and inclusion and which underrepresented groups are most painfully missing. it also has to reflect where diversity has to be limited due to organisational goals. at a university for example, a certain exclusion of people without sufficient school education might be necessary – but the university should still make sure that as few secondary attributes as possible have an influence on the educational outcome. the university can use dim programmes to help ensure that people from non-academic families have equal opportunities, or that there are second-chance degree programmes for those who are only able to discover or follow their academic abilities at a later stage of life. in the same way, churches have to do with religion and worldview – they cannot promise that inclusion has nothing to do with these attributes, but they should make sure that no secondary attributes are decisive, like a religious family background or a certain degree of sociability. dim knows that a balance is needed between diversity and cohesion (see aschbrenner-wellmann and geldner 2021: 202–4). for the cohesion, relationships need to be built, communication skills need to be trained, and a sense of unity and togetherness needs to be strengthened, in order to deal with a broad diversity. an organization, a team or a group needs a certain amount of cohesive and unifying dimensions. the question for a realistic approach to the diversity of a congregation is: how much difference can it include? how can the sense of unity and belonging be strengthened, without making too many assumptions about equity? and when does more diversity in one direction lead to less diversity in another, to losing some people while trying to include others? in my experience, no congregation (or any organization or group) can be inclusive for everyone. trying to accommodate some people will put others off. a sensible approach for practical purposes might be to seek to expand from the status quo towards just some people who are a bit different (hauschildt and pohl-patalong 2013: 351–3), but still have quite a few overlapping attributes with those who are already well integrated. a congregation could focus on just one or two group attributes that they want to accommodate – and use an intersectional approach for that. for instance, if a congregation already has lots of families with similar secondary attributes, it could try to remove barriers for single-parent 67 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22183 67 families4 or reach out to international families. a tool for expanding diversity will be presented below. dim often combines two approaches: one is to work on a general culture of openness and acceptance, the other to work on the accessibility and inclusion for certain groups of people (warmuth 2012). one approach might actually lead to the other, in both directions. growing a general culture of openness and acceptance in a congregation is a huge undertaking in itself. i can only give some basic ideas on relevant aspects and possible approaches here. a. welcome and hospitality, especially for newcomers: to naturally expect visitors and create processes for people who come for the first time is a helpful basis for dim. clear signage, a welcome team with people who live hospitality, slides or leaflets that help to follow the liturgy, a good cup of tea or coffee – these are just some practical aspects that might help to create a general atmosphere of hospitality in the congregation. b. general diversity within the staff and volunteer leadership: even before there are thoughts on specific diversity attributes, it is generally helpful if the staff and core volunteers do not all look and think alike. men and women, different ages and family status, different styles and talents – if they respect and complement each other and are able to work well together, it can be a model and invitation for others. c. appreciation of differences instead of rigid ideas about what’s right and what’s wrong: if there is a sense that there is the one right style and tradition (and lots of wrong ones), the one right way to behave, the one right set of thoughts and beliefs – this is the opposite of a general culture of openness. instead, differences and ambiguities can be communicated as a positive thing. programmes and events can include a variety of styles of worship, music, language, use of media etc. a variety in behaviour, styles, opinions, beliefs within the core community creates space for more diversity. this openness and variety needs to be balanced with profile and orientation, but the balance should be reflected on and discussed carefully. d. fewer assumptions, less taking for granted that everyone thinks or feels or wants the same: sometimes the use of “we” isn’t inclusive, but shows how one approach or perspective is represented and others are neglected. to avoid that, different realities and perspectives should be reflected in sermons and other 4 the barriers that a single parent family might face in a congregation are well described in lange, 2022. 68 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22183 68 public communication – and the rhetoric should leave space for a listener to silently agree or disagree, to identify or not. e. ease of faults and errors: openness and acceptance is also influenced and mirrored by the way a congregation deals with faults, errors and disturbances. how does the congregation react if there are apparent mistakes made in the music or the spoken words, if a baby cries right in the middle of a quiet time of reflection, if the pastor forgets the lord’s prayer? how willing are leaders to let volunteers try out different tasks, even if the first steps aren’t always totally satisfying? this again needs to be balanced with a certain quality and professional approach. f. ability to find compromises and to deal with and resolve conflict: conflict management is a necessary competence when trying to create this culture of openness and acceptance without the risk of disintegration. if different styles, habits and opinions are encouraged to be in the open, it is all the more important that this is twinned with the willingness to find compromises, and a positive attitude towards conflict. 2 practical approach: a framework for fostering diversity in a congregation to put some of the learnings from dim into practice for local congregations, i have developed a framework with two parts: one is about raising awareness that (non) accessibility and exclusion go much further than one might think at first. the other is about areas of church activities where actual barriers can be found and removed. for both parts, ideas from research outcomes, policy papers and practical instruments5 are combined, adapted and systematized. 2.1 levels of accessibility and exclusion while talking about diversity, a church leader once said to me: “but we don’t exclude anyone! everyone is welcome and can take part!” this is what most congregations want, and how they would describe themselves. to raise sensitivity for actual exclusion mechanisms, people first need to understand that there are different levels of inclusion and exclusion. the issue involves much more than a basic form of accessibility. for this purpose, a model of four levels of accessibility and exclusion is 5 https://www.aktion-mensch.de/kommune-inklusiv/praxis-handbuch-inklusion/planung/partizipation, accessed on 29.04.2025 (for local civil communities), https://www.stifterverband.org/diversity-check, accessed on 29.04.2025 (for universities and research institutes), https://www.diakonie-vielfalt.de/, accessed on 29.04.2025 (for diaconal and similar organisations), https://www.serviceportal-nordkirche. de/gemeinde-leiten/vielfalt, accessed on 29.04.2025 (for churches, but little information yet). https://www.aktion-mensch.de/kommune-inklusiv/praxis-handbuch-inklusion/planung/partizipation https://www.stifterverband.org/diversity-check https://www.diakonie-vielfalt.de/ https://www.serviceportal-nordkirche.de/gemeinde-leiten/vielfalt https://www.serviceportal-nordkirche.de/gemeinde-leiten/vielfalt file:///p:/radboud%20university%20press/ecclesial%20futures/2025/01/1%20originelen/3%20voorbereid%20-%20finished\h 69 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22183 69 introduced. on all four levels people can experience barriers. the levels build on each other, so if someone is excluded on the first level, he or she usually doesn’t even get to the next. and yet, all of them are vital and crucial for full inclusion and participation. a. there is a first level of basic accessibility. can people actually find and reach the place? can they get into the building? is information available in a medium that they can receive? are events or meetings at a time when they can possibly attend? on this level, we suppose that people actually want to attend. typical barriers for this basic level of accessibility could be physical stairs to the building, no toilets, costly fees or that information is only distributed in print to members or only available digitally. b. the second level is understanding. of course, understanding itself can be basic or profound, but here i am talking about a quite basic understanding. it implies the acoustics, the language, the media used and any required prior knowledge. typical barriers are the use of insider-language and specialist terms, a complicated grammar, thoughts that demand a lot of shared knowledge or experiences, or noisy surroundings or bad acoustics that make it hard for people with hearing aids. for internationals or migrants, an altogether foreign language might prevent understanding. c. the third level is a positive experience. this implies basic accessibility and understanding, but demands more than that. it is about people feeling welcome and comfortable, about people liking the atmosphere, the programme, the aesthetics, the people around them. typical barriers could be that people feel insecure about the do’s and don’ts, that they feel uncomfortable with a room, that they feel bored or overwhelmed, that they feel left out in communication, or that they have to do things they don’t feel comfortable with. on this level it does get really tricky, because different people are used to and like different styles and programmes, and the different demands might seem to exclude each other. aiming for a mainstream approach might be one option, or, when working with an existing congregation, trying to make the experience more positive for those who are already there plus bearing in mind others that are somehow similar and somehow different, in order to broaden the diversity of those who could have a positive experience. d. the fourth level is belonging. there are different forms and needs. belonging can, on the one side, be to visit now and then and to feel at the right place when it happens. or, on the other side, it can be to have personal contacts, be part of a group and to take ownership. what can stand in the way of belonging, if basic accessibility, understanding and a positive experience are given? barriers could be the feeling that everyone is different from oneself, that one’s own situation and concerns are never mentioned, or that one’s own culture is not repre70 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22183 70 sented at all. exclusion from certain volunteer positions, whether by rules or by soft factors, can also obstruct a full sense of belonging. diagram: levels of accessibility and exclusion 2.2 areas of accessibility if a congregation wants to drive forward a process of diversifying, it is crucial to identify the things that put people off, make them feel unwelcome or prevent their participation – in short: the barriers that limit basic accessibility, understanding, a positive experience and belonging. these barriers are usually unintentional and often lie within habits and structures. to realize them is necessary if they are to be minimized. since no approach can fully remove barriers for everyone and some needs are even in opposition, i suggest to choose just a few group attributes to work with6 how can such a choice be made? maybe there are people who have already shown interest by visiting once or twice, but you feel it hasn’t gone that well – in which dimension might they be different from others who are well included? maybe some of the regular churchgoers have friends, family or other contacts in a specific milieu that isn’t well represented in the congregation yet. might that be a milieu to try to reduce barriers for? there might be longstanding members of the congregation whose health or family status has recently changed so that long-term illness or divorce might be a recent challenge, and a chance to think about those dimensions of diversity. or there might be something in the local context that invites to choose a certain diversity perspective. how can the actual barriers then be recognized? for illustration purposes, let us imagine that a congregation would want to expand their range of diversity to 6 hauschildt and pohl-patalong (2013: 351–53) come to a similar conclusion regarding milieus. 71 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22183 71 be more accessible for international university students. they already attract native university students and want to diversify from there. the best way to spot barriers for international students would be to actually ask international students, especially if a few are already at the edges of the congregation. another way would be that there might be bridge-builders in the congregation who work or live with international students and can put themselves in their shoes especially well. in addition to that, the leaders of the congregation should also try to take that perspective and to imagine different situations of congregational life from that perspective. combining the different approaches and also hearing stories and reading research about other diversity groups might help to overcome the blindness that comes with routine and longstanding habituation. for a structured approach, it is helpful to go through several areas and aspects of the congregations’ activities. the following framework can be used for that.7 it gives a structure of five areas of congregational activities: information and public communication, buildings and times, content and culture of events and meetings, personal contacts and networks, and opportunities for participation and contribution. i give some ideas for each area, using the four levels of accessibility, and sometimes using examples of the group of international students for illustration. the question to ask for each area when using the framework is: what might be barriers for a group that you have in mind, and how can they be reduced? a. information and public communication: in this area, for basic accessibility and understanding the information needs to be easy to find, disseminated in the right places and channels, and available in an understandable language. for international students, who are often new to a town, online information with appropriate keywords and the use of english language would be basic features. for a positive experience, the design and choice of words matters – international students might like what is generally attractive for young, well-educated and globally mobile people. to open up for belonging, visual representation might be relevant. international students might feel less excluded if in the pictures there are young people and also ethnically mixed groups. b. locations, buildings, times: a traditional understanding of accessibility concentrates on physically disabled people and the appropriateness of entrance and facilities for them. but there are also other needs. for international students, basic accessibility could be hindered by inappropriate signage of and in the building, or by times of activities that don’t fit with students’ timetables. for inter7 some ideas are taken from guidelines on inclusion, on diversity management or on inclusive church services for specific groups. see e.g. diakonie deutschland 2019; evangelische kirche im rheinland 2013; bieler 2008; ekd 2015; evangelische kirche von westfalen 2016; kunz 2013. 72 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22183 72 national students, the concerns are probably more on the levels of positive experience and belonging – does the building feel welcoming and a safe space, does the interior design mirror the openness for their generation and cultures, do the rooms allow for different levels of participation, and does the congregation allow for not being strictly on time? for different groups of people, aspects like space, ventilation and temperature might be relevant, or lighting, acoustics and other things. another aspect worth mentioning is drinks and food. although it is rarely relevant for basic accessibility and understanding, it can be vital for positive experience and belonging. it adds greatly to the surrounding and overall atmosphere, is crucial for hospitality and can have a strong inclusive impact. drinks and food are closely connected with different cultures, milieus and generations – going the extra mile here to accommodate certain groups might be well worth it. c. content and culture of events and meetings: depending on the type of event or meeting, different aspects come to mind. in a church service, understanding might be hindered for certain groups by unfamiliar or complicated language in songs, prayers and sermons. in addition, sometimes too much shared knowledge is required – about christianity in general, but also about specific faith traditions or about the congregation. for international students, the altogether foreign language might have to be translated – which is easier if the original grammar, choice of words and lines of thought are easy to follow. for a positive experience and for belonging, it might help to address various senses and also to give different options to participate or to follow from a distance –intentionally opening the event for different levels of involvement might support diversity. another important question is whether or not people’s situations are mentioned in sermons and prayers: if people sense that the speakers only have other groups of people in mind, it might also make them feel excluded. in church services, the music often has a strong impact on the experience of those who take part (see ahrens and wegner,2008: 36–9). there is no right or and wrong way of choosing between different styles of music, or mixing them, just as there is no right and wrong of a professional or amateur approach. lots of conflicts arise around the choice of instruments and songs and volume. it is about culture, familiarity, faith traditions and personal theology. it seems to be closely connected to the dimension of belonging, and needs to be treated with great care. all in all, if a diversity of people is involved in contributing to the event, it enhances the chances of representing a variety of perspectives and styles – at least if those who contribute are encouraged to bring their own preferences and thoughts to the table and act authentically. 73 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22183 73 d. personal contacts, networking and community: in this area, opportunities for personal contacts and for experiencing a sense of community are fundamental. different ways of interaction are helpful – not just the usual small talk at church coffee, but maybe also guided group discussions, communal meals, or joint activities. what is appropriate depends on the group of people a congregation wants to especially include. to foster diversity, the information about and access to joint activities and networking opportunities should be transparent and available via different channels. if there is a social gathering, the invitation should be clear; if there are digital networks or other structures where people can join to connect, they should be transparent and accessible. personal contacts should, on the other hand, not be forced on anyone – if someone wants to come and go and not talk to anyone, that shouldn’t make that person feel like an outsider. respecting personal space or dealing sensitively with different perceptions of closeness and distance are also relevant. community isn’t just about personal interaction though. singing or praying together can in itself create the experience of community. standing together for holy communion can create a feeling of togetherness and community. if this sense of community is not disrupted by some of the barriers mentioned above, and if a general atmosphere of welcome and openness is facilitated, that might sometimes even be worth more for a positive experience and a sense of belonging than lots of opportunities for personal interaction. e. participation and contribution: as much as inclusion is not just about the possibility to passively attend and be cared for, diversifying a congregation is about allowing and inviting different people to have an impact and leave their mark. the attempt to diversify needs the contribution of diverse people. if people are invited to attend, but not listened to and not appreciated for their gifts, it might be yet another form of exclusion. obviously not everyone wants to participate in the same way, or even take on an active role in the congregation. but if attempts are discouraged or some volunteer positions are principally closed to a group of people, that can be a huge barrier for feeling welcome and for belonging (barron 2016). what can be done to open up for active participation and contribution and to foster diversity in this area? it is necessary to give opportunities to contribute with more or less time commitment. there might be situations where people can help or share spontaneously, whether carrying tables or putting forward their prayer requests. one-time activities like bringing food or taking part in a gardening day might be easily accessible. a mixture of short-term projects and longterm voluntary positions can serve different needs and living situations. offering a variety of tasks and roles to include people with different gifts and preferences is also crucial. communication and meetings for volunteers need to be barri74 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22183 74 er-free, just like public communication and events in general (see above). and last but not least, the ideal would be transparent information about possible contribution combined with personal approaches by someone who is good at getting to know people. to work with these tools might seem complicated, but in fostering diversity, a congregation is dealing with a complex challenge. the different steps – choosing the group(s) they want to be easily and fully accessible for, understanding the different levels of accessibility, and getting hands-on in the different areas of their activities, can help to actually get a grip and start the process. 3 concluding reflections the presented framework wants to help practitioners to reflect and develop their own ideas for fostering at least one dimension of diversity in their local church. it has not been tested and evaluated yet. research on the impact of using diversity checks and diversity-oriented frameworks for church development could be fruitful. there are lots of open questions and critical reflections in my mind: isn’t the learning process of an organization far too complex to even suggest using this framework? doesn’t the process of linking this with the organisational vision and values deserve much closer attention? (see warmuth 2012: 210). isn’t a professional process necessary, analysing the status quo, creating future goals and a strategy, implementing and evaluating this strategy? (warmuth 2012: 210–30). where should the resources in time and attention and emotional investment come from, when many local churches are struggling already? still, the needs of churches deserve attempts to apply theories to practice, even though there are still open questions and reservations. last but not least: any process of church development, whether diversity oriented or with another approach, needs to be rooted in prayer and inspired by scripture. dwelling in the image of jesus and the early church, in god’s calling of the marginalized and the perspective of heaven where all will feast together – that can encourage and enrich any diversity-oriented church development. when using the presented framework to grow the sensitivity for diverse perspectives, this rooting in prayer and scripture can help to balance the load of details and the demands for organizational activities with a spiritual approach and personal growth. about the author dr hanna kauhaus has a background in protestant theology and educational sciences. she holds a doctorate in historical theology. currently she is working at 75 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22183 75 martin-luther-university in halle, heading a research group on church theory and church development with ecumenical and international perspectives. contact: hanna.kauhaus@theologie.uni-halle.de references ahrens, petra-angela, and gerhard wegner. 2008. “hier ist nicht jude noch grieche, hier ist nicht sklave noch freier…”: erkundungen der affinität sozialer milieus zu kirche und religion in der evangelisch-lutherischen landeskirche hannovers. hannover: sozialwissenschaftliches institut der evangelischen kirche in deutschland. aschenbrenner-wellmann, beate, and lea geldner. 2021. diversität in der sozialen arbeit: theorien, konzepte, praxismodelle. stuttgart: w. kohlhammer verlag. barron, jessica m. 2016. “managed diversity: race, place, and an urban church”, sociology of religion 77 (1): 18–36. bendl, regine, edeltraud hanappi-egger and roswitha hofmann. 2012. “diversität und diversitätsmanagement: ein vielschichtiges thema” in bendl, hanappi-egger and hofmann (eds). diversität und diversitätsmanagement. wien: facultas; stuttgart: utb: 11–22. bieler, andrea. 2008. gottesdienst interkulturell: predigen und gottesdienst feiern im zwisenraum. stuttgart: kohlhammer. brunn, frank martin. 2021. “das thema inklusion in der evangelischen theologie” in nicola hericks (ed.). inklusion, diversität und heterogenität: begriffsverwendung und praxisbeispiele aus multidisziplinärer perspektive. wiesbaden: springer vs: 95–111. cox, taylor. 1993. cultural diversity in organizations: theory, research, and practice. san francisco, ca: berrett-koehler. diakonie deutschland. 2019. vielfaltcheck diakonie und kirchen. projektbericht und ergebnisse, berlin. eckholt, margit. 2017. “kirche im zeichen der diversität: systemtisch-theologische perspektiven”, zeitschrift für pastoraltheologie 37 (2): 9–24. ekd. 2015. es ist normal, verschieden zu sein: inklusion leben in kirche und gesellschaft: eine orientierungshilfe des rates der evangelischen kirche in deutschland (ekd). 2nd ed. gütersloh: gütersloher verl.-haus. ———. 2022. ekd-fachforum “inklusive kirche gestalten” 2021: aktionspläne inklusive kirche: 11.-12: oktober 2021 (digital), vol. 2022, nr. 19, dokumentation. frankfurt am main: gemeinschaftswerk d. evangelischen publizistik (gep). etzelmüller, gregor, and claudiaa rammelt (eds). 2022. migrationskirchen: internationalisierung und pluralisierung des christentums vor ort. leipzig: evangelische verlagsanstalt. eurich, johannes, and andreas lob-hüdepohl (eds). 2011. inklusive kirche, vol. 1, behinderung theologie – kirche. stuttgart: verlag w. kohlhammer. evangelische kirche im rheinland. 2013. da kann ja jede(r) kommen – inklusion und kirchliche praxis: eine orientierungshilfe der evangelischen kirche im rheinland. düsseldorf: abteilung bildung im landeskirchenamt und pädagogisch-theologisches institut der ekir. evangelische kirche von westfalen. 2016. gemeinsam kirche sein: gottesdienst feiern mit internationaler beteiligung: materialien für den dienst. bielefeld: evangelische kirche von westfalen. frey, jörg. 2014. “neutestamentliche perspektiven” in ralph kunz and tomas schlag (eds). handbuch für kirchenund gemeindeentwicklung. neukirchen-vluyn: neukirchener theologie: 31–41. gonzalez, jorge a., and azadeh zamanian. 2015. “diversity in organizations” in james d. wright (ed.), international encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences (second edition). oxford: elsevier: 595–600. grümme, bernhard. 2017. “‘diversity” in mirjam zimmermann and heike lindner (eds). wissenschaftlich-religionspädagogisches lexikon (wirelex). deutsche bibelgesellschaft. mailto:hanna.kauhaus@theologie.uni-halle.de 76 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22183 76 hauschildt, eberhard, and uta pohl-patalong. 2013. “kirche” in albrecht grözinger, christoph morgenthaler and friedrich schweitzer (eds). lehrbuch praktische theologie 4. gütersloh: gütersloher verlagshaus. herbst, michael. 2018. aufbruch im umbruch: beiträge zu aktuellen fragen der kirchentheorie: beiträge zu evangelisation und gemeindeentwicklung. göttingen: vandenhoeck & ruprecht; bristol, ct: neukirchener theologie. hermelink, jan. 2011. kirchliche organisation und das jenseits des glaubens: eine praktisch-theologische theorie der evangelischen kirche. gütersloh: gütersloher verl.-haus. jacobi, christopher. 2024. “religiosität und kirchlichkeit im altersund generationenvergleich” in sozialwissenschaftliches institut der evangelischen kirche in deutschland (ekd) and katholische arbeitsstelle für missionarische pastoral (kamp), wie hältst du’s mit der kirche? zur relevanz von religion und kirche in der pluralen gesellschaft: analysen zur 6. kirchenmitgliedschaftsuntersuchung. leipzig: evangelische verlagsanstalt gmbh: 208–29. kläden, tobias, and edgar wunder. 2024. “sozialstrukturelle ungleichheiten und ihre beziehungen zur religiosität” in sozialwissenschaftliches institut der evangelischen kirche in deutschland (ekd) and katholische arbeitsstelle für missionarische pastoral (kamp): 243–54. krieg, matthias. 2017. “‘seid umschlungen millionen! diesen kuss der ganzen welt!’: neun thesen zu milieuorientierung oder inklusion”, praktische theologie im reformierten kontext 15: 536–48. kunz, ralph (ed.). 2013. handbuch inklusion in der kirchengemeinde. göttingen: vandenhoeck & ruprecht. lange, katarina. 2022. “the christian message for single parents – challenges for mission and diakonia” in motte, parlindugan and hübner. building inclusive communities: how can churches fight against discrimination, exclusion and violence? contributions of young people from africa, asia and europe (für menschenrechte, vol. 22). solingen: foedus: 36–43. schulz, claudia. 2014. “sozialstrukturelle vielfalt, lebensstile und milieus” in ralph kunz and thomas schlag (eds). handbuch für kirchenund gemeindeentwicklung. neukirchen-vluyn: neukirchener verlag: 117–24. warmuth, gloria-sophia. 2012. “die strategische implementierung von diversitätsmanagement in organisationen” in bendl, hanappi-egger and hofmann (eds), diversität und diversitätsmanagement. wien: facultas: 203–36. wunder, edgar. 2024. “macht geschlecht einen unterschied? die schließung des gender gap bei der religiosität als säkularisierungsindikator” in sozialwissenschaftliches institut der evangelischen kirche in deutschland (ekd) and katholische arbeitsstelle für missionarische pastoral (kamp), 230–42. yadav, shatrughan, and usha lenka. 2020. “diversity management: a systematic review”, equality, diversity and inclusion: an international journal 39 (8): 901–29. hanna kauhaus fostering diversity in congregations: a practical framework for local churches to reflect and improve accessibility ecclesial futures 2025 – volume 6 – issue 1 84 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23522 b o o k r e v i e w doi: 10.54195/ef23522 legrand, lucien. 2023. paul and mission maryknoll, ny: orbis books isbn: 978-16-2698-516-2 reviewed by john d. doss lucien legrand’s study of paul and mission was initially published in french in 2021 as paul et la mission: apôtre des temps nouveaux. the english translation of his research on the man, the mission, the message and the method of paul the apostle is valuable for studying the new testament, early christianity, and the christian mission today. paul and mission is very readable, consisting of twelve concise chapters. the new testament scholar has a gift for expressing the complexity of paul’s thought in simple, understandable terms. moreover, as a member of the paris foreign mission society and professor emeritus at st peter’s institute of theology in bangalore, india, legrand is uniquely equipped to speak both to the ancient context and the contemporary implications of paul’s mission. legrand opens the preface by asking, “was paul a missionary?” the method he rigorously applies to answer this question is studying the seven undisputed or authentic pauline epistles (romans, 1–2 corinthians, galatians, philippians, 1 thessalonians and philemon). the pastoral epistles (1–2 timothy, titus) and especially the book of acts are also essential for reconstructing paul’s life and ministry even though they were written one or two generations afterward. chapter 1 is the prelude. legrand briefly sketches the life and times of the apostle, including his hometown of tarsus, roman citizenship, and especially his upbringing as a member of the jewish diaspora and training under rabbi gamaliel in jerusalem. chapters 2–5 are the first of three parts of paul and mission. legrand begins with his conversion on the damascus road, where he saw the risen lord and became an apostle. he focuses on paul’s own references to his conversion in galatians, 1–2 corinthians, and philippians. the damascus road encounter is reported several times in the book of acts. legrand acknowledges the differences between the portrayal of paul in his letters and acts. nevertheless, he identifies essential points of agreement, concluding that acts is useful for reconstructing the historical paul. in chapters 3–4, legrand explores two of paul’s most frequent selfidentifications: apostle and servant of jesus christ. the former is the basis of paul’s authority to 85 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23522 85 teach, preach and establish churches among the nations of the ancient world. paul defines an apostle as one who has seen jesus (1 cor. 9.1). hence, his damascus road conversion was not a dream or vision but a physical encounter with the risen lord himself. moreover, the frequent designations of himself as a servant (diakonos) and slave (doulos) of jesus emphasize his conformity to christ and personal communion with him. legrand notes the application for god’s servants today as those who must empty themselves to be united with christ and experience his fullness in their ministry. chapter 5 concerns paul’s message, especially his “gospel”. paul’s frequent use of the term demonstrates its centrality to his message. the gospel is the good news of god concerning his son, jesus christ. it is the message of love’s victory over human weakness accomplished by jesus’s resurrection, which is the divine power of salvation for the world. part 2 (chapters 6–10) is the longest and most critical section of paul and mission. chapters 6–7 concern paul’s missionary project. legrand begins by surveying parallels to the pauline mission in second temple judaism and roman hellenism. paul’s ministry remains distinct, though he is firmly situated in judaism. his purpose was not merely to preach the good news but to establish small communities of converts in major cities across the roman empire. hence, the church (ekklesia) was central to paul’s missionary project, the subject of chapter 7. the new covenant community is comprised of those who are baptized in the name of jesus and continually commemorate his death in the lord’s supper. furthermore, the church is a community united with christ through practicing christian virtue, especially the triad of faith, hope and love. legrand discusses paul’s mission field in chapter 8, defining his self-title as “apostle to the nations” (rom. 11.13). he argues that this was not an ethnic but a geographical designation since paul evangelized jews along with gentiles. moreover, paul’s assignment was to go west, where judaism was culturally absent. in contrast, the apostles and others focused on the southern and eastern parts of the roman empire that had large, established jewish communities. legrand moves on to paul’s methods in chapter 9. the apostle travelled with his missionary team around the empire by land and sea, working to support himself and receiving monetary support for his church-planting mission. paul wrote letters to continue communicating his message to the churches in his absence. chapter 10 explores paul’s “inculturation” of the gospel, i.e., the contextualization of a palestinian jewish sect for a greco-roman audience. he begins with an intriguing comparison between paul and jesus, who mainly taught rural peasants in galilee as opposed to the major metropolitan centers of the roman empire. he discusses the influence of stoicism on paul as well as hellenistic virtues like wisdom, freedom and glory. paul’s genius lay in expressing the core of jesus’s message in terms familiar 86 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23522 86 to his mediterranean audience, calling them to join the counter cultural jesus movement. the third and final part of paul and mission reflects on the source of the apostle’s power and his ministry of prayer. paul credits the holy spirit as the source of his seemingly inexhaustible energy. the gift of the spirit is also a primary motif in the book of acts, but legrand highlights paul’s distinct emphasis on the spirit’s resurrection power. in chapter 12, he asserts that paul’s prayers are a distinctive feature of his epistles among other ancient letters and indicate the centrality of prayer in his ministry. this has powerful implications for today as prayer is inseparably intertwined with mission. legrand concludes by answering his original question that luke presents paul as the model and hero of christian mission, while his letters provide an earlier and more personal portrait of the apostle. the resurrection was central to paul’s message of a new covenant community forged by faith in the lord jesus christ and transformed by the spirit into his image. paul and mission is a bath in the scriptures, especially the pauline epistles, and a helpful resource for understanding his missiology. legrand’s extensive focus on paul’s mission in the seven undisputed epistles and the book of acts is an important contribution to biblical studies. he is to be commended for situating paul within second temple judaism, not as a founder of a new world religion. the missiological principles he distils are applicable to all christians today, especially those serving in cross-cultural contexts. nevertheless, paul and mission has several shortcomings. first, while legrand’s style of successively citing multiple passages immerses readers in the pauline epistles, further comment on their interpretation is desired. libraries of books have been written on paul the apostle, resulting in numerous fiercely debated readings of his epistles. a contemporary study of paul’s mission cannot simply cite his letters, often lengthy block quotations, and assume readers know the proper meaning. i particularly enjoyed chapters 8–10 as legrand makes intriguing claims concerning the interpretation of paul and then supports his argument. these are more substantive and thought-provoking than other sections of paul and mission, which contain lengthy chain quotations with little exegetical comment. a second critique concerns legrand’s methodology. his dependence on the book of acts as a reliable source of historical information on the historical paul conflicts with his view that it is a later tradition along with the pastoral epistles. legrand often discusses the discrepancies between the portraits of paul in acts and his letters. yet his reconstruction of the pauline mission is sometimes primarily dependent on acts. further clarification of his methodology in this regard is needed. moreover, some of the distinctions legrand claims to have identified between the two corpora are suspect. for example, he asserts in chapter 3 that acts does not refer to paul as an apostle but reserves this title for the twelve. however, acts 14.4, 14 identify paul and 87 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23522 87 barnabas as apostles. legrand explains that the term apostolos should be understood here as “missionaries”. nevertheless, the data clearly challenge legrand’s interpretation of acts. finally, legrand’s portrait of paul is instructive but incomplete. it is striking that paul’s eschatology and doctrine of justification are almost entirely absent in paul and mission. instead, legrand focuses on the reconciliation at the cross and the present victory believers enjoy through the resurrection. his treatment of these themes and their bearing on paul’s mission are insightful. however, one cannot understand the apostle or his mission without engaging his eschatology. moreover, justification by faith in christ was central to paul’s message, as both the undisputed paulines and the book of acts (see 13.38-39) attests. in conclusion, despite its inadequacies, paul and mission is a valuable contribution to the ongoing study of history’s most celebrated missionary and its implications for the contemporary christian mission. about the reviewer rev john d. doss, asbury theological seminary, 204 n lexington ave, wilmore, ky 40390. contact: john.doss@asburyseminary.edu mailto:john.doss@asburyseminary.edu reviewed by john d. doss legrand, lucien. 2023. paul and mission ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 2 71 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19268 a r t i c l e doi: 10.54195/ef19268 healing the wounded to lead in the postcolonial church pieter h. j. labuschagne abstract amidst continuous calls for decolonization and africanization in theological reflection on the african continent, this paper looks at the effects of colonialism, its power and the inequalities and vulnerabilities it created, and how, long after the demise of the structures of colonialism, the coloniality1 of the heart and mind still lingers. as a white south african, of french huguenot descent, i come from the minority group which dominated non-white citizens during apartheid. i still benefit from this past privilege but the opposite is true for those who suffered under apartheid, who lives with a legacy of inferiority. for decolonialization to succeed, the historically wounded should be supported to find their true identity. this article makes use of exegesis by story as methodology to describe the journey of the old testament judge gideon, as an example of healing and restoration of the hearts and minds of the oppressed. the research furnishes the church with transformational principles that can be used to come alongside the oppressed, and to facilitating the healing of the wounded to become leaders. keywords: church as agent of change, coloniality, wounded, healers, leaders, restoration, transformation 1 colonialism is a political system where one nation forcefully rules over another. coloniality is the inclination of the heart and mind, where colonial sentiments live on – even when the system is abolished. the term coloniality is therefore used in this paper to refer to an inclination of the heart and mind, manifesting as attitudes, ways of knowing, and patterns of living that exist because of colonialism, which is in turn an external system that is forcefully imposed on people by others. seroto (2018: 3) defines coloniality as a result of how colonizers “undervalued and dehumanised the imagination and mind of indigenous people”. “coloniality survives colonialism. it is maintained in books, in the criteria of academic performance, in cultural patterns, in common sense, in the self-image of peoples, in aspirations of self, and so many other aspects of our modern experience. in a way, as modern subjects we breathe coloniality all the time and every day” (maldonado-torres 2007: 243). 72 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19268 72 1 introduction colonialism dominated large parts of the african continent and its people, with the western way of life being forced down on different african nations. eventually this political stranglehold of colonialism started to crumble. in south africa, the first democratic elections were held in 1994, shortly after the release of nelson mandela from prison in 1990. this was a watershed moment for south african politics, leaving behind apartheid and ushering in freedom and democracy. however, the dreams that people had of this new era started to wane and three decades later the call continues for decolonization and africanization, and to break the stranglehold that the historically privileged still have on the economy. though colonialism is dead, the lingering coloniality of people’s hearts and minds continue. this article calls on the church to intentionally implement godly principles that will heal hurting people and build their self-worth in a wounded world. in the 2024 national elections in south africa the african national congress (anc) lost their majority rule for the first time in three decades, securing 40.18% of the votes. this comes after a decade of political turmoil, state capture, and corruption. a government of national unity (gnu) is now in place consisting of the anc, their main opposition the democratic alliance, and eight other, smaller parties. though it falls outside the scope of this article, an interesting topic for future research would be how the local political shift in power will affect the coloniality of people’s hearts and minds. 2 materials and methods this article makes use of baird’s “exegesis by story” as research methodology. it is an integrated, wholistic approach, which includes all three traditional foci of interpretation: the author, the text, and the reader. the method starts with the text, as the primary focus, and then reconstructs and examines the life-story behind the text. note that the reader’s imaging of this world of scripture is not the work of imagination – the dangers of that kind of exegesis are obvious and well documented. imaging the world of scripture requires discipline: a thorough historical-grammatical analysis of the text must be conducted, with the text itself as the anchor point for imaging and understanding. however, exegesis must go one step further and reconstruct the life-story from the surface structure of the text. this back-story is the foreground, the focus of the search for meaning. how did the author and community struggle with circumstances or issues as revealed by the passage, and what was going on when the text was read for the first time by the original audience? 73 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19268 73 the key to understanding is to live in the story. imaging the world of the ancient community of faith allows the reader to interact with the author and their context in such a way that it becomes possible to live in it today. this method corresponds with the early church’s own exegetical method, which takes seriously the context of author, recipients, text, and readers. baird’s approach should not be confused with narrative theology, which can descend into theological relativism and a denial of objective truth. he simply calls for a deeper understanding of the text; to move beyond the surface structure to the deep structure of the text; to understand the text better. getting a glimpse of the people behind the text and the challenges that they faced makes the text more personal and easier to connect to modern readers and the challenges that they face. the world of scripture is like a city in which not only the ancient community dwelt but in which the community of faith continues to live today. this approach provides a holistic context for exegesis – understanding the process that lies behind the authors’ words. this leads to a measure of synchroneity with the author, the recipients, and the text. the more that modern readers become immersed in the story, the better their understanding of the text. the exegeted text and the constructed back-story show how the ancient audience applied the text, or were expected to apply it. exegesis by story makes application part of the process of exegesis as the modern reader understands and experiences the text, dwelling in their world provided by the ancient community of faith with the proper perspective to receive and to use the text. for the community of faith today, to dwell in the world of scripture and read the text in that context provides several advantages. the first advantage of exegesis by story is the holistic context of understanding that it provides: it helps us to understand what lies behind the authors’ statements. the second advantage is contemporaneity, to read and understand the text in the spirit of the times, leading to a significant measure of synchroneity with the author, recipients and text. the third advantage is that the exegeted text and the reconstructed life-story show how the ancient audience applied the text, or was expected to apply it, and therefore what effect the message was expected to have on its readers. 3 the effect of oppression this article looks at gideon, the old testament judge, as a type of the oppressed, and how his circumstances and bad experiences with israel’s oppressors shaped his way of thinking and acting. gideon’s story helps us to consider the effect of the coloniality of one’s heart and mind on our capacity and self-belief. before we turn to gideon, let us sketch the historical back-story in broad strokes. 74 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19268 74 israel entered canaan under joshua’s leadership after being set free from egypt and wandering in the desert for 40 years. joshua’s death led to a leadership void and everyone did what was right in their own eyes ( judg. 17.6, 21.25).2 this was a repetitive cycle. the israelites sinned against the lord and turned away from the lord; the lord’s anger burnt against them and they fell into the hands of their enemies; they called on the lord and the lord raised up a judge to deliver them; this led to a period or peace; until the people became disobedient again. the cycle repeated. hence, the lord appointed and equipped judges to rescue the israelites from their enemies. these judges resonate with folk tales about national heroes that we heard as children. some desperate situation presented itself and then, as if from nowhere, someone stepped up and saved the day. i always enjoyed these stories because it is part of a boy’s dna to seek adventure and be the hero. many of the heroes were young people and children, which had an even greater impact on me. the images that i conjured up of these heroes became part of my frame of reference. it formed part of my white, western perspective on leadership. i assumed that all heroes were powerful and capable. however, god has a different view of people. the lord does not measure people by the same standards as we do. in fact, the bible is saturated with examples of leaders whom god selected, whose selection ran contrary to these “powerful-hero-of-god” expectations. moses protested when god called him to lead his people from egypt because he did not consider himself qualified (exod. 3–4). nehemiah claimed that he was too young and could not speak (neh. 1.6). david was not even considered by his father as a candidate to become king – calling him to appear before the prophet as an afterthought. when jesse’s sons were presented to samuel, he marvelled at their physique. yet, god did not select any of them, but elected the teenage-shepherd as the next king (1 sam. 16.11-12). solomon saw himself as a little child who was incapable of ruling god’s people (1 kgs 3.6-9). jesus’ disciples were ordinary men and women, who did not have the same credentials as the jewish leaders, and had no special training in the scriptures (acts 4.13). it is clear that the lord does not make selections in the same way that humans do. god does not consider outward appearance but looks at the heart (1 sam. 16.7). the same is true of gideon’s call. his selection to serve as judge seems odd, not just to us but even to himself. the fact that he turned out to be a prominent judge is not evident in the account of his call. when we encounter him for the first time, he was 2 all scripture references are from the new living translation (nlt). 75 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19268 75 weak and fearful. in judges 6, we read that the midianites had been ruling over israel for seven years. they were cruel and the israelites had to hide from them in mountain caves. neither crops nor animals were safe from their plundering. the people cried out to god for help and the angel that was sent to gideon found him threshing wheat in a winepress, out of sight of the enemy. the following table summarizes the conversations that ensued between god, the angel and gideon. pay close attention to the words of each character. character gideon’s call to be a judge god’s enabling reference angel mighty hero the lord is with you judg. 6.12 gideon if the lord is with us, why has all of this happened to us? where are all the miracles our ancestors told us about? the lord has abandoned us and handed us over to the midianites. judg. 6.13 the lord go with the strength you have, and rescue israel from the midianites i am sending you! judg. 6.14 gideon how can i rescue israel? my clan is the weakest in the whole tribe of manasseh, and i am the least in my entire family! judg. 6.15 the lord you will destroy the midianites as if you were fighting against one man. i will be with you. judg. 6.16 in the table several themes stand out. first, gideon is addressed as “mighty hero” and is instructed to go in the strength that he has, and to rescue israel from their enemies. god adds that gideon will destroy the midianites and that it would be as easy as fighting against one man. in addition to this, the lord is sending gideon on this mission. twice it is stated that the lord is with gideon. as with the biblical leaders mentioned already, god is not looking at the immediate circumstances. god is looking to the future role that gideon will play. second, gideon’s response is quite negative. he does not see himself as a hero or believe that he can rescue his people. he points out that his clan is the weakest in his whole tribe, and that he is the least in his family. he doubts the lord’s presence; and 76 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19268 76 asks how all these bad things could have happened to them if the lord was indeed present with them. gideon did not see any of the miracles that the ancestors talked about. in fact, he believes that it is the lord who handed them over to the midianites. gideon is blinded by despair. all he can see is how dire his circumstances are. the surrounding enemy and the fear that they instilled made their home in gideon’s heart and mind. third, in modern terms, we could say that the israelites were the colonial subjects of midian. they were demoralized, stripped of all dignity and their land was plundered. people hid in caves and gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress; he was hiding so that his enemies would not confiscate his grain. for seven years they had been subjects of another nation and had been struggling for survival. these circumstances led to tunnel-vision, where survival and the here-and-now was all that mattered. the miracles of the past sounded like fables. the protection and presence of god seemed like lies. if the lord was with them, then why were they in this unbearable position? gideon heard the angel and the lord speak but he did not believe their words. in fact, because of gideon’s insecurity and vulnerability it was impossible for him to believe their words. it was not only the midianite oppression that kept gideon captive but also the coloniality of his heart and mind. paying attention to this deep story that lies behind the words of the text, aids modern readers to place themselves in gideon’s shoes. by pausing to ask how such circumstances would have affected us helps to live in gideons story and to understand his hesitance and resistance to god’s call. 4 decolonialization and decoloniality what we observe in gideon’s life is also true today. though colonialism, as a political system, ended in most countries, the coloniality of people’s hearts and minds still control them. on 14 july 1957 dr martin luther king jr delivered a sermon entitled overcoming an inferiority complex. he pointed out that “segregation generates a feeling of inferiority, that it gives the individuals under the system an inferiority complex … it’s so easy for us to feel that we don’t count, that we are not significant, that we are less than. we stand every day before a system which says that to us” (see also fanon 2021). on south african shores, steve biko (1987: 55) challenged blacks to see themselves as more than “appendages to white society”. colonization was not only established by physical force and violence but also by colonizing people’s hearts and minds (ngũgĩ wa thiongʾo 1981; mamdani 1996: 16–18), culture, language and education (androas 2012: 5; dladla 2011: 3; ngũgĩ wa thiongʾo 1981; mbembe 2016: 36; nkoane 2006: 62–3). 77 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19268 77 ngũgĩ wa thiongʾo (1981: 11–12) shares his experience as a child in a colonial school, where english was the language of the colony, and pupils were not allowed to speak gīkūyū near the school. the punishment for speaking gīkūyū was corporal punishment, a monetary fine, or wearing a metal plate around your neck with inscriptions like i am stupid or i am a donkey. the opposite was true when one did well in english. you were rewarded with prizes, prestige and applause. with the above in mind, it is not enough to put an end to oppressive political structures, to hand over control to the oppressed, and to expect them to be able to manage things in the new status quo. one also has to deal with the inward coloniality of the heart and mind, the lingering belief by people that they are inferior and not significant and the impression that they are incapable of success. it is here where the church should play an intentional role to heal the wounded to become leaders. it can only happen when people’s hearts are set free from the imprisonment of the past (cross & naidoo 2012: 228). jansen (2009: 5) rightfully refers to this as “bitter knowledge … how people remember and enact the past”. it is imperative that the church should minister to hearts and minds that were affected by social evils. 5 empowerment gideon challenged the lord, if it was truly the lord speaking, to prove it. when gideon returned with food that he prepared, the angel touched the food and it was consumed in fire and the angel disappeared. realizing that it was indeed an angel of the lord, gideon cried out that he was doomed, because he had seen the lord’s messenger face-to-face. when the lord assured him that he would not die, gideon built an altar for the lord ( judg. 6.17-23). this was the first turning point in his life and resulted in him destroying the baal altar and asherah pole, as instructed by the lord. gideon, the oppressed, initially rejected the claim that the lord was with him, was empowering him, and wanted to use him (judg. 6.12, 14, 16). yet, a personal encounter with the lord led to bold obedience and performing a dangerous and confrontational act of bravery ( judg. 6.27). what made the difference? dr king (1957) answered this question in the sermon referred to earlier. “you should go out with the assurance that you belong and that you count and that you are somebody because god loves you.” this is the same truth that transformed gideon from doubting the lord’s favour, blessing and power, and how he, gideon, the least in his family, and from the smallest clan in his tribe, rescued israel ( judg. 6.13, 15). 78 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19268 78 eventually, gideon went to war with 300 men against the 135,000-strong coalition forces of the enemy. not only did he and his men challenge them but pursued the survivors and captured them (judg. 7–8). what a transformation! what made the difference? what should we see in the unwritten story behind the text? what made the difference was gideon’s newfound identity in, and his dependence on, the lord. when he prepared for war, filled with the holy spirit, he consulted the lord to make sure that he acted in accordance to the lord’s will. the lord was with gideon and encouraged him by agreeing to give him the well-known sign of the fleece on the threshing floor ( judg. 6.36-40). the lord transformed a man with no self-belief into a bold leader, and a people with no hope into a willing army that marched towards the enemies. the circumstances were still the same. the enemy was still there, but god was changing gideon’s heart and mind. the deep story behind the text is one of despair that is slowly turning into hope and trust. gradually gideon started to realize that his real prison was not built by the midianites but by his own mind and heart. 6 developing confidence in reply to gideon’s request for a sign, he is assured that the lord would rescue the israelites and give them victory over their enemy ( judg. 7.7, 9). as an added confirmation, the lord encouraged gideon to go down into the enemy’s camp during the night. there, gideon heard a man talk about a dream that he had about gideon defeating them in battle. encouraged, he returned and marshalled his troops and the lord caused confusion in the enemy’s camp so that they started to kill one another. apart from the 120,000 that died in the chaos of that night, another 15,000 fled, were pursued, and captured by gideon and his men ( judg. 8.10-12). the lord’s enabling and empowering helped gideon to escape his own inferiority complex and to discover the capacity that god had given him. prolonged indoctrination and domination by those in power debilitates people. according to biko (1987: 86, 152–3, 166), fear led to a paralysis of the african spirit. from a position of white privilege, i was brought up with the belief that the sky is the limit. i can do anything that i set my mind to and this was mostly true because i had access to education, resources, experiences of success, and a life-long validation of my abilities. for those who suffered under apartheid, the opposite was true. when you are forcefully removed from your home and relocated to live in segregation under horrific conditions, it is hard to have self-belief. when you are subjected to inferior education, healthcare, career opportunities, citizen’s rights, and you are told that you are 79 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19268 79 nothing more than an animal, you start to believe it. it becomes impossible to stand up and take your rightful place in society (mashau 2018: 1, naidoo 2019: 171). apartheid was driven and characterized by fear and africans had every reason to fear the security forces, which detained and intimidated them (du toit 2008: 36). when change took place in south africa with the first democratic elections in 1994, many from the white community willingly ceded power to the very people that they previously oppressed. however, the message that accompanied their surrender of power was clear: we hand the country over to you – now govern and make a success of it. almost three decades later, whites and blacks are equally disillusioned by many failures. “in the emerging ‘rainbow nation’, the need to embrace another view of nature has been disorienting for many” ( johnson 2008: 624). the white community blames blacks for not trying hard enough, while the blacks blame apartheid. for both sides their argument makes logical sense. whites blame blacks for a lack of drive and zeal. they say blacks must “man-up”, stop blaming apartheid, and do something about their situation. from a white vantage point, this is the way one gets things done. yet, not having experienced oppression themselves, but rather benefitting from white privilege, whites are incapable of imagining how debilitating and destructive a life of oppression can be. they continue to “think white … believing that whiteness ought to be the norm” (green, sonn & matsebula 2007: 398). it is imperative that the church takes up the challenge to help people to address their whiteness and its power. mashau (2018: 5) rightly states that “whiteness needs to work through its christian heritage that is associated with imperialism, conquest and colonialism that fed racism”. there is also logic in black people blaming apartheid. the system of apartheid dehumanized and indoctrinated people to believe that they were inferior and incapable; something that has a stronghold on people’s minds and hearts. when you are thrown into the deep end and have never been taught to swim, are your oppressors not to blame when you sink and drown? mason says “we harbour inside ourselves the pain and the memories, the fears and the confusions, the negative self-images and the low expectations, turning them into weapons with which to re-injure ourselves, every day of our lives” (1990: 69). “the psychological effects which were caused by the apartheid system had a terrible impact upon black people. they resulted in black people doubting their humanness and doubting whether the god that was presented to them by missionaries and ministers of religion was their god” (lephakga 2012: 70). 80 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19268 80 the polarity of referring to “us” and “them” when we talk about other people does not support the move towards a more inclusive society. elsewhere i have written: the schism between africa and the west feeds on the reciprocal prejudice, propaganda and historical injustices, which is not a fertile ground for dialogue and collaboration … imperialists want to maintain the status quo – what can be more right than your own epistemology? that is also why the oppressed resist colonialism – what can be more wrong than another’s epistemology being forced upon you? (labuschagne 2022: 248–9) gideon’s story ends with approximately 40 years of peace ( judg. 8.28). his journey has come full-circle, from seeing himself as worthless when the lord called him, to leading his people to victory over the enemy, and experiencing a time of peace. this means change is possible. the lord, and the church as god’s agents, can make a difference in people’s self-belief and help them to see themselves for whom they really are. victims of social abuse can become restorers of social justice and the wounded can become the healer. joel 3.10 looked forward to the day of the lord, where even the weakling would become a warrior. gideon, the hero of our story, was a mighty hero all along. he just had to discover it and believe it for himself. the angel of the lord called him a hero when they met, because the lord sees beyond our limitations. god sees our potential and we should do the same. at the beginning of this article i pointed out my disillusionment at god’s selection of “unqualified” biblical leaders and how they even doubted themselves. yet, when we follow their stories, they all succeeded in their leadership roles, all the way from moses, nehemiah, david, solomon, to jesus’ disciples. it is valuable, therefore, to ask what the church should learn from the example of gideon, and how the church could make a meaningful contribution in helping people to find their true identity in christ. 7 results: from victim to victor several principles from gideon’s life should be consideration by the church, in healing victims of colonial oppression. the deep story behind the text is that gideon and his fellow jews suffered under the midianites, who were so cruel that the people had to hide in caves. the enemy constantly attacked them and stayed in the land until all the crops were destroyed and no animals were left. the enemy was so overpowering that they were like waves of locusts, too many to count. nobody can deny the devastation of the situation, given the israelites were starving ( judg. 6.2-6). normalcy did not exist. people were scattered and hiding in mountain crevices. all economic activities ceased. families 81 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19268 81 were separated, life-savings destroyed, properties demolished, cultural habits and practices violated. gideon and his people were hopeless and lacked confidence. in judg. 6.13 gideon conversed with the angel and asked why the israelites were suffering if the lord was with them. gideon heard about the miracles of the past, but in his dire circumstances it was hard to believe any of that. yes, the lord might have brought them out of egypt but now god had abandoned them and handed them over to the midianites. in judg. 6.15 gideon expanded on his lament by stating that he was a nobody, from the weakest clan in the tribe of manasseh, and that he was the least in his family. was this true? or was it the kind of exaggeration that often accompanies depression and despair? the angel and the lord did not rebuke gideon for his outbursts. they allowed him to speak and even to challenge the lord’s goodness and faithfulness to israel. yet, despite this outburst, the lord did not compromise on the mission. gideon was chosen to set the people free from their enemies. nowhere in the account of gideon did the lord ever verbally challenge gideon’s outburst. god simply encouraged him through a series of signs and faith experiences. these are important principles to consider. gideon was blinded by his circumstances but the lord saw future peace for israel. god announced a plan and took gideon along on the journey. from being nobody (in his own eyes) gideon soon became jerub-baal, which means “let baal defend himself” (nlt). the scared fugitive that we met a few verses earlier, now became a baal-slayer ( judg. 6.27-32). subsequently, when israel’s enemies assembled and camped in the valley of jezreel, a new gideon emerged. where he was hiding in a winepress 30 verses earlier, he now acted bravely, “the spirit of the lord clothed gideon with power. he blew a ram’s horn as a call to arms” ( judg. 6.34). gideon’s previous, cynical attitude made way for a bold display of power. the lord did not persuade gideon with words, but allowed him to experience the lord and to see the lord at work with his own eyes. that made all the difference. the church must learn from gideon’s encounter with the lord that our efforts to bring restoration and healing must not be limited to talking and writing about it. we need to remember that “the kingdom of god is not just a lot of talk; it is living by god’s power” (1 cor. 4.20). the church should contribute what the world does not have, empowered by the enabling of the lord. the church consists of those called by god into god’s kingdom. the church is where people are healed and grow and minister as part for the body of christ. in rom. 12.2 paul urges us not to “copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let god transform you into a new person by 82 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19268 82 changing the way you think”. talking is not enough – the church should bring lasting change and reconciliation through lived experiences with god. the backstory must change. people must experience god’s ways. this has five concluding implications. first, we met gideon threshing wheat in a winepress – far from the prying eyes of his enemy. he was negative and scoffed at god’s call to rescue his people. his circumstances and his oppressors did not allow any space for a positive self-image. they wanted the israelites to know who was in charge, and robbed them of their identity, self-belief and courage. the threat of the enemy was as much an external reality as it was an internal one. the israelites were not only hiding from their enemies; they forgot who they were. shifting our focus to the oppression by the west, ngũgĩ points out that language has a dual character – it is a means of communication and a carrier of culture (1981: 13). forcing africans to speak english, separated them from themselves, their words and their world. ngũgĩ adds that language “is the collective memory bank of a people’s experience in history” (15). language carries culture and is therefore inseparable from people and the community they belong to (16). by forcing them to use the colonial language learning, “for a colonial child, became a cerebral activity and not an emotionally felt experience” (17). in embracing his own culture, ngũgĩ eventually abandoned english, and only wrote in gīkūyū. it is important for the church to contribute to the change that is needed in the world. social injustice is something that should be dealt with in the church, especially in churches were the previous colonial influences are evident in the liturgy, polity, and language. space should be created for church members to feel safe enough to exit the winepress, like gideon, and to experience faith in ways that resonate with their own culture and background. it took gideon a long time to get from the winepress to the battlefield but the rewriting of his narrative by the lord and the angel messenger is what led gideon on his way. second, neither the angel nor the lord rebuked gideon for his attitude; they simply continued to share their plan with gideon. the lord knew that gideon needed time and encouragement to believe about himself what the lord already knew. sometimes gideon asked for a sign, and sometimes god took the initiative in providing a sign. initially gideon had a negative attitude and he did not have any self-belief, as a consequence of his circumstances. the lord, however, had a plan and saw in gideon a person who could fulfil that plan. to succeed, gideon had to get up, stand firm, and live up to what god was asking from him. the church should help believers to associate with such truths, because god is always at work in transforming people into god’s likeness and into useful vessels. instead of talking to people about their desperate context, or judging them for the debilitating effect it has on them, the church should model faith, speak the truth, and encourage belief. fixing people’s eyes on the lord and on his purposes, sets people free from the prison of their past. 83 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19268 83 third, what the lord said about the biblical leaders mentioned in this paper was the opposite of what they believed about themselves. yet, this is what made them dependent on the lord. these leaders could not succeed without god. the church should help people to look beyond their lack of faith or belief in what we can do for god. further, the church should help people to experience god’s call and to be challenged like never before. those who are reduced to the lower rungs of society, those who have no self-belief, those who are oppressed and mistreated can be healed and become successful leaders. fourth, gideon, the one hiding in a winepress, became gideon, the leader of an army. from hiding, to calling people publicly to war, was a complete transformation. note what this transformation in gideon’s life accomplished. it gave courage to his people and they came out of hiding to follow him. the lord is lord of the underdog. the lord uses those we do not consider worthy so that god’s power can shine through and that all can see what god is capable of. fifth, gideon saw no way out of his situation. he had not seen the great exploits of the lord that his ancestors referred to. he believed that they were in this difficult situation because of god and he did not see how a nobody, like himself, could be of any use to his people. he had obstacles that kept him from obedience. these included the fact the enemy was strong and outnumbered them, he was from a small clan, had no physical strength and his own father was worshipping baal. while these physical barriers incapacitated gideon, what was rooted much deeper in his heart and mind, was his own coloniality, the belief that he was useless. it was only when the lord started to rewrite his narrative, that gideon gained confidence and obeyed the call of god. if god had not reached out to gideon, he would have remained in the winepress, imprisoned by his own heart and mind. the church should stand against the physical and psychological barriers which remain after decades of colonial oppression. it the church does not reach out to those incapacitated by their own coloniality, and paint a godly picture of life for them, they will remain imprisoned. the church should echo the lord’s words to gideon: “mighty hero, the lord is with you!” ( judg. 6.12). about the author pieter h. j. labuschagne serves as the head of course development at the south african theological seminary and is the pastor of northway baptist church in pretoria, south africa. with over 20 years of experience as a missionary, his research interests encompass missiology, contextual studies, hermeneutics, and ecclesiology. contact: pieter@sats.ac.za 84 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19268 84 references andraos, m. e. 2012. “engaging diversity in teaching religion and theology: an intercultural, decolonial epistemic perspective”, teaching theology and religion 15(1), 3–15, https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-9647.2011.00755.x baird, m. 2018. “exegesis by story: the disciplined imagination of the world of scripture.” journal of biblical and theological studies 3(2): 298–311. available at https://www.perlego. com/book/1721925 (accessed 22 oct. 2024). biko, s. 1987. i write what i like: a selection of his writings. johannesburg: heinemann. cross, m., and d. naidoo. 2012. “race, diversity pedagogy: mediated learning experience for transforming racist habitus and predispositions”, review of education, pedagogy, and cultural studies 34(5), 227–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714413.2012.735558 dladla, n. 2011. decolonising the university in south africa: a precondition for justice, https://www. academia.edu/1031311/decolonising_the_university_in_south_africa_a_precondition_ for_liberation (accessed 31 dec. 2020). du toit, c. 2008. “black consciousness as an expression of radical responsibility: biko an african bonhoeffer”. religion & theology 15, 1–2, 28–52, doi: 10.1163/157430108x308145. fanon, f. 2021. black skin, white masks. penguin modern classics. green, m., c. sonn and j. matsebula. 2007. “reviewing whiteness: theory, research, and possibilities”. south african journal of psychology 37, doi: 10.1177/008124630703700301. jansen, j. d. 2009. knowledge in the blood: confronting race and the apartheid past, cape town: uct press. johnson, w. r. 2008. “are ‘whites’ in south africa really ready for democracy?” social identities, 14(5): 621–36. doi: 10.1080/13504630802343440. king, martin luther, jr. 1957. overcoming an inferiority complex, in clayborne carson, susan carson, susan englander, troy jackson, and gerald l. smith, eds. (2007). the papers of martin luther king, jr. volume vi: advocate of the social gospel, september 1948 – march 1963. berkeley, ca: university of california press. labuschagne, p. h. j. 2021. “western theological education must fall: the impact of western theological training on africa”, in knoetze, j. j., and a. r. brunsdon (eds), (2021), a critical engagement with theological education in africa: a south african perspective, in reformed theology in africa series volume 7, pp. i–338, cape town: aosis. lephakga, t. 2012. “reclaiming god and reclaiming dignity: the history and future of black liberation from internalised oppression”. studia historiae ecclesiasticae 38(2): 65–80. maldonado-torres, n. 2007. “on the coloniality of being: contributions to the development of a concept,” cultural studies 21:2–3, 240–70. mamdani, m. 1996. citizen and subject: contemporary africa and the legacy of late colonialism. princeton, nj: princeton university press. mashau, t. d. 2018. “unshackling the chains of coloniality: reimagining decoloniality, africanisation and reformation for a non-racial south africa”, hts teologiese studies/theological studies 74(3), 4920. https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v74i3.4920 mason, m. 1990. “internalised oppression”. in rieser, r. and mason, m. (eds), disability equality in the classroom, london: inner london education authority. mbembe, a. 2016. “decolonising the university: new directions”, arts & humanities in higher education 15(1), 29–45. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022215618513 naidoo, m. 2019. “racism, whiteness and transformation: reforming the space of theological education in south africa”m reforming practical theology 1 (2019): 168–75, https://dx.doi. org/10.25785/iapt.cs.v1i0.68. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9647.2011.00755.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9647.2011.00755.x https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v74i3.4920 https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022215618513 https://dx.doi.org/10.25785/iapt.cs.v1i0.68 https://dx.doi.org/10.25785/iapt.cs.v1i0.68 85 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19268 85 ngũgĩ wa thiongʾo. 1981. decolonising the mind: the politics of language in african literature. nairobi: east african educational publishers. nkoane, m. m. 2006. “the africanisation of the university in africa”, alternation 13(1), 49–69. seroto, johannes. 2018. “dynamics of decoloniality in south africa: a critique of the history of swiss mission education for indigenous people.” studia historiae ecclesiasticae 44(3), 1–14. ecclesial futures 2025 – volume 6 – issue 1 77 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23521 b o o k r e v i e w doi: 10.54195/ef23521 herbst, michael, andreas c. jansson, david reißmann and patrick todjeras. 2024. evangelisation: theologische grundlagen, zugänge, und perspektiven1 leipzig: evangelische verlagsanstalt isbn: 978-3-374-07514-0 (print) stoppels, sake, jan marten praamsma and jan martijn abrahamse. 2023. zoeken naar de dingen die boven zijn: heil in een seculiere tijd2 utrecht: kokboekencentrum uitgevers isbn: 978-90-435-4036-0 (print) reviewed by edwin chr. van driel among german theologians and religious studies scholars, evangelism is not a cool topic, so the writers of evangelisation: theologische grundlagen, zugänge, und perspektiven assert. therefore, as convinced students of the subject, they have launched a contextually appropriate mission to place evangelism back on the academic agenda. for the sake of german theological scholars, used to massive academic handbooks that with unparallelled pünktlichkeit discuss every historical, systematic and practical aspect of a certain topic, the writers produce exactly that. in three parts, ten chapters, and five hundred thirty-five pages, they discuss the biblical grounding, historical expression, systematic-theological embeddedness, and practical theological implications of the christian practice of evangelism. the four authors of the book were or are all connected to the former research institute for evangelism and church development at the university of greifswald 1 evangelization: theological foundations, approaches, and perspectives. 2 seeking the things above: salvation in a secular age. 78 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23521 78 or to its successor institutes at the martin-luther-universität of halle-wittenberg university of halle-wittenberg (missional church development at the centre for empowerment studies) and in austria (institut zur erforschung von mission und kirche). for twenty years, after its founding in 2004, the institute at greifswald was a somewhat lonely, but also highly productive voice, engaging developments in missional thinking in other parts of the western world and contributing to them from the perspective of the deeply secularized context of eastern and central germany. that work is now continued at the other two institutes. in the first part of the book, david reißmann lays the foundations of the discussion by offering an extensive historical account of the concept “evangelism” from its roots in the new testament up to contemporary usage both in international missional and german ecclesial and academic accounts. andreas c. jansson follows with two chapters on the history of the practice and theology of evangelism, the first focused on evangelism in german protestantism since the eighteenth century, the second on the notion of evangelism in international missional theology since the twentieth century. the second part turns in a theological direction, beginning with two essays by patrick todjeras. the first essay returns to the new testament notion of gospel/to evangelize and then document the remarkable lack of systematic theological reflection on the idea of evangelism in german-language literature. this lack stands in contrast to the notion of “faith” (glaube) and the path to faith, which receives significant attention in literature rooted both in pietism and liberalism. todjeras lists a number of reasons why evangelism is theologically ignored, ranging from a perceived notion that evangelism is a practical theological concern rather than a systematic theological one, to cultural and theological resistance against the very idea of proselytizing and conversion (136–7). in the rest of this wide-ranging chapter todjeras attempts to remedy this situation by looking at evangelism from the full range of theological loci, from trinity and creation to ecclesiology. interestingly, he does not push it all the way to eschatology, even while significant praxes of evangelism are eschatologically motivated. in a subsequent chapter todjeras zooms in on the appropriation of faith in conversion or rebirth. this chapter is also most explicit about the book’s confessional commitments, which are best characterized as “generous lutheranism”. the book of concord and the following lutheran theological tradition are the cantus firmus for todjeras’ reflections. in the next two chapters, andreas jansson follows up with parallel theological analyses of the place of and reflection on the idea of evangelism in temporary missiology and practical theology. michael herbst concludes this part of the book with an extensive constructive contribution offering a “practical theology of evangelism”. herbst registers a similarly silencing of or resistance against evangelism among german practical theology as todjeras noted concerning systematic theology (270–86). in response, herbst offers a wide-ranging 79 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23521 79 discussion of both the theological motivation for evangelism as well as its practice as embedded in the holistic life of the christian community. this chapter is particularly sensitive to the post-christian context in which evangelism in western europe takes place and engages the classics of a philosophical analysis of the secular (such as charles taylor) and the wider missional theological debate. in particular, herbst takes up lesslie newbigin’s suggestion that the congregation is the hermeneutic of the gospel and develops an account of all the various ways in which the congregation gives public – and thereby evangelistic – witness to its faith. herbst accounts for the goal of evangelism as conversion, but, based both on theological considerations and empirical research, wishes to conceive of conversion as a longer journey that itself leads to a continued life of nachfolge (“discipleship”; dietrich bonhoeffer) rather than a particular moment in time. if there is such a moment, herbst locates it, with paul, in baptism, when one dies and is resurrected with christ (392), rather than in a moment of human agency. the third part of the book explores the idea of evangelism in two different directions. in his chapter, patrick todjeras takes on the question of what evangelization might look like in the unexplored realm of digital space. he maps the various digital religious practices and explores if and how they are conducive to evangelism. in the last chapter, david reißmann ventures in another direction. his is the most constructive theological discussion, taking the topic right to the gates of german academic theology. when theological reflection is focused on religion rather than revelation, with the particularities and contextualities of people’s experiences and convictions suppressed for the sake of the modernist construct of religio, evangelism is nothing more than another human religious expression, and an intolerant one at that. the heart of reißmann’s counterargument is the urging for the christian community not to understand “evangelism” as an expression of matthew 28, but of luke 4. that is, evangelism is less about a commissioned activity of humans than it is about revelation; it is less about an obedient witnessing on our part than that it is about an inbreaking in all our lives – church people and academics alike – by the living god, a pouring out of the spirit, a lifegiving work of christ that demands not analysis, but a response. evangelisation can thus be read as an act of evangelism itself, a contextual witness to the gospel in an (academic) european culture that is increasingly post-christian. but the book can also be read for the sake of determining what new thinking is demanded of us as we reflect on the gospel and its proclamation in a post-christian world, and where our theological conceptualization is still thin, and our footing unsure. evangelisation can help us to identify at least three. first, what is the hoped-for outcome of evangelism? when congregations and churches give witness to the gospel, what vision drives them? in a christendom 80 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23521 80 context, where the christian faith was woven into the fabric of society, evangelism was meant to deepen that christian conviction, to let is shape not only public but also individual lives and to draw back those who might have wandered away from the faith of their youth. as christendom unravelled, evangelism for many became a means to attempt dechristianization, revival and finding new and fresh ways to counter the powers of secularism. but as in post-christian europe the immanent frame thickens (charles taylor), and not just the christian faith, but any form of religiosity becomes to be seen as implausible or irrelevant, such dreams of revival seem increasingly improbable. what then shall we hope for? moreover, in the background of such considerations are also deep questions that touch directly on the perceived identity of the church and its role in society, questions about the relationship between christ and culture. christendom is built on the idea that christ is transforming culture, and that the church is a critical instrument or expression of this. post-christian realities seem to deal such vision a deadly wound. but then what should the church hope for when it preaches the good news? such questions come particularly to the fore in michael herbst’s essay. at several places he refers to contemporary dutch missiologist stefan paas, who argues that we are to accept that the world will never be christian, and that until the last day church and world will be different entities (e.g., 305–7). on such a view, mission in the post-christian west needs a radically differently vision from anything akin to post-christianization. paas finds such vision in the idea that the church, on pilgrimage in exile, is to be a priestly community that prays and worships for and on behalf of the world. as such, it gives witness to the gospel, it welcomes and rejoices about those who wish to join her, but its witness is not driven by the expectation that the nations will (re)turn to the church. paas is an increasingly influential voice in the european missional conversation. herbst acknowledges the appeal of paas’ vision but is not ready to sign up. is the biblical witness not more hopeful than that of an essential and enduring differentiation between church and world? if that is so, what does this mean for evangelism in the reality of a post-christian society? second, but closely related to the first dilemma, is that of divine speech. evangelisation can be read as a contextualization of the international missional reorientation on the missio dei. that idea is now applied to the european and, in particular, german theory and praxis of evangelism. this is particularly expressed in the final essay by david reißmann. evangelism is not our speaking in response to the gospel we have received, but it is god’s transformative speaking and working of goodness and healing. this is indeed the implication of the idea of the missio dei. notice, however, the unreflected assumption of these arguments: that god continues to speak. but is god still speaking? if god is, where is our post-christian reality coming from? why is western culture caught in what seems to be an increasingly immanent framemin which the transcendent seems to have no place or voice? is this simply the result 81 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23521 81 of human mishearing, or unwillingness to listen? but that would suggest that god’s speaking is not as transformative as we hope it might be; that it very easily can be drowned out and ignored, that far more than we might be theologically comfortable with, creatures are the masters of their own universe. therefore: might post christian realities not be the result of something else – that is, that sometimes god does not speak? the scriptures speak of times when “the word of the lord was rare, and visions were not widespread” (i sam. 3.1). might we not live in a similar time? contemplating the idea that we might experience divine silence rather than divine speech and mission is not comfortable. it also raises deep theological questions about god’s relationship to history and divine intentionality within history. at the same time: if this is indeed what we are experiencing, we ignore these kinds of questions at our peril. third, we seem to be living in a time when history has sped upon considerably. i was particularly aware of this in reading patrick todjeras’ essay on evangelism in digital space. while he does an excellent job naming and reflecting on the various questions that come up as we are trying to understand what digital reality is, and how community and communication happen there, todjeras could not have realized how in recent months the owners of digital space – the technology gurus that own, shape and manipulate the social media on which most digital community life takes place – would prostrate themselves for the new american president and make common cause with what can only be characterized as a new authoritarian, illiberal, post-christian regime. in fact, through the engineering of algorithms and other means, social media have become instruments that actively manipulate the electorate to usher in illiberal democracies, which in turn will serve the expansion of wealth and power for those who own those very same digital spaces. this invites renewed (theological) reflection on the realities we are dealing with here. is digital space a neutral expansion of the space already familiar to us, to be used for good or bad; and are the social media platforms, on which most forms of evangelism take place, simply the cities and houses that allow us to inhabit this space and reach out to our digital neighbours with blessing or curse? or do the developments of the last months reveal that digital space and social media are intrinsic instruments of wealth and power, designed to manipulate free citizens into commodities, and not just supporting, but actively furthering a project to colonize our hearts and minds in the service of venture capitalism? if so, is there any sense for christian communities to inhabit those spaces, thereby contributing to the ways they make money for their owners and furthering the ways our identities are shaped by digital space, or are christian communities called to counter-culturally resist the role digital realities play in our lives and unmask social media networks for what they are? 82 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23521 82 a fourth place where our theological thinking is thin, and our footing is unsure, is voiced by the other book up for review. its editors have worked together on a research project sponsored by the ede christian university of applied sciences in the netherlands, the country neighbuoring germany to the west. since the netherlands is just as secularized as eastern germany, dutch theologians are wrestling with many of the same questions as their german colleagues. the question raised in the ede research project is: when it comes to missional work, the forming of new worshipping communities and missional outreach to a post-christian society, what is the nature of the good news we believe we inhabit and share? what do we take to be the nature of salvation of which the christian faith speaks? their research and that of others revealed that many contemporary church planters in the secular west are highly motivated to working on forming new relationships and creating new places of community. they have a much harder time, though, in locating this work theologically in some account of salvation. research shows that both pastors of existing congregations and leaders on church plants find it challenging to formulate an account of christian salvation. soteriological models that turn around individual accounts of sin and grace are considered outdated and, in fact, somewhat embarrassing. church planters feel uncomfortable telling people that they are “bad”. they are much more interested in the practical work of countering loneliness and engaging questions of meaning making, but are unclear on how to understand this kind of work in terms of christian soteriology. following british researcher philip wall, the editors of the book speak of “soteriological agnosticism”. as they characterize it also, this is the immanentization of christian soteriology. but salvation has to turn around more than building of community or making the world a better place. without a transcendent dimension, salvation loses its hopeful character. the twenty-two essays in this book offer avenues to explore new ways of speaking about salvation in a secular time. in character, this book is very different from evangelisation. whereas the german book is more determinate in its conclusions, the essays in the dutch book are exploratory, open-ended, a first inquiry into a subject that demands significantly more attention. the essays take us in many different directions: explorations about soul and positive psychology; disability and soteriology; an intercultural dialogue about soteriology in african and dutch contexts; contextualization of israel’s liberating understanding of its god for a contemporary city like amsterdam; the relationship between salvation and christian practices. (given the fact that these essays are in dutch, few readers of this journal will be able to access them. i understand an english-language collection of similar essays, product of the same research project, is forthcoming soon from brill.) for the sake of this review the observation to make is this, though: the fourth challenge for our thinking about the missional challenge in a post-christian world is 83 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef23521 83 that post-christianity is not something that happens outside the church; it plagues also us within the church. if secularity is characterized by a loss of the sense of the transcendent, by living in the immanent frame, then, as the project that produced this book illustrates, those who lead the church do not escape it. thus, we are called to missionally and theologically examine our own practices of proclamation and theologizing, of prayer and ministry, as much as we consider what it means to faithfully reach out to those outside the church. about the reviewer edwin chr. van driel, directors’ bicentennial professor of theology, pittsburgh theological seminary (usa). contact: evandriel@pts.edu mailto:evandriel@pts.edu reviewed by edwin chr. van driel stoppels, sake, jan marten praamsma and jan martijn abrahamse. 2023. zoeken naar de dingen die boven zijn: heil in een seculiere tijd herbst, michael, andreas c. jansson, david reißmann and patrick todjeras. 2024. evangelisation: theologische grundlagen, zugänge, und perspektiven ecclesial futures 2025 – volume 6 – issue 1 21 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22223 a r t i c l e doi: 10.54195/ef22223 regional and/or local: can church be present in close proximity and in regional cooperation at the same time?1 michael herbst abstract this article deals with the efforts of the churches in germany to rebuild the structures of church life in view of the loss of members and resources. the experiences with structural reforms of the last 20 years are evaluated. a critical light is shed on the associated danger of prioritizing structural issues and losing sight of theological aspects as well as missional calling. in addition, structural reforms are creating ever larger units; the life of the local community is drying up more and more. in contrast, it is proposed here to pay equal attention to local and regional church work, to promote the maturity of the local community (including in worship services without a pastor), to promote regional cooperation and to focus on the church’s mission to serve the kingdom of god in local and regional social spaces. missional ecclesiology proves to be a critical and constructive corrective to a church reform that is only oriented towards structures. keywords: regional church cooperation, structural church reforms, missional ecclesiology, decline of the “volkskirche” (people’s church) 1 introduction this paper deals with dilemmas of fundamental changes of church life. due to the decline of members and resources, the churches in germany restructure church life and services and bring together several local congregations in greater regional units. this strategy causes controversial debates. local churches complain about the loss of proximity to their people. they expect more cuts – in waves. today’s 1 this article was first presented as a lecture at the icef conference from 5 to 9 june 2024 in halle (germany). the oral style was largely retained. 22 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22223 22 solutions could be tomorrow’s problems. the idea of a “regio-local” church tries to reconcile the idea of a local church which is close to its people with the need to save resources. under the bottom line this concept is based on the idea of self-employed local churches; it recommends encouraging the local christian people to take over responsibility for local church life and to concentrate activities on local worship and giftor charisma-oriented services. this is in tension to the parochial principle that has been customary in the evangelical churches in germany to date. its aim is the sacramental and pastoral “care” of all church members in a certain area, who are automatically listed as members of a local church when they choose their place of residence. this parochial way of organizing church in germany is under severe pressure, because the number of people who are members of the church is rapidly declining. this dynamic has an immediate effect on resources, like money and paid staff. thus, the german evangelical churches are looking for new attempts and ways of being church and organizing local ecclesial life, which is strategically linked to a more regional level. ideally, the regional and the local level of being church are deeply connected and support each other. this is the basic idea of regio-local church development. for the future of the church at least two things are needed: one the one hand, a regional ecclesial strategy is important. on the other hand, vital and inviting church communities that are places of attraction for their surroundings are crucial for being church, where people are. which paths lead to a good future for the church? we should pay particular attention to the relationship between local communities and the regional church. 2 mission statements of the church we start with the question of what really is meant, when talking about the church whose path into the future we are looking for. i want to remind us of three key statements. first, church exists for the sake of the gospel. in 1530 the reformers said in very concise terms what is important when talking about the church (cf. amt der velkd 2013; confessio augustana, 1530: art. vii). the church is the assembly of believers. in this assembly people should hear and experience the gospel. they should hear who jesus christ is for them, they should hear that their lives are sustained by grace and mercy, that they are justified before god, regardless of what they achieve, but also free from all their guilt. we can put it this way: that they are justified by grace and thus free to live a life of faith, love and hope. church is the gathering where people come together to hear and celebrate this gospel. and to emphasize that, the reformers tell us something else: in order to be a church and to get along with others who are also a church, it is not necessary to agree with each other on all the ceremonies instituted 23 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22223 23 by people. with this statement the reformers tell us what is mandatory and where we are more flexible (cf. abraham 2007). we are fundamentally bound to what makes faith possible and brings the church into being: the gospel, which the holy spirit brings to the people through word and sacrament and through which he calls the people of god together. this is what church is for. but we are fundamentally free to adapt, rebuild and redesign the church’s “ceremonies”. ceremonies are structures, liturgies, church professions, forms of community, financing, size and layout of congregations – always in connection with the fundamental task of making the gospel accessible. we are free to adapt, rebuild and redesign. if circumstances so require, we are even obliged to do so. it is not completely irrelevant how we arrange our ceremonies, but our ceremonies can be arranged in different ways and our current ways can be changed. perhaps one could say with john 12.24: even ceremonies sometimes have to die like a grain of wheat so that the service of a church can be fruitful again. my second image comes from the anglican church, the church of england. here we can see that the church is a creature of the word of god (creatura verbi). figure 1 shows more precisely how the church that hears and celebrates the gospel will live. its life consists of four relationships (moynagh 2012: 99–119). she should maintain, develop and expand these relationships: – it is (1) the relationship with god (“up”), to whom she listens, to whom she prays and whom she praises. – it is (2) the inward relationship (“in”): those who have heard the gospel cannot be indifferent to one another. they become sisters and brothers. they may be highly different, but they share the same faith. they are there for each other. they live in some form of fellowship. – it’s (3) the relationship to the outside (“out”): the inward community is important, but it doesn’t exist for its own sake. we are on the lord’s mission, and this means we are on our way to the people in our world. the church shall bear witness to the gospel and pass it on, in word and deed. she should introduce people to faith in christ and recommend it to their hearts. it is “the universal task of the church: to witness to jesus christ and to make disciples in the challenging context of secularized europe” (paas 2016: 240). – and it’s (4) the relationship “downwards” (“of”). every congregation is a church, but no congregation is the whole church. that’s why local churches are connected to other local churches. this is important for our topic: local churches cannot be indifferent to one another. they form a network of communities that share faith in christ – even if our ceremonies differ significantly from one another (herbst and pompe 2022). 24 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22223 24 figure 1 the four sets of relationships a congregation thrives when it nurtures these four relationships, striving to grow and mature in each of these four relationships. thirdly, in ephesians 4 we read (4.11-14, niv): “so christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the son of god and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of christ” (cf. barth 1974; böttrich 1999; hofius 2006). in the church there are people who take on special tasks. here in ephesus there are five. there are apostles and prophets, but there are also evangelists, pastors and teachers. there could be others (with other titles) too, that’s not the point here. we can roughly imagine what they do, the founders and preachers, the pastors and the missionaries, the teachers. and today we say very consciously: there are men and women in these and similar tasks. but the point is this: these people with their special talents are a gift to the community. but why? so that they take good care of the community and do everything a local church does in their place? no, the apostle puts it like this: these special ministries of pastors, teachers, evangelists and so on exist so that the church, that is the saints, the baptized and gifted, so that the people in the church are equipped: encouraged, trained, empowered, accompanied. and then the church should be built up through this service of the saints, which means 25 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22223 25 the relationships should be maintained upwards and downwards, inwards and outwards. the pastors and deacons, the musicians and educators, the youth leaders and administrators (and other full time, paid staff) do not replace the actions of the fellowship of believers, but rather they equip the “saints”. 3 what we are currently experiencing as a church: on the way to become a minority one central insight of the latest (sixth) church membership survey in the protestant church in germany (ekd 2023) is that we are not simply becoming smaller at a high level, but that we are experiencing a massive shrinkage. the number of people actually leaving church remains at a very high level. the willingness to leave, particularly among young people, remains high. only 35 % of our members rule out leaving the church. fifty years ago, it was 83 % (ekd 2023: 57). the church is becoming smaller at a rapid pace. today we are interested in local church communities and the regional network of churches. in local churches people often feel the decline somewhat late, because the local worship services and the groups and meetings can still function quite well and may be well attended. maybe they have fewer confirmation candidates, maybe slightly fewer baptisms and weddings. but at the bottom line it feels normal. and the active members are faithful. that’s because the shrinkage is starting at the edges of the church, among those who were once unquestionably evangelical without attending church every sunday. but even as rather passive members they thought it was a good idea to be protestant and to celebrate the major transitions in life with church, like baptism, confirmation, marriage, burial. they also sent their children to protestant kindergartens and attended worship services on christmas eve. the number of these people is now decreasing at a relatively high rate. so we are crumbling mainly at the edges. you can picture it like this: the majority of people in our country live secular lives. it is becoming more and more normal not to belong to church and not to share christian beliefs. the new normal exerts gentle pressure on those who still belong – in one way or another – to church. but this pressure affects the fringe of the minority – not the core of the convinced and active (müller, pollack and pickel 2013). 26 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22223 26 figure 2 “pressure” we are on the way from a “volkskirche” (people’s church) (huber 2003) to a still considerable but minority church. in the long run, the church will be composed of those who are convinced and more or less involved – and that is at least partly good news. that’s why we don’t immediately see the demolitions on site: the convinced and active people are there – and mostly remain so. but the “naturalness” of faith is lost. this minority church will operate in a highly secular environment. the latest church membership survey shows the trend towards a secular society that doesn’t know what to do with the christian message. among germans, 56%say that their worldview and their way of life are completely secular. in other words, they can make ends meet without some remaining christian traditions (evangelische kirche in deutschland 2023: 15-23). they still trust and welcome the church’s social engagement, the services for the poor, the old and the sick. but the religious content hardly resonates with the majority of people. there is no need to mention that the abuse scandals are increasing the distrust of church (evangelische kirche in deutschland 2023: 51–7). philosopher charles taylor looks at the change in western society from a condition in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in god, to one in which believing in god is simply one option among others – even for religious people (taylor 2007: 25). the church is therefore faced with the question of how to cope with this situation. it is not easy to hold on to faith and stick to the church when fewer and fewer people in your environment do so. which attitudes can support us? it wouldn’t be good if church people resigned and thought: now it’s the end for the church. nor does it help to ungratefully overlook everything that is vital and thriving in the church. of course, we shouldn’t sugarcoat the massive decline because the churches are still full at christmas. and we 27 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22223 27 shouldn’t fix our hopes on the past and dream that things could maybe go back to the way they used to be. it would be more helpful to accept the new situation as god’s instruction. throughout its history and throughout the world, the fellowship of jesus has often been a minority, even a persecuted minority. and in many cases that didn’t stop them from hearing, celebrating and sharing the gospel. even as a minority the church can be church, with one another, before god and still for all people in our world. but there is also something painful about it: namely a yes to the fact that the “ceremonies” must change, that the church will be different from what christians have been familiar with and loved for so long. the dominant mental image of church is the local community with its church, its parsonage, in which “the lights should be on”, and the sunday service that “our pastor celebrates with us”. this is a possible, beautiful image of church, but it is not the one and only possible image; it is actually about “ceremonies”. and this brings us to the painful transformations that the church is currently going through: 4 a painful transformation as a result, the church is not only becoming smaller, but also poorer. the resources are becoming scarcer. but this is now also being felt in the local communities and is the core of the problem local church people are dealing with today. this core concerns precisely the central mental idea of the church as a local community to which people belong because of their place of residence. the traditional system of the parish or local church community ensures that there are no “church-free spots” in our country, so to speak. there is always and everywhere a church nearby, with short distances and pretty much the same programme for everyone. and the local priest is the central player. around him or her, church life revolves. without her or him, church life withers. however, the local churches are becoming smaller in terms of membership. their resources are shrinking. and there are fewer young people for pastoral ministry. and this has resulted in structural reforms across the country for many years. and the central strategy of these structural reforms is regionalization (ebert and pompe 2014). communities, parishes and places of worship are becoming increasingly united in the region. it begins with cooperation, and it continues with joint worship service plans and united parish offices. at the end there is often a complete merger. 28 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22223 28 you can see this as a fictional example (figure 3): figure 3 regionalization in a rural area, the independent local churches are united step by step. and today’s parish plan is usually just a prelude to tomorrow’s parish plan. michael domsgen puts it this way: the “stroke rate” is increasing: “as soon as one structural reform is implemented, the next one has to be initiated.” put differently, there is a double movement of contraction and expansion: people and resources are shrinking, districts and areas of responsibility are being expanded. but the expansion means that not only resources and people are shrinking on site, but also the presence of community life, the number of worship services, the visits of “our” parish priest. the processes are more or less consensual, but hardly anyone 29 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22223 29 is really happy with them. there are some features that stand out in the strategy of regionalization: – on the one hand, there is a well-intentioned desire to maintain area-wide provision of church services in the region. however, the decisive measurement is and remains the number of available pastoral persons. when there is still a pastor, there is still a congregation, perhaps only with part-time staff and a somewhat reduced programme, but it still exists. the principle is that of comprehensive coverage. – on the other hand, the structural processes turn out to be basically endless. there are endless seasons of this series. one parish plan comes and goes, and the next one follows quickly. the compressions and expansions seem to never end, so no one can be sure that the worst is behind them at some point. and that has a high potential for frustration. the processes primarily focus on restructuring the structure. i’ll come back to this later: the structural often dominates, while the question of relationships with one another or praying together and asking about god’s promises and orders takes a back seat. in addition, not all hopes for relief are fulfilled: life will by no means become easier after a structural reform, the number of meetings will not (as promised) be smaller and concentration on genuine spiritual tasks will not be easier. there just doesn’t seem to be an end. and the price is high: the church presence is decreasing. the dominant principle is dismantling. who would have the courage to try out new things at the same time, hope for growth and give space, money and resources to new ideas? but that is exactly what is needed. the former bishop of the church province of saxony, axel noack, said: “a ghost is haunting the church – the specter of regionalization” (noack 2012). this motivated us, together with hans-hermann pompe, the former head of the ekd-centre for mission in the region, to take a different approach. and that leads to the idea of regio-local church development: 5 one possible approach: regio-local church development the church in 2030 will either have continued the process of downsizing/enlarging undeterred and in many places will have reduced church life to homeopathic dosages. or it will have reconciled the idea of the local community with the idea of the larger regional community and thus gain new opportunities for action, enable relief and promote a spirit of hope alongside the dismantling. this is how the neologism “regio-local” was born (herbst and pompe 2022, 2023). 30 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22223 30 this is not a bypass that simply saves us from having to make cuts. nothing will just stay the same. but it is a different approach that relies on the fact that regional cooperation does not have to be the end of local religious fellowship. when it comes to regio-local church development, we are not talking about a method, but rather about an attitude. the first thing is to look away from your own church steeple and towards the community of communities in the region. in the new testament the same word for church, namely “ekklesia”, is used both for the small home group and for the local congregation, but also for the entire church in a region. the church in the region is a church, it is more than just an administrative unit. our new attitude should focus on the region as a shared mission. the local churches and the full-time and volunteer workers, are responsible together in this area for the christian faith to be passed on, with the augsburg confession (art. vii), for the gospel to be accessible to as many people as possible, and with the anglican idea of church, that the community can develop upwards and downwards, inwards and outwards. they are collectively responsible for this. this is what they pray, plan and work for – together. regional church development calls for exchange, mutual trust, willingness to work together for the common good, for prayer and fresh ideas and the treasure hunt for all the good gifts that have been entrusted to the church here and there. at the same time, the church teams say goodbye to toxic attitudes. there are a lot of things that must be put under the cross. these are the old stories about why someone can’t go with someone else under any circumstances, the pride that we have to handle it alone, the worry, our small community could be coming under the wheels, the prejudice that the other person is far too liberal or unbearably pious or too progressive or too conservative, the arrogance that we alone know how things can work with the church, the first calls for self-preservation (“make my church great again”). likewise: this includes not least the willingness to put aside envy, and to orient oneself towards the common goal. 31 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22223 31 hopefully they will cultivate a slightly different culture together. they are still dealing with changes in structures. but unlike many structural debates, this is about the harmony of structure, mission and relationship (see figure 4). and they can look at two aspects of this complex picture:2 figure 4 structure, mission and relationships – on the one hand they can see that structural processes always work better when trusting relationships have developed. but that means: if everybody has invested in a healthy relationship. when they have taken the time for talking person to person and for getting to know each other. when trust could grow. – and on the other hand: when they have agreed on their mission. they often have structural discussions and try to save buildings or places of worship. nothing to say against it! but it would be better if they had clarity about what they are tasked with doing in this region – and then asked what structures they need for this. designers say: form follows function. but then there are six questions that local and regional church people discuss with each other, in their local communities and together in the region (figure 5). but behind every question there is a challenge! 2 the idea and illustration were developed by hans-hermann pompe. 32 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22223 32 figure 5 six questions – what can we do to build good relationships with the other communities and their paid staff/volunteers and to allow trust to grow? – where can we cooperate better voluntarily? what would be easier and more successful for us if we cooperated with others? voluntary is an important keyword: when things get tight, everything works better if we have already had good experiences together. this can happen in very different areas. maybe a nurture course like alpha is too expensive and exhausting for one local church alone, but with three neighbouring congregations it can work. in pomerania (east germany), the confirmation classes were often so small that even urban local churches had no more than 1 or 2 candidates. this led to a joint confirmation course for the innercity churches in greifswald. or perhaps several parishes can work together to employ a curator for construction and finances and to relieve the administrative burden on the local priests. – what is our profile? what are we particularly passionate about? what are we good at too? what would we never give up? then that is what we should continue to focus on. theological profiles also belong here! regio-local church development says: our differences do not have to separate us. our diversity is our strength: it allows different people to feel at home here or there. profiles should not be levelled. we can confidently say: we are so charismatic, so liberal, so progressive, so traditionally lutheran – and that’s a good thing. that’s just how we are, and others don’t have to be like us. we are strong in music, we have a special calling for families, and we are invested in evangelism, we are passionate about working with refugees. 33 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22223 33 – the consequence of this approach and perhaps the downside of this idea is hidden in this fourth question: this is about saying goodbye to the idea that in a church region every local church or congregation should offer a full programme: everything everywhere and mostly the same for everyone. by trying to offer everything to everyone, we are over-exerting ourselves. in church reform processes this insight is gradually emerging: to say goodbye to the claim of full spiritual care. we don’t have to do everything! what do we need to do to be a church? something like worship service of course! but is sunday at 10 the only proper time? we live from the gospel and from communal prayer. we want to maintain relationships in some way: upwards, inwards, outwards, downwards. do we need our own choir? do we need our own scout work? if we knew: we don’t have to keep everything in reserve, because the other church a few kilometres from here offers exactly that, because it is their strength and passion. we could get rid of this burden. – can we then imagine that our region will become a kind of ecclesiastical schengen area? what is that? the european schengen process allows free border crossing back and forth within the schengen area. this means for our church life: we say yes to people in our region settling there, becoming at home there, and getting involved wherever it suits them. this also follows from our specific profiles and the waiving of a full programme. we do not view christians as the property of the local church. we are one church in the region with many local congregations. and we are happy when people choose their best place to live their spiritual life with others. in the end, what matters is that people find a spiritual home, but not where they find it or that they necessarily find it with us. we allow border traffic without tedious passport controls. but that means something else: we no longer see ourselves as a community in terms of our boundaries. we see ourselves as a community based on our profile, which attracts people who are looking for exactly that in our region. we respect that late modern people seek options and make their own choices, including church ones. perhaps we now feel what it means that the grain of wheat must first die before it bears fruit. so, what can our region look like? in the diversity of communities? not just with different profiles, also with different structures. there are larger, central, well-equipped communities (“resource churches”) (philipp 2022: 315–70) that are highly visible and publicly attractive. well-functioning parish churches play their role in coexistence. there are also fresh expressions of church that focus on specific topics or target groups ( mission and public affairs council 2004; müller 2016; lings 2018). in this respect too, the position of the parish church is not abolished, but it is reduced in size. the church also tries out new forms of community wherever local or regional initiatives are available (moynagh, 2024). and the mode changes from official permission to willing enablement. and then there are also smaller communities without full-time paid staff. there may be a small communitarian fellowship in a former rectory. there 34 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22223 34 is a diaconal initiative, which also includes fellowship through word and sacrament. there is a youth church and a music church. there are analogue and digital forms of community. all of this can be expressed if we ask each other how we can together give as many people in the region as possible as many opportunities as possible to explore the gospel, take hold of it and live out the gospel in community with others. an ecumenical horizon is helpful as well: is there a methodist community here or there? can’t it too be part of the regio-local landscape? can’t the worship service of the ymca, which has long seen itself as a sort of church, in a village be the worship service for this village (figure 6)? to show the biggest annoyance once again: the church ‘schengen area’ has long been a reality: people vote. they do it when shopping, choosing a school, joining clubs. and they also do it by choosing the church that suits them! faith and church loyalty cannot be taken for granted. they are not handed down but chosen, considered as an option and affirmed. being a christian is not a given. we should reintroduce and suggest it to a religiously inexperienced population, recommend it and practise it with people. but then we need diversity of access for such different people. we need the ‘schengen area’. we need it so that we can be grateful about everyone who is won, either by us or by our neighbours. this is how the church grows, with one here and one there, one by one. one local church alone cannot do this. but we can use our profile to ask: who could we attract? who will gain from us what he or she needs for their own journey of faith? figure 6 the ‘new region’ 35 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22223 35 6 who is supposed to do all that? for example, the worship service … there are still some loose ends. forgoing the full programme, regional cooperation – this saves resources! but there is not more money or more people, especially not more pastors, youth workers, deacons or musicians. there’s still something missing. churches have lived for a long time with very comfortable facilities and more than sufficient resources. they have simply practised and enjoyed area-wide provision with church services. but in many places, not everywhere but in many places, they have also got the local church folk used to being something like ‘assisted living for the baptized’. they have been less successful in promoting the ‘priesthood of all believers’ with local church folk using their gifts, as was intended in ephesians 4, where leading ministries equip the saints and the saints do the work in building up the church. every baptized person is also a charismatic, entrusted with a gift, with a measure of strength and time. regio-local church development will not work if churches do not manage the turnaround from a supported to an independent congregation, from assisted living to team sports. but this doesn’t happen by appeal. just like in ephesians 4, there is a need for guidance, formation, encouragement and empowerment. and that is where churches should concentrate their efforts. in everything they do, they should ask: who can we do it with? what can a team be formed for? where am i not needed as a full-time employee? and what measures do we need to take to ensure that people in our community work happily and competently? who do we need to train and who can help us? and who should we no longer burden? can we perhaps tackle this through regional cooperation? and how do we celebrate our talented volunteers? one of the most difficult questions in all regional processes is worship life. it’s easy to say that local churches should become more independent and take their lives into their own hands, but seriously – leading worship services as lay people? possibly preaching or administering the lord’s supper? are we allowed to do that? more than that: can we do it? who would dare to do that? that’s a task for those who have studied for years, isn’t it? on the other hand, it hurts, especially this: regionalization means so often that there will only be a few worship services in our church. first every 14 days, then monthly, then at odd times like sundays at 2:30 p.m., then only on holidays, and eventually not at all. we cannot simply impose more and more worship duties on pastors without jeopardizing their joy in ministry and their health. and then we are told that we can drive to the neighbouring town if there is no worship service in our local church. there is always a worship service somewhere in the regionalized community. maybe they can also offer a transport service. but the former dean of fürth (bavaria), ludwig markert, told me at one of my first lectures (1993): “the people from veitsbronn don’t go to worship in obermichelbach, 36 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22223 36 and the people from obermichelbach don’t go to worship in veitsbronn.” two small villages, only three and a half kilometres (about 2 miles) apart from each other. people travel around for shopping, for their children’s activities, for medical care – but not for church. church has to be here, in our village, in our local church. there’s no other way! this is a real worship dilemma. regio-local church development is not the magic wand that can solve this problem. but it provides a direction in which a solution can be found. as always, this can work in many places, but certainly not in all places. here are a few such pointers: – local/regional churches can increase the number of people who can prepare and lead worship services by encouraging and training people to become lay preachers. in a local parish in bamberg (bavaria) there are five volunteers who have such training and who now lead the worship services after the pastor’s position was halved. no worship service is cancelled. – local/regional churches can set up a fair plan: worship service reliably on every sunday in a central, accessible location;; in all other locations, worship service reliably once or twice a month, including christmas and easter. – local/regional churches can also assign churches a certain type of worship: here an evening service in a free form, there a weekly traditional service, here a ‘messy church’ (moore 2006) for the whole family once a month, there a monthly youth service. each place then has its own special liturgy – and everyone can find the service that suits them somewhere. the “michelbach/veitsbronn syndrome” (mvs) is a common problem. what shall we do if people just don’t play along? here is a somewhat robust answer and suggestion: deal with them as adults. respect and empathize with their sense of loss, but don’t use their refusal as an opportunity to choose worse solutions: you are adults, so we expect this from you: we can no longer celebrate worship services everywhere without exploiting our resources. you drive 20 kilometres to go shopping, your kindergarten is 20  minutes away, as are the sports club and piano lessons. we believe you can do it. worship is important to you; then you will be able to change. and those who can’t do it get support. this won’t completely fix the mvs, but here are some more ideas: – local/regional churches can make leading worship services easier. here is an example from the evangelical church in central germany. hardly any other region has as many church buildings as thuringia and saxony-anhalt. and at the same time, the number of pastors is no longer sufficient to celebrate worship services everywhere. now it happened that on the open monument day the elders of a village community turned to their dean and said: it is such a shame that the church was open for visitors on this sunday, but no worship service was being celebrated. couldn’t he help? he could! he sat down with his team, and they wrote 37 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22223 37 a small script for a simple worship service led by the elders in the village. they were able to follow this script with prayers, readings and song suggestions. the village community did not hesitate; the service took place, and the dean thought everyone was happy and content. but what had he done? the christians in this village community were so excited that they asked for more (bremer and wegner 2012). long story short: in the central german church there is now a so-called ‘community liturgy/book of prayer’ with service plans for all sundays in the church year. in some east german regional churches, there are now congregations that celebrate together on many sundays without a pastor. there doesn’t have to be a sermon: maybe someone reads aloud a devotional text, maybe there is a period of silence or those present talk about the sermon text for a few minutes and use the ecumenical seven-step-method of bible sharing (hirmer 1998). decades ago (1987), east german practical theologian eberhard winkler from halle asked: if there are still 10 christians living in a village (during gdr times) who would like to get together and celebrate communion, does the pastor have to travel from 35 or 40 kilometres away? or couldn’t we authorize these 10 christians to celebrate the meal together, even without the priest? yes, but that requires a calling, some people now reply. yes, says winkler, then let’s give them this calling! but, as they say, you have to be trained for that! winkler doesn’t object there either, but asks back: does this really have to be an academic training? isn’t there the spiritual formation of the baptized? and how difficult would it be to teach them what they need? under the conditions of a church in the minority, winkler asked: why don’t we empower the local community to become more responsible and self-active (winkler 1987)? and we can become even more resourceful when it comes to the shape and rhythm of worship services. the church of england is an old folk church like the german and has experienced a somewhat even more brutal decline. at the same time, there are courageous and successful attempts to revitalize church life in england. not only are local congregations being merged or even closed – on the contrary, new, fresh expressions of church are being founded, with a special profile, often aimed at specific target groups and not at a specific residential area (moynagh 2024). here is an idea that two theologians from sheffield expressed and which has changed the worship life in the parish of st thomas philadelphia. mike breen and bob hopkins thought about having elaborate worship services every sunday (hopkins and breen 2007). they ask: what was it actually like at the time of the temple in israel? did people go to the temple every sabbath? no, they say, not at all: people made a pilgrimage to the temple rarely, perhaps once a year. and the visits to the temple were highlights in the life of faith. on all other sabbath days, it was more modest, on site, at home or in the synagogue. liturgical life in israel had three places: the home, the synagogue and the temple. and now the two anglicans suggest 38 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22223 38 translating this idea to their circumstances: house, synagogue and temple then become ‘cell’, ‘cluster’ and ‘celebration’. the ‘cell’ is the small format, the personal community on site or in the house, the home group or the end-of-week service in the chapel or the little church group that celebrates a short worship service in the church at the end of their meetings. a ‘cluster’ is the medium-sized community, perhaps weekly, on sundays, in our church, sometimes with, but usually without the priest, but with us on site, 15 to 50 people who are happy that the local church is accessible even without a priest. and then ‘celebration’, the big festival. how would it be if large, solemn church services were the exception, truly celebrations of faith, where we come together from all parts of the region, with special music, the ‘big’ sermon, with communion and baptism? for our topic: in the central church of the region, with our regional priest and the organist. maybe every six to eight weeks. in short: at this crucial point, regio-locality would have to prove itself, it would have to be an alternative to a regionalization which leads to the church becoming less visible, less accessible and less close to people. at the end we return to the augsburg confession. there is still a biblically wellfounded promise in there, not as a cushion for defaulting church people who don’t want to change anything, but as a promise to those who set out and ask in what ways christ will build his church today. at the beginning of the 7th article, it says: “also they teach that one holy church is to continue forever.” (confessio augustana, 1530: art. vii) of course, that is god’s work and not our contribution. about the author professor dr michael herbst is professor of practical theology (till 2022 at the university of greifswald, germany). he is researching and teaching on church development, pastoral theology and mission. contact: michael.herbst@i-m-k.org references abraham, m. 2007. evangelium und kirchengestalt: reformatorisches kirchenverständnis heute. berlin and new york: de gruyter. amt der velkd. 2013. unser glaube: die bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen kirche. ausgabe für die gemeinde (edn. 6). gütersloh: gütersloher verlagshaus. barth, m. 1974. ephesians: translation and commentary on chapter 4–6 (the anchor bible vol. 34a). garden city, ny: anchor bible. böttrich, c. 1999. “gemeinde und gemeindeleitung nach epheser 4.” theologische beiträge 30: 137–50. bremer, a., and m. wegner. 2012. “gottesdienste feiern mit der ‚gemeindeagende’ kirchenkreis egeln. “ in moldenhauer, c. and warnecke, g. (eds), gemeinde im kontext (beg praxis, pp. 64–9). neukirchen-vluyn: aussaat. church of england. mission and public affairs council. 2004. mission-shaped church: church planting and fresh expressions of church in a changing context. london: church house publishing. mailto:michael.herbst@i-m-k.org 39 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef22223 39 ebert, c., and h.-h. pompe (eds). 2014. handbuch kirche und regionalentwicklung: region kooperation – mission (kirche im aufbruch vol. 11). leipzig: evangelische verlagsanstalt. evangelische kirche in deutschland. 2023 wie hältst du’s mit der kirche? zur bedeutung der kirche in der gesellschaft: erste ergebnisse der 6. kirchenmitgliedschaftsuntersuchung. leipzig: evangelische verlagsanstalt. https://kmu.ekd.de/fileadmin/user_upload/kirchenmitgliedschafts untersuchung/pdf/wie_hältst_du’s_mit_der_kirche_–_zur_bedeutung_der_kirche–in–der– gesellschaft_kmu_6.pdf (27th nov 2024). herbst, m., and h.-h. pompe (eds). 2022. regiolokale kirchenentwicklung: wie gemeinden vom nebeneinander zum miteinander kommen können (edn. 5). berlin: evangelische arbeitsstelle midi. ——— (eds). 2023. vertrauen und verantworten: regiolokale kirchenentwicklung ii: umsetzung, praxis, erfahrungen. berlin: evangelische arbeitsstelle midi. hirmer, o. 1998. bibel-teilen: bekannte texte neu erleben. stuttgart et al.: missio. hofius, o. 2006. “gemeindeleitung und kirchenleitung nach dem zeugnis des neuen testaments”, zthk 103: 184–205. hopkins, b., and m. breen. 2007. clusters: creative mid-sized missional communities. sheffield: anglican church planting initiatives. huber, w. art. 2003. “volkskirche, i. systematisch-theologisch”, tre 35: 249–54). berlin and new york: de gruyter. lings, g. 2018. “fresh expressions of church: the state of the art in england.” prth 53: 7–13. moore, l. 2006. messy church: fresh ideas for building a christ-centred community. abingdon: bible reading fellowship. moynagh, m. 2012. church for every context: an introduction to theology and practice. london: scm press. ———. 2024. startup: kirche: neue christliche communities gründen, mit einem vorwort von michael herbst. gießen: brunnen verlag. müller, o., d. pollack and g. pickel. 2013. “religiös-konfessionelle kultur und individuelle religiosität: ein vergleich zwischen westund ostdeutschland.” köln z soziologie 65: 123–48. müller, s. 2016. fresh expressions of church: ekklesiologische beobachtungen und interpretationen einer neuen kirchlichen bewegung. zürich: tvz. noack, a. 2012. “geleitwort.” in hörsch, d., and h.-h. pompe (eds), region gestaltungsraum der kirche. begriffserklärungen, ekklesiologische horizonte, praxiserfahrungen (kirche im aufbruch reformprozess der ekd, vol. 4, pp. 5–7). leipzig: evangelische verlagsanstalt. paas, s. 2016. church planting in the secular west: learning from the european experience. grand rapids: eerdmans. philipp, a. 2022. klassische gemeindegründung – ein handlungsmodell für kirchen in transformationsprozessen? (beg vol. 33). göttingen: vandenhoeck & ruprecht. taylor, c. 2007. a secular age. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. winkler, e. 1987. „die neue ländliche diaspora als frage an die praktische theologie.” thlz 112: 161–70. https://kmu.ekd.de/fileadmin/user_upload/kirchenmitgliedschaftsuntersuchung/pdf/wie_hältst_du’s_mit_der_kirche_–_zur_bedeutung_der_kirche–in–der–gesellschaft_kmu_6.pdf https://kmu.ekd.de/fileadmin/user_upload/kirchenmitgliedschaftsuntersuchung/pdf/wie_hältst_du’s_mit_der_kirche_–_zur_bedeutung_der_kirche–in–der–gesellschaft_kmu_6.pdf https://kmu.ekd.de/fileadmin/user_upload/kirchenmitgliedschaftsuntersuchung/pdf/wie_hältst_du’s_mit_der_kirche_–_zur_bedeutung_der_kirche–in–der–gesellschaft_kmu_6.pdf michael herbst regional and/or local: can church be present in close proximity and in regional cooperation at the same time? ecclesial futures 2023 – volume 4 – issue 2 a r t i c l e doi: 10.54195/ef17944 regenerative development as a pathway for church renewal rosemary dewerse, roxanne haines, stu mcgregor abstract this article details and discusses regenerative development, a concept developed by the regenesis group, as a means for enabling church health and renewal. across 2020–23 cityside baptist in auckland, aotearoa new zealand, worked with regenerative development practitioners through three phases of application. the process and what emerged challenges usual perspectives on church growth and revitalization priorities around vision, outcomes and the community and context in view. keywords: regenerative development, renewal, cityside in 2019 the leadership of cityside baptist church in auckland, new zealand, found themselves wrestling with the question, “why cityside, here?” we had decisions to make that would impact our life together in the present and the future. amongst our members were four people passionate about regenerative development and, seeing resonant potential with the nature of our community, the decision was made in 2020 to accept their recommendation to apply this methodology to address our question. what emerged challenges usual perspectives on church growth and revitalization priorities around vision, outcomes, and the community and context that is in view. this article begins by backgrounding our story leading up to this work, introduces regenerative development and details the process as applied to cityside and emerging discoveries, before discussing the implications for understandings of church health and renewal. 1 the cityside backstory in 2019 the council of cityside baptist found ourselves wondering what we were being called to be for another generation of our life together. this iteration of faith community at 8 mount eden road in auckland, aotearoa new zealand, had been 7 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17944 – version 2 8 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17944 – version 2 alive and active since 1993 and formally instituted as a church of the baptist union in october 1995. it had emerged out of a period of social justice ministry on the site (the auckland baptist city mission) in recognition that such ministry “needed to be based in a worshipping congregation” (cityside baptist, n.d.). essentially at the time a fresh expression of church community in the inner city made up of young to middle-aged adults, cityside, initially led by mark pierson, became known for being a safe space for those struggling with traditional theological assumptions and performance-based paradigms of church, and for its innovation in artistic expression and participatory “ancient-future worship” (pierson, n.d.). study of the community’s approach was published in the mid-2000s (taylor 2004; guest and taylor 2006). by 2019, with the worshipping community having outlasted the work of the city mission on the site, we were feeling the need to revitalize our sense of identity for discerning our future as a church and ongoing missional purpose. a group of members had undertaken research into the future potential of our buildings and offered design possibilities, and we were wondering how best to approach not only our children and youth spaces but a range of needs in our diverse community. one of the wider local contextual realities for us was that construction was beginning on both a redesigned public transport hub and high-density housing planned to accommodate 20,000 inhabitants, promising to significantly alter the physical and socio-cultural landscape (auckland city council, n.d.). closer to home, due to an initiative called 8space, our building during the week is a vibrant hub hosting artists, musicians, poets and community events across twenty art studios and rehearsal and meeting spaces. their evolution and aspirations need to be taken into account. meanwhile there has been a growing commitment amongst citysiders, inspired by māori brothers and sisters, to try to truly live the principles of te tiriti o waitangi, the founding document of our nation. this is a long but important journey of decolonizing our thinking, relationships and living in this land.1 key challenges for us in the face of these contextual realities are that: few of our members live locally; there is not often cross over between sunday and weekday inhabitants; and te tiriti requires paradigm shifts in language and power. as we look to the future, what is god’s invitation to us? who are we to be? it was important to employ a process that would resonate with us. the innovator of 8space, damaris kingdon, and two others of our congregation, roxanne haines and justine skilling, are regenerative development practitioners; a fourth, joy 1 a roopu (group) of the minister, three māori members and the chair of council was established during 2020. davidson, was deeply interested in this methodology. they felt regenerative principles of wholistic, participatory, nested-systems, essence-of-place regenerative development aligned with our community and so early in 2020 they approached council. after some months of discussion and planning, the council agreed to begin this process in november 2020. mark haines, a council member and from august 2021 its co-chair, volunteered to coordinate the logistics and gave many hours to this work. coming strongly recommended, rhyll stafford, a member of the 8space community and experienced regenerative development practitioner, was employed as an invested outsider to facilitate the identified phases. the process itself, planned to be substantively progressed in 2021, was slowed by the covid pandemic. the phases were completed at the beginning of 2023. 2 regenerative development regenerative development first emerged as a concept in north america in 1995, coined by the regenesis group. it describes a means of enabling living beings to co-evolve a whole-of-systems approach to harnessing potential so that a project might contribute to the regeneration of the unique place in which it is located. as a methodology, regenerative development seeks the stories of that place as contained in environmental, historical and community records and data (quantitative and qualitative) to uncover recurring patterns shaping geology, biology and culture over time. by doing so, the essence of that place is revealed and thereby core guiding principles for future initiatives can be discerned. in taking such a place-sourced approach what becomes possible is not a short-term strategy, but a fiftyor even five-hundred-year trajectory for development. typically, development and renewal projects are the work of a (siloed) few, seeking to address problems that have arisen, with an eye on the immediate issues, working to time and money constraints, and rarely taking into account wider considerations and interdependencies, let alone listening to the unique stories of place. a city, for example, may be facing urban growth that puts pressure on essential services and housing requiring the reconfiguration of neighbourhoods and risking social and ecological disruption. locally, a community suffering from the consequences of disaffected youth might look to further means for curtailing their behaviour, missing opportunities to harness their energy, while (church) leaders may decide to establish as a missional initiative a community garden to address rising costs of living but find themselves quickly facing issues of sustainability. regenerative development does not focus on a problem in an attempt to fix, contain or manage it, but proactively engages in deep listening and “imaging” to identify 9 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17944 – version 2 purposeful potential – the inherent, long-term directional possibilities emerging from context. “imaging is different from imagination. it is a focused effort to see something accurately and from the inside, as it really is” (regenesis institute 2023a: 3). in order to do this, the whole story of a setting needs to be taken into account in order to discover its inherent potential sourced in its essence. then it is a process of “seeing how that essence can be uniquely value-adding within its con-text” (mang and haggard 2016: 123). for regenerative development, this requires the collaborative involvement not only of would-be decision-makers, but all those who will be affected from the past, present and future. the law of three facilitates what could present as a complexity of disparate ideas. it understands that truly creative thinking is enabled by activating forces inspiring new ideas, restraining forces that identify those things that could constrain and thus need integrated consideration (often articulated by the receiver), and reconciling forces that bring the first two together and enable “a shift in level or insight” (regenesis institute 2023b: 2). in such a process place and its unique qualities is crucial, for regenerative development believes we must allow nature and indigeneity to shape us if we are to thrive as nested eco-systems. a given project may be place-based – an imposition of an idea on a living community; the aim is to be place-sourced – inspired by what we encounter. deep listening is therefore a matter of paying attention not only to current need but, in the case of a community’s development, the interweaving of realities sourced in historical human knowledges of and behaviour in that place, ecological and, deeper still, geological truth. the focus on place recognizes that eco-systems are unique expressions of interdependent communities – animated in ways particular to each location, “touchstones for shared meaning and caring” (mang and haggard 2023: xxxii). who and what we are and can become is inevitably shaped by place. as rebecca solnit has observed, “places matter. their rules, their scale, their design include or exclude civil society, pedestrianism, equality, diversity…they map our lives” (solnit 2007: 9). in a real way vocation emerges from this mapping, essentially of soul. for a true thriving there will be congruence of the past, present and future, across land, water, rocks, vegetation, human and other life forms. indigenous peoples have been profoundly aware of this for millennia: those of us who have inherited western enlightenment thinking need to recover this understanding. such thinking recognizes the complex reality that we exist within interrelated (or nested) systems that not only have an impact upon us, but which we also impact. regenerative development is built upon systems thinking, including the work of john bennett in the 1960s (bennett 1992). in his work, four sources underpin activity toward realizing potential: the ground and the goal (motivations revealing the why, 10 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17944 – version 2 that take into account need and aspiration); and the directive force and instruments (means of engaging). in regenerative development they become: figure 1 regenerative tetrad with bennett ’s terms added (regenesis institute 2023b: 6) the starting point for seeking motivation is the question ‘what is the unique and inherent potential of this place?’ for that will help in identifying the regenerative capability of the work. discernment of the vocation of that place (its essence that will inspire guiding principles for long-term decision-making), deployed in an approach committed to co-evolving mutualism of all natural and human parts, constitute the means. this is not a process therefore of the visioning so popular with many leaders with its sense of casting an idea forward, but of identifying purpose – a profoundly grounded exercise exemplifying the māori proverb, “ka mua, ka muri,” we walk into the future facing the past. two other approaches to change are also woven into regenerative development. permaculture, “originated by bill mollison and david holmgren in the 1970s … discerns patterns in natural and human systems in order to weave them together as dynamic wholes” and developmental change processes commit communities to working together to co-evolve “the potential of place, rather than struggling over the limits presented by existing conditions” (mang and haggard 2016: xv). the overall result is that design (and planning) is linked to process rather than end product and is held with an open hand while being grounded. it is important to note that whenever and wherever this work is done, systems thinking requires of us an awareness that whatever our “whole” might be – the geographical or conceptual project we are focused on – it is nested within, and offers nesting to, 11 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17944 – version 2 12 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17944 – version 2 other wholes. the concept is of interdependent holarchies as opposed to discrete hierarchies – nested and interweaving ecosystems. a building project, or a project centred on a building, for example, should not consider the building individually but be mindful of its role as both a host of wholes and belonging to larger wholes, or systems. truly regenerative work, embarked upon in a way that gathers the voices, understandings and creativity of all invested parties, human and of nature, should thus enable thriving beyond the immediate sphere. in the thinking of organizational architects james clark and charles krone, writing in the 1970s, humans have the potential to awaken “the capability embodied in all living systems for creating increasing levels of vitality, viability, and the capacity to evolve” if we would only think in these new (yet, for indigenous peoples, old) ways (plaut and amedée 2018: 5). as noted earlier, deep listening is required to discern what is essential and wherein lies potential; self-awareness to set aside ego in order to align and image with others the possibilities of the nested whole is a continuing (regenerative) necessity. spirit in and through all is key; deep calling to deep. 3 the process and our discoveries most commonly regenerative development has been applied to urban design and development projects, as well as community development. we agreed to apply it to our life as a gathered and dispersed community of faith (gathering on sundays to worship at 8 mt eden road but living and working during the week across the city of auckland) to address two fundamental questions: what is the spirit saying to cityside at this time?; and who/what is cityside being called to be in this place? pre-intro intro background and research learning finding patterns identifying potential guiding principles vison development practical work plan ph as e o n e ph as e th re e ph as e tw o figure 2 three phases (haines 2020: slide 2) three phases were shaped up to enable us to discern the essence of cityside and this place, what we could look like, feel and do in a regenerative state, and what our guiding principles and commitments might be. together they help us discover and enable in this iteration three of the four elements of the regenerative tetrad noted earlier: place-sourced potential, co-evolving mutualism and vocation of place. the fourth – regenerative capability – being the goal. figure 3 cityside’s tetrad (haines 2022) several months were devoted to the first phase and particularly to researching our “stories of place”. five storylines were explored by cityside members: tangata whenua (indigenous) stories; geological, ecological and water stories; neighbourhood stories; church history; and cityside stories. 3.1 phase one: stories of place 3.1.1 tangata whenua cityside is located under the shadow of maungawhau, “the mountain of the whau tree” (also known as mt eden), a volcano of some significance for local iwi (māori tribes) in tāmaki makaurau, or the auckland region (geonet, n.d.). an elder, matua paora puru of waiohua, a confederation of tribes, took members of cityside up the mountain on a hikoi named te aro oho – a journey of awakening. as part of that journey, we learned that until about ad 1700 thousands of māori had lived there 13 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17944 – version 2 in an enormous pā, a terraced citadel. you can still see the evidence of this carved into the maunga, along with indentations of house sites and food storage pits. the crater itself is known as “te kapua kai a mataaho – ‘the food bowl of mataaho’, the deity responsible for volcanic activity” (tūpuna maunga authority , n.d). the whau, after which the maunga is named, is a native tree with large leaves whose wood is half again lighter than cork. the wood was used for rafts and outriggers on small waka (canoes) and as floats on fishing nets, the leaves as paper, and the sap and jelly beneath the bark for medicinal purposes (te mara reo, n.d.). meanwhile, in the valley between maungawhau and the ridge on which cityside is located is a puna or spring named te ipu pakore, which was the main water source of the pā. the maunga for māori therefore, we discovered, had been a home to many, a key source of shelter and sustenance, hospitality and healing, a refuge and place to both venture out from and return to. interestingly today it also hosts a series of large rocks sourced from another key local volcano, te tātua a riukiuta, the only surviving scoria cone of three in the wake of quarrying. this is to maintain the memory and the mana (spiritual power and authority) of these lost ancestors. 3.1.2 geology, hydrology, ecology investigation into our geological history reveals that while we are located on tuff – rock made of volcanic ash ejected during an eruption – it does not come from maungawhau, our closest mountain, but from pukekawa, the volcano now at the heart of auckland’s central business district. the lava of maungawhau meets the tuff of pukekawa at the ridge on which cityside sits. hydrologically “the porous volcanic soil [across the area] causes rainfall to quickly soak away, and the large fractures and even caverns in the rock allow large amounts of water to be stored and move underground” creating an aquifer below ground – the ongoing source for puna (springs) nearby – and a stream above ground flowing eastward to the sea (dewerse, dewerse and skilling 2022: 2). alongside this significant water resource, the volcanic soil itself is extremely fertile, rich in magnesium and potassium, creating an abundant ecological oasis. a lush forest grew alongside a wetland, both full of native trees and plants good for food and medicine as well as native birds, lizards, fish and eels. māori, arriving from polynesia, added kumera, taro and uwhi (yams), cultivating significant gardens and using warm rocks from maungawhau to enable these tropical plants to grow. living with the land they came to see themselves as its descendants and kaitiaki (guardians and caretakers). europeans and chinese from the 1840s altered the landscape, building houses and roads along main arterials following ridgelines such as ours, as well as market gardens. “in a short space of time, the fertile soil, the stream, the spring, the forest and wetlands disappeared beneath concrete and asphalt” (dewerse, dewerse and skilling 2022: 3). 14 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17944 – version 2 15 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17944 – version 2 3.1.3 the neighbourhood reflection on the neighbourhood noted our neighbours as not only being the volcanoes, our abundant water sources and fertile soils, but also the thirteen iwi (māori tribes) who have lived, moved through and interacted in this area over time. there is an invitation and challenge to deep relationship in the mihi, or salutation, given to cityside by matua paora puru, our guide on maungawhau: “ka pa he taura waka e motu, he hono tangata e kore e motu.” unlike a canoe rope, a human bond and connection can never be severed. (kingdon, 2022: 6). today, as in pre-european times, we are located on the edge of a tuff that is both a point of convergence and a thoroughfare “on the way to elsewhere” (kingdon 2022: 7). down the road is a train station that has been key to the auckland rail network since the 1880s. not far away is the mt eden corrections facility, a fortress-like prison built in 1882, today a reception centre for male remand prisoners in the auckland region. while the area overall has gone from housing to industrialization and back, postcodes for our neighbourhood have been changing in recent times as apartments have been appearing and the population has been densifying. if you examine our neighbourhood over time it evidences cycling patterns of showing promise or lapsing into dubiousness, of housing people or becoming industrial, of land being fertile and abundant or contaminated, of being vibrant and artsy or soullessly functional. today it has been dubbed “uptown”. maungawhau has been redesignated sacred and is a place for walkers to pause and remember. a new housing development is under way with accommodation for business and light industry. not-for-profit organisation for the love of bees has established an exemplary no-till regenerative organic market garden in what was an empty contaminated lot and 8space gathers together a vibrant arts community. there is renewed intent and possibility. 3.1.4 church history the land our church building sits upon was part of the waitemata block “gifted” by a local māori chief to the british around 1840.2 baptist activity first began in a house a few streets away with the founding of a sunday school in 1864 by theophilus b. heath to give children local to mt eden something divinely-shaped to do on their weekends (kingdon 2022: 6). rapidly-growing, a dedicated building catering for up to 200 children was erected in 1865 at the junction of three main arterials. then in 1885, heath’s home church planted mt eden baptist further down the main road on the 2 “gifted” is enclosed in speech marks because while the british understood it therefore as ownership, and able to be bought and sold for māori “tuku whenua” is land gifted for a purpose to be used responsibly and without alienation of the land, in the context of ongoing mutual relationship. in the perspective of māori, this gifting has been abused (healy 2009: 111–34). current site. adult membership multiplied ten-fold within two years, partly because of political commitment to the temperance movement. over time, from being a church plant the community at mt eden became church planters. twelve other auckland baptist churches existing today had mt eden baptist members involved in their founding, a fact which meant our church waxed and waned in number as people engaged beyond. from such significant evolutions, by the 1950s industrialization was overtaking housing in the area, reducing attendance. in 1960 the congregation decided to close and offer the building for the use of the baptist city mission. it became a key centre of resourcing and refuge, particularly for those who were homeless. an article in the central leader newspaper in 1971 called it “an oasis of relief in auckland’s concrete jungle” (prince 1971: 5). thirty-five years later, in the wake of one hundred years of very christological cycles of dying and rising, a new ministry emerged with the constitution of the faith community of cityside in 1995. 3.1.5 cityside this storyline, being the most recent, coalesced through conversation and contribution. it was actually the first piece of research undertaken and included interviews with our two previous pastors, two former children’s programme leaders, and five long-standing members; five reflective zoom sessions open to all current attendees which more than thirty-five people attended; and the opportunity for the community to construct an online map of time and heart exploring when citysiders first came to the community and why, and why they have stayed. the data from more than fifty people on the map pretty much sums up the original intent and realised potential to date. the majority came because they no longer felt at home in church, wanted a faith community in which they could be fully themselves, and/or because of relational connections. they stay because honest wondering is truly welcome as per our tagline “thinking aloud allowed,” for the authenticity and challenge to the status quo, the emphasis on participation, silence and creativity, the inclusivity and aliveness of spirit, the commitment in our lives and work to the good of our wider world, and the deep friendships that have been forged. for many, cityside is an edgy oasis to come to and go out from. 3.2 phase two: discerning deeper we spent time learning and presenting the storylines to our community because it was important for us all to hear, understand and process these if together we were to uncover the essence of place so important for discerning our unique vocation, and thus responding to “why cityside, here?” our children too engaged in experiential reflection by walking in our neighbourhood and the maungawhau rock forest and exploring the nooks and crannies of our building. as the storylines were celebrated – woven into our worship services – key observations were noted on tall 16 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17944 – version 2 17 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17944 – version 2 three-dimensional blackboards standing as pillars amongst us. we colour-coded and drew connecting lines as we formally and informally reflected together on what was emerging. we asked five questions: what is unique to this place?; what has influenced and is influencing cityside’s role?; what resonates for us personally?; what do we hear amongst us as we share responses?; and what does this mean for cityside’s role and potential? children and adults alike journalled and conversed. the “regen boards” we populated together provided the data against which all subsequent parts of our regenerative process were cross-referenced by our facilitator rhyll and a small team of key cityside regenerative practitioners and leaders supporting her. in the wake of the storyline sessions one of that team, karen haines, wrote the following responsive prayer. it usefully summarised our storylines, expressed our desire, and began the distillation process. cityside is built on ancient tuff at a meeting of the ways, travelled by pathfinders. we seek wisdom in our journeying. cityside is near a spring, nourishing life, an oasis to splash in. we seek wisdom as we, too, thirst. cityside wants to honour tiriti partnership making space to listen, to understand, to kōrero together. we seek wisdom in our learning. cityside has met the needs of community: children learning, church planting, provision for lost adults, space for meeting. we seek wisdom to be good neighbours. cityside has nurtured imagination, drawn in artists, musicians, way-finders, free-thinkers. we seek wisdom as we create and recreate. cityside is on a hill, visible from a distance edgy, being out front. we seek wisdom as we influence others. the next step saw us, across three workshops with small groups of people, focused on defining, refining and finalizing an articulation of cityside’s essence of place arising from the data gathered. as rhyll noted in her report: much like our personal essence that endures and transforms through our lifespan, the essence of place is also unique and enduring. collective action can be empowered when the unique essence of a communities[sic] place is uncovered and expressed. asking if we are being true to essence, keeps our collective direction alive and free of personal agendas. providing much more than plans or activities that tell or ask people what they think, we have instead an invitation to learn and respond collectively to what is emerging. we can move forward with essence as both a reflection and a guide. (stafford 2023: 17) cityside’s essence: a nourishing wellspring where journeys converge, a waypoint at the edge, providing sanctuary as we creatively explore and question, respond to and engage in our world. (stafford 2023: 16) once confirmed, past and present cityside council members sought to distil core principles. we drew not only on our regenerative work to date, but also a set of community priorities and a statement of intent drawn up by then leaders in 2014 that proved encouragingly, consistently resonant. we seek to be a transforming community following in the way of jesus the christ, through practices of prayer, hospitality and engagement in our world – local and global. we hope to nurture depth, beauty and vitality in ourselves and in the world around us. we aim to sustain and resource christian practice, and work towards the restoration of all life. (stafford 2023: 32) our principles we consequently named as: relational, restorative, creative. the expectation is that into the future all decisions in any part of our community life be cast and reviewed through their lens to ensure we honour our discerned essence. 3.3 phase three: ka mua, ka muri in regenerative development, as noted earlier, awareness of nested systems and interdependency is important because “in a truly healthy state, each system adds 18 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17944 – version 2 19 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17944 – version 2 value to the other” (stafford 2023: 19). the activity in our building across every day of the week reminds us that cityside is only one whole within its whole as other groups also find home here. not only that, jesus’ command to love our neighbours (mk 12.31), cast through the regenerative frame, requires that we consider our human and natural neighbours beyond our building, local and global. while we know this, the regenerative process nonetheless invites us in our next season to intentional accountability that is true to our essence conducted in ways that are always relational, restorative and creative. having said this, it is important to note that for our indigenous members such reminders are unnecessary. early in the regenerative process they noted that its commitments and insights are intrinsic to their worldview. this makes it even more urgent that we honour the call to deep relationship woven into te tiriti o waitangi. what therefore could cityside look like in a regenerating state? further workshops sought to respond to this question, imagining practically what this might mean. we identified three ways we would recognize we are regenerating, set the following goals for the next three years within those, and identified an accountability structure including timeframes and people responsible to see them carried out. cityside as a church [will be] sustaining an authentic and responsive christian centre – reading the ‘signs of our time’ as a dispersed community. 1. weaving cityside spiritual practices, encouraging those on the margins and multiple voices. 2. understanding and developing co-governance. equipping pākehā.3 3. creating a cultural shift: relational spirituality/being intergenerational. cityside … [will be] providing a meaningful contribution to our neighbourhoods: local, theological and ideological. 1. developing cityside as a community hub…(establishing a ‘community weaver’ role). 2. initiatives in the building (including social enterprises). cityside building and surrounds [will be] creating a place of solace and restoration, in connection with our local environment, providing contemplation for citysiders and others. 1. building renovation. [note: during the regenerative process the city council hired our hall and kitchen to provide people in the area with “quiet space” when the rede3 pākehā initially referred to those of british descent. it can also refer to all non-indigenous new zealanders. velopment of the local train station got too much for them, affirming our essence as sanctuary.] 2. residential intergenerational community – an offsite option. one sunday, when practical ideas to realize the goals were presented, there was significant energy generated with a surprising number of people offering their creativity, skills and time. this was a first affirmation for us that when development is sourced in the essence of place, imagination can be sparked and vitality enabled. as rhyll noted, however, moving into a regenerating state is a commitment taking years, not months. “building the required capacity and capability for a regenerative direction can be a creative challenge, needing action as well as plenty of room to experiment, reflect, adapt and learn” (stafford 2023: 31). this is the space cityside now find ourselves in. 4 what can regenerative development offer to church renewal? there may in fact be much in our story and this approach to renewal that seems unsurprising. missional church leaders know the importance of surveying one’s neighbourhood to ensure initiatives undertaken are congruent with need. history is something congregations often like to recall and assess the present in the light of. but in our context, where the possibility of numerical growth by which health is so often judged is becoming elusive for many church congregations, regenerative development offers a wider perspective and frame. the concept of renewal has been significantly influenced since 1961 by the work of donald mcgavran, who inspired the church growth movement (cgm) (mcgavran and wagner 1990). mcgavran promoted evangelism conducted via a genuine understanding of local culture though in the hands of others cgm developed into a focus on quantitative measurement and over-simplified formulas for church growth (stetzer 2012). in the 1990s one such formula given significant profile was rick warren’s purpose driven church offering five strategies. this focused on “purpose” via internal people-building to create health bringing growth (warren 1995). more recently the concern has been to understand church life cycles because “learning life cycle status often provides a sense of urgency for church leaders as they plan for new cycles of growth and development to avoid the life cycle of decline” (general baptist ministries 2016, n.p.). the key perceived problem, to be avoided if at all possible, is decline and death. “redemptive potential” is the antidote – a quantitative analysis of income, membership and activities to realise a comfort zone that enables transition into a larger church size (general bapist ministries, n.p.) embedded in all of this is 20 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17944 – version 2 the assumption that the responsibility for renewal lies on the shoulders of “church leaders”, or the church leader, who must cast a vision for others to follow. related to these approaches but deviating a little, other initiatives have pressed again into sociological understanding for empowering renewal. “place” is acknowledged as important and “ecology” is even spoken of, but typically these terms refer to the church building as per the model for growth for leaders profiled in holy places: matching sacred space with mission and message, or to human community evidenced in local demographics of changing cultural and socio-economic reality (demott, shapiro and bill 2007). alice mann in her chapter entitled “place-based narratives” took a step further and investigated the historical story to reveal the “soul of place,” but stopped there (mann 2010: 63). bids for renewal, even when sourced in attempts at appreciative enquiry, fundamentally remain problem-centred and anthropocentric. regenerative development affirms uniqueness of place and, rather than being focused on the problem, seeks to discern vocation arising from place-sourced potential through wide collaboration. regenerative development recognises that an organizational entity is not an entity unto itself operating independently and on its own terms in the world around it. beginning with the boundary of the greater whole, which could be, say, the city limits, we look at the systems nested within that boundary. we explore how ecology, geology as well as sociology and anthropology affect a place historically to the present and then, based on this information, into the future. the outcome of this is that the entity doesn’t “do to” the world around it, but “works with”. at first this sounds like classic missional thinking, but the major difference is that it is not anthropocentric in the first instance. after deep listening to the nested systems it finds itself in, the church discovers its vocation, which determines shape and service. we should not underestimate the seismic shift in thinking here. rather than “mission to” the emphasis is on “participating in”. a church then is integrated already, particularly if it has a building. in this frame, evangelism and church “growth” is dramatically expanded from a fundamentally quantitative exercise into a qualitative journey, and into a service model rather than a saving model. it is no longer an “us and them” but simply an “us”. we become participants in the systems we are nested within rather than set up against them. furthermore, the attitude the church has towards itself is more humble and accepting of ebbs and flows in the church life. for example, the children’s ministry that once thrived is allowed not to now. it is not a crisis if an ebb takes place. trying to avoid decline and death at all costs is arguably not consistent with the acknowledgement at the heart of the gospel and affirmed by paul in the 21 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17944 – version 2 epistle to the romans, that it is dying that makes rising possible. part of the crisis in western churches, we would suggest, is that we see existence needing to be a continual progression in growth. worldviews that are cyclical in orientation accept waxing and waning as a part of life; “unforming” is as vital as forming and re-forming in the process of renewal (lee 2022: 7). from another angle, as steve taylor noted, we need to be very cautious about assigning value to permanency (taylor 2019). cityside’s own stories of place affirm the beauty of reimagination and rebirth, as well as our need for repentance. as in permaculture, instead of growth being territorial and imposing, health incorporates death and decay to give way to more life. if the focus on place that regenerative development requires seems to fly in the face of the old adage that a “church is not the building but the people”, the wisdom of indigenous peoples reminds us that landscapes are living beings and we are integrally connected to them. as david titterington has noted, landscapes are “actors … ‘agentic’ … shape[ing] our beliefs, our bodies, and our minds” (titterington 2017: n.p). reminiscent of the law of three, “they also enable, inspire, and constrain much of our activities … societies and stories take place” (titterington 2017: n.p). the biblical record itself evidences the importance of place for shaping identity and grounding potential. “the place where we live tells us who we are – how we relate to other people, to the larger world around us, even to god” (lane 2007: 22). for cityside, a dispersed community where the majority of members do not live in the suburb of mount eden during the week, a lingering question was how can a process focused on the place of our building be relevant to our everyday lives? the understanding of nested and interdependent holarchies affirms, however, the resonance of discerned patterns in one place (for us restoring, relating and creating) for influencing life in others. in spirit the essence of place goes with us. 5 conclusion when it comes to how we might effect church renewal, a warning from the leaders of regenesis institute is useful: “on the face of it, the promulgation of good ideas around the world seems sensible. yet it has the insidious effect of transforming living communities into commodities. it flattens reality, ironing out the differentiation and diversity that makes all the places of the world rich, resilient, and interesting” (regenesis institute 2023c: 13). at cityside, as a result of the regenerative process we have undertaken to date, we have caught a glimpse of how hopeful and vital our life can be, within a transformed understanding of viability. 22 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17944 – version 2 23 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17944 – version 2 about the authors rosemary dewerse is currently academic dean at the uniting college for leadership and theology in adelaide, australia, part of the university of divinity. in 2020–21 she was chair of the council of cityside baptist and supported the initiation and, beyond that, the application of regenerative development. contact: rdewerse@ unitingcollege.edu.au roxanne haines works as a placemaker in strategic development in an urban design context for eke panuku, auckland council’s urban regeneration agency in aotearoa new zealand. a trained regenerative practitioner she was a key initiator of, leader in, and contributor to the cityside regenerative process. stu mcgregor has been the minister of cityside baptist church since 2015 and completed the regenerative practitioner course in 2022–23 in the wake of the events described here. he has a postgraduate diploma in theology from tyndale carey graduate school. acknowledgements rhyll stafford for access to her report which contains a summary of the extensive work undertaken and the emerging outcomes. the cityside baptist council for permission to write this article. references auckland city council, “newton and eden terrace plan: 2016–2046,” https://www. aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/plans-projects-policies-reports-bylaws/our-plans-strategies/ place-based-plans/docsnewtonedenterraceplan/newton-eden-terrace-plan-part-1.pdf bennett, john g. 1992. elementary systematics: a tool for understanding wholes. science of mind series. london: bennett books, 1992. cityside baptist. “our past,” https://www.cityside.org.nz/history demott, nancy, tim shapiro and brent bill. 2007. holy places: matching sacred space with mission and message. herndon, va: the alban institute. dewerse, claude, roelant dewerse and justine skilling. 2022. “geology-hyrdology-ecology speaker notes.” march 2022. general baptist ministries. 2016. “first steps in turnaround: part 1 recognize” in the doing together blog (13 october 2016), https://gbjournal.org/first-steps-turnaround-part-1recognize/ (accessed 30 sep. 2023). geonet, “volcanoes,” https://www.geonet.org.nz/about/volcano/aucklandvolcanicfield#:~: text=the%20auckland%20volcanic%20field%20is,across%20new%20zealand%27s%20 largest%20city (accessed 31 july 2023). mailto:rdewerse@unitingcollege.edu.au mailto:rdewerse@unitingcollege.edu.au https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/plans-projects-policies-reports-bylaws/our-plans-strategies/place-based-plans/docsnewtonedenterraceplan/newton-eden-terrace-plan-part-1.pdf https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/plans-projects-policies-reports-bylaws/our-plans-strategies/place-based-plans/docsnewtonedenterraceplan/newton-eden-terrace-plan-part-1.pdf https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/plans-projects-policies-reports-bylaws/our-plans-strategies/place-based-plans/docsnewtonedenterraceplan/newton-eden-terrace-plan-part-1.pdf https://www.cityside.org.nz/history https://gbjournal.org/first-steps-turnaround-part-1-recognize/ https://gbjournal.org/first-steps-turnaround-part-1-recognize/ https://www.geonet.org.nz/about/volcano/aucklandvolcanicfield#:~:text=the auckland volcanic field is,across new zealand%27s largest city https://www.geonet.org.nz/about/volcano/aucklandvolcanicfield#:~:text=the auckland volcanic field is,across new zealand%27s largest city https://www.geonet.org.nz/about/volcano/aucklandvolcanicfield#:~:text=the auckland volcanic field is,across new zealand%27s largest city 24 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef17944 – version 2 guest, matthew, and steve taylor. 2006. “the post-evangelical emerging church: innovations in new zealand and the uk.” international journal for the study of the christian church 6(1): 49–64. haines, mark. “church history storyline.” https://www.cityside.org.nz/church-history-1 (accessed 1 sep. 2023). haines, roxanne. 2020. “skeleton process.” presented to cityside council 31 october. healy, susan. 2009. “tuku whenua as customary land allocation: contemporary fabrication or historical fact?” journal of the polynesian society 118(2): 111–34. kingdon, damaris. 2022. “our neighbourhood story.” march 2022. lane, belden c. 2007. the solace of fierce landscapes: exploring desert and mountain spirituality. oxford: oxford university press, 2007. lee, cindy s. 2022. our unforming: dewesternizing spiritual formation. minneapolis: fortress press. mang, pamela, and ben haggard. 2016. regenerative development and design: a framework for evolving sustainably. new jersey: wiley. mcgavran, donald a, and c. peter wagner. 1990. understanding church growth. 3rd ed. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. first edition published in 1970. pierson, mark. “ancient-future worship.” reality magazine issues 45, 46, and 48, https://www. reality.org.nz/index.php (accessed 1 aug. 2023). plaut, josette m., and emily amedée. 2018. becoming a regenerative practitioner: a field guide. colorado: institute for the built environment. prince, olive. 1971. “an oasis of relief in auckland’s concrete jungle.” central leader (13 july): 5. regenesis institute for regenerative practice. 2023a. “the regenerative practitioner session 1: definitions and basic concepts.” [course materials.] ———. 2023b. “the regenerative practitioner session 2: systemic frameworks.” [course materials.] ———. 2023c. “the regenerative practitioner session 4: harnessing potential.” [course materials.] solnit, rebecca. 2007. storming the gates of paradise: landscapes for politics. berkeley: university of california press. stafford, rhyll. 2023. “cityside as a regenerative faith community.” report submitted to the cityside council, march 2023. stetzer, ed. 2012. “what’s the deal with the church growth movement?,” christianity today (1 october). taylor, steve. 2004. “a new way of being church: a case study approach to cityside baptist church as christian faith ‘making do’ in a postmodern world.” phd thesis, university of otago. https://ourarchive.otago.ac.nz/handle/10523/10831?show=full taylor, steve. 2019. first expressions: innovation and the mission of god. london: scm press. te mara reo: the language garden. “whau” https://www.temarareo.org/tmr-whau.html (accessed 15 sep. 2023). titterington, david. 2017. “landscape theology.” (16 may 2017), https://davidtitterington. medium.com/landscape-theology-60a4ee48251c (accessed 1 sep. 2023). tūpuna maunga authority. “maungawhau: mount eden.” https://www.maunga.nz/maunga/ maungawhau/ (accessed 16 sep. 2023). warren, rick. 1995. the purpose driven church: growth without compromising your message and mission. grand rapids, mi: zondervan. https://www.cityside.org.nz/church-history-1 https://www.reality.org.nz/index.php (accessed 1 aug. 2023 https://www.reality.org.nz/index.php (accessed 1 aug. 2023 https://ourarchive.otago.ac.nz/handle/10523/10831?show=full https://www.temarareo.org/tmr-whau.html (accessed 15 sep. 2023 https://www.temarareo.org/tmr-whau.html (accessed 15 sep. 2023 https://davidtitterington.medium.com/landscape-theology-60a4ee48251c https://davidtitterington.medium.com/landscape-theology-60a4ee48251c https://www.maunga.nz/maunga/maungawhau/ https://www.maunga.nz/maunga/maungawhau/ ecclesial futures 2025 – volume 6 – issue 2 134 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef25098 b o o k r e v i e w doi: 10.54195/ef25098 root, andrew 2025. evangelism in an age of despair: hope beyond the failed promise of happiness grand rapids, mi: baker academic isbn: 9781540968715 reviewed by felix eiffler in his new book on evangelism, lutheran theologian andrew root presents an original and inspiring concept. under the headline “read before using (don’t skip!)” he lays out his basic idea of his book: “evangelism and discipleship are fused. evangelism is the invitation to receive consolation, to receive ministry. evangelism is the reception of care that places a person on a path of encounter with the divine. evangelism is the invitation to lean into one’s sorrows to find the sacramental presence of the living god changing one’s deaths into life” (2). the first chapter sketches the idea of the book and its basic assumptions and rationales. this is, that the church is called to “participate in the life of god through the work of the spirit” (21). christians are followers of christ, because “the spirit leads us to hear the voice of the living christ calling us to follow. this following takes us into sacramental participation as the concrete invitation to join another’s sorrow” (21–2). root criticizes an approach to evangelism that views evangelism as a task to keep the church alive (chapter 2). his criticism is mainly a theological one: a church that avoids dying underestimates the godly dynamic of bringing new life through and out of death: “therein lies the church’s conformity to the body of jesus christ. therein lies the sacramental logic of the infinite entering into the finite, finding union in opposites. when christianity faces death, it lives” (49). consequently, root states,”evangelism is central to christianity, but only if it wears these marks of a sacramental dying for the sake of others” (50). this idea of evangelism is rooted into the lutheran theology of the cross (theologia crucis) and root links it with the human condition of having to pilgrim through life from goodbye to goodbye until the ultimate farewell – one’s own death: “we are the creatures who are dying and tempted to deny all our sorrow. but it’s inside this sorrow, and by wrestling with this temptation, that we find ourselves in the real 135 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef25098 135 presence of jesus christ” (250). thus, evangelism is potentially relevant to every human being, because everybody sooner or later faces losses and goodbyes. this not only means to lose some loved one, but also to pass a dream, a goal or a plan. the experience of farewell is even true for the good things, because e.g. to marry means to say goodbye to a lifestyle of independence. this basic human condition offers the chance to encounter god, who reveals himself in the very depths of sorrow, grief and losses. so, evangelism is primary consolation – a comfort that is experienced when people meet god and are held, solaced, healed and saved by him. to outline this lutheran-shaped understanding of evangelism, root dives deep into the history of philosophy and theology with an emphasis on the late middle ages and the early modern age. he enriches the historical quest with ideas and thoughts from people like macrina and her brother gregory of nyssa, jean gerson, johann von staupitz and martin luther as well as rené descartes and blaise pascal (chapters 6 to 9). this approach also aims to understand our present times, which root describes as sad times: “ultimately, and ironically, we are in sad times in the early twenty-first century because we’re a society obsessed with happiness. we are sad because we’ve made happiness our highest aim and goal” (27). root connects the current “sad times” with the modern idea of the free self (chapters 3 to 5), which he traces back to “michel de montaigne (1533–92), who, through his extremely popular essays, invented the self as a free person who seeks happiness” (28). root concludes: “a world like ours – filled with sad happiness-seekers in misery who are stuck in their self-imposed châteaus of fragile authenticity – needs evangelism and ministry not as polemics but as consolation, not as arguments but as visions of how sorrow itself is shared by god and brings peace and mercy. what is needed is a theology of consolation as the pastoral shape of evangelism” (273). every chapter opens and ends with a continuous story of different people, whose lives are interwoven and who minister each other as everyday evangelists in accompaniment, support and consolation. by this, root illustrates his theological thoughts and rationales. this attempt is quite convincing, because it serves his argumentation and helps to make his case. root’s book on evangelism is a refreshing approach to this very topic and offers a rich philosophical as well as theological encounter with some surprising connections and ideas. his interaction with the named thinkers of different centuries is thorough and profound, but sometimes maybe a bit too detailed to keep track of his main theme. although, his description of our times as sad times is persuasive, it is also a bit one-sided and focuses mostly on the downsides of individualism, which are evident. this, however, hides the positive aspects of individual access to and expressions of faith in jesus christ, which is also an achievement of the lutheran reformation. furthermore, one could criticize that root’s description of evangelism is focused primarily on the edges of life, the losses, sorrows and deficits. this leaves 136 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef25098 136 the reader with some questions: what does the gospel have to tell those, who are well off (even though this might only be a temporary state)? is the gospel only relevant for the sad and grieving ones? is loss in root’s theology maybe somehow a precondition to encounter god? nevertheless, however, the kind of evangelism root describes is stimulating, because he links the gospel message of god incarnate with a basic human experience: to lose, to say goodbye, to pass and to be sad. the consolation that is offered by evangelism is a kind of christian empowerment (see domsgen 2025: 12–20), because it equips a person to lean into one’s own sorrow and sadness instead fleeing from it. by this, to be evangelized means to encounter god, means to be consoled, means to be able to be confronted with the dark sides of life, means to be resilient and well suited for the small, medium and big farewells of life. and this leads finally to divine hope and deep happiness. this recontextualization of the theology of the cross in terms of evangelism under current (mostly western) societal and cultural circumstances is inspiring and seems to be a fruitful approach to the topic of evangelism. root’s approach to evangelism offers an enhancing perspective to the approach of “frohbotschaften” (messaging the good news), which was lately introduced into the debate by david reißmann in a german academic handbook on evangelism (see herbst et al. 2025: 431–83; van driel 2025: 77–83). frohbotschaften is linked to isaiah 61/luke 4 and describes the role of a messenger of the gospel, “to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the lord’s favour” (lk. 4.18–19). therefore, it is not that people are to be evangelized, but that the good news is to be messaged – out of the specific joy of the church and ultimately for that joy – in words and deeds of proclamation, liberation, recovery and worship. root adds to this approach the invitation into one’s own and other’s sadness in order to encounter god and thus find delight. about the reviewer felix eiffler, head of research unit missional church development at the center for empowerment studies, martin-luther-university halle-wittenberg. contact: felix. eiffler@theologie.uni-halle.de references domsgen, michael. 2025. “christian empowerment and secularity: introduction to a research idea”, in ecclesial futures 6 (1): 12–20. doi: 10.54195/ef22184. herbst, et al. 2025: evangelisation. theologische grundlagen, zugänge, und perspektiven. 2nd ed., leipzig: 431–83. van driel, edwin. 2025. “review of evangelisation: theologische grundlagen, zugänge, und perspektiven, by andreas herbst et al.”, in ecclesial futures 6 (1): 77–83. doi: 10.54195/ ef23521. mailto:felix.eiffler@theologie.uni-halle.de mailto:felix.eiffler@theologie.uni-halle.de ecclesial futures 2024 – volume 5 – issue 2 23 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19723 a r t i c l e a missiological approach to migration and mission in the apostolic faith mission international ministry in the united kingdom: a pneumatological missional imagination mookgo solomon kgatle abstract the intersections of migration and mission have been studied in past, but little has been developed regarding theoretical frameworks for approaching the subject from the discipline of missiology. this calls for the development of a framework that will assist in the missiological approach to migration and mission. the current study reflects on the current missiological approaches to migration and mission to identify the existing gaps such as relevance to pentecostalism. to fill the gaps, this article brings together three theories of pneumatological imagination, missiological spirit and missional imagination to develop a pneumatological missional imagination. the findings are that a pneumatological missional imagination is relevant for dealing with some of the challenges in migration and mission in pentecostalism such as an inability to minister relevantly to the host countries, cultural differences, and orientation to the mission of god. these challenges are outlined by using the apostolic faith mission ministry international in the united kingdom (afmimuk) as a case study. the pneumatological missional imagination is relevant for witnessing to others, speaking foreign languages, and orientation to the mission of god. keywords: missiology, migration, mission, pentecostalism, pneumatological imagination, missional imagination, missiological spirit, apostolic faith mission international ministry in the united kingdom (afmimuk) doi: 10.54195/ef19723 24 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19723 24 1 introduction mission refers to the assignment given to an individual or communities. however, the theology of mission is the commitment and dedication of individuals and faith communities to understand god’s mission and god’s intentions for the world (kirk 1997). migration is an important aspect of mission in the understanding of the intentions of god for people living in the diaspora. the intersection of migration and mission is one of the important subjects in the study of missions and world christianity in the disciplines of missiology, history, anthropology, sociology, development studies and international relations. this relationship is important as believers around the world move from one country to another due to socio-economic challenges, political instability and wars. these have caused many africans to move to the global north in search of a better life. these africans carry their religious or christian beliefs along with them when arriving in the host country, thus making the intersection of migration and mission very strong. but most recently, the conflicts between ukraine and russia, and israel and palestine, have also made some find a  home in africa. these are the dynamics of the intersections of migration and mission. the relationship between migration and mission is what has made the christian mission transcend the  locality where christianity became the world religion, hence the concept of world christianity. robert (2009: 9) points out that “christianity thrives at the intersection of global or universal and the local or personal”. this intersection of global and local contexts in christian mission is conceptualized as the intersection of migration and mission with implications for the intersection of pentecost and mission (boer 1961). this refers to the study of the christian mission moving from one local area to the other including in the global context as argued by robert (2009). furthermore, the study of migration and mission is important as we explore the spread of the gospel in a religiously pluralist and culturally diverse world. in other words, what are the relevant missiological approaches to studying the intersections of migration and mission in this diverse world? what are the relevant missiological approaches in the exploration of the challenges of this relationship between migration and mission? these are some of the research questions that this article seeks to answer by developing a theoretical framework for studying the same. pentecostalism is one such christian tradition where the intersections of migration and mission can be studied. given the growth of the pentecostal movement in world christianity, the intersection of migration and mission becomes an important area of study as we seek to explore the rationale behind the expansion of the movement. wariboko and oliverio (2020: 328) relied on the world christian encyclopedia for the current statistics on the population of pentecostals in the world which currently counts 644 million pentecostals/charismatics worldwide, including all the members of pentecostalism’s 19,300 denominations and fellowships as well as all 25 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19723 25 charismatic christians whose primary affiliation is with other churches. this is 8.3 percent of the world population so one in twelve persons today is a pentecostal or charismatic christian. looking at the current global distribution of pentecostal/charismatic christians, the encyclopedia counts 230 million in africa, 195 million in latin america, 125 million in asia, 68 million in north america, 21 million in europe, and 4.5 million in australia and oceania. the phenomenal growth of the pentecostal movement is worth exploring in the study of missions and world christianity. in addition, this study is worth exploring considering the factor of migration in the growth of pentecostalism. in other words, pentecostalism as a movement that has spread beyond the local context to the global context in what is known as global pentecostalism is an important tradition for the exploration of the intersections of migration and mission. while we recognize the importance of the study of the relationship between migration and mission in christian mission in general and the pentecostal movement in particular, there is also a need to develop theoretical frameworks to address the subject missiologically. i developed what i have framed as the pneumatological missional imagination using the theories of pneumatological imagination, missiological spirit and missional imagination. i argue that this approach is relevant in studying the various challenges that are faced by the migrant churches such as witnessing relevantly to the host country, cultural differences, and orientation to the mission of god. these are not peculiar to the apostolic faith mission ministry international in the united kingdom but also other african pentecostal migrant churches. i have divided this article into five main sections. first, i will look at the previous studies on the intersections of migration and mission to identify the gaps in the missiological approaches of the same. the second section is dedicated to the development of the pneumatological missional imagination. in the third section, i introduce the apostolic faith mission ministry international in the united kingdom as a case study. in addition, i identify the current challenges faced by migrant churches in many parts of the world. in the last section, i demonstrate how the pneumatological missional imagination is relevant for studying different challenges at the intersections of migration and mission. 2 research methodology a literature review in qualitative research on the intersection of migration and mission is the approach for the study. the study looked at the literature, particularly concerning the missiological approaches or the theoretical frameworks thereof. in the identified theories of pneumatological imagination and missiological spirit, i relied much on the works of yong (2012, 2015, 2019, 2020). the theoretical frameworks 26 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19723 26 for migration and mission activity culminated in the theological approach. therefore, a pneumatological missional imagination becomes the theological approach for a missional imagination in a pentecostal context. however, in the theoretical framework of missional imagination other works such as roxburgh and boren (2009), beard (2015), and smith and niemandt (2022) helped summarize the aspect of the theory. the works of bevans (2013), fredericks and nagy (2016), and haug (2018) helped explore the previous missiological approaches to the intersections of migration and mission. when identifying the challenges that are faced by migrant churches, i specifically looked at an african pentecostal church, the apostolic faith mission ministry international in the united kingdom (afmimuk) using the participation observation method where the researcher attended the services in some of the assemblies in the afmimuk. the examples coming from afmimuk were important so the challenges of migration and mission are not discussed generally. therefore the current study does not remain superficial but is enriched by concrete examples coming from the afmimuk. therefore, a case study method was used for the choice of the afmimuk. a case study drew on the literature of migrant churches and theoretical missional frameworks for a pentecostal context. however, no interviews were included in the study but only reflections from the author’s observations. the work of sande (2019a, 2019b) was helpful in the historical developments of the afmimuk in the united kingdom and its link with the apostolic faith mission in zimbabwe (afmz). data was analysed by using thematic analysis as i explored important themes in the intersections of migration and mission. 3 missiological approaches to migration and mission this current study looks at the previous missiological approaches on migration and mission to identify the research gap. one scholar who looked at the different approaches to studying the intersections of migration and mission is storstein haug (2018), who highlights four main missiological approaches that have been used in the intersection of migration and mission: historical, empirical, descriptive-analytical, and theological studies. the historical perspective looks at how the theme of migration and mission has developed over the years in missions and world christianity. haug (2018: 282) says that the historical approach is also helpful in studying the contemporary developments within the same subject of migration and mission. therefore, the historical reflection does not only involve the past but also the present in the intersections of migration and mission in missions and world christianity. the historical approach can navigate the changes that happened in countries that were previously recipients of the gospel and have lately become the givers of the gospels in what others describe as a  reverse mission. bevans (2013: 158) explains: “the migration of peoples within the global south but perhaps especially from the south to the 27 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19723 27 global north is ushering in a new missionary era, both in terms of pastoral practice and theological insights.” these historical shifts are worth exploring in the context of migration and mission. furthermore, the historical approach helps investigate how the relationship between migration and mission works in different contexts. in using this approach for example we can investigate how migration and mission have evolved in different contexts historically. however, the same historical developments would require proper reflection as migration and mission in the pentecostal movement are informed by the role of the holy spirit in these developments. therefore, the historical inquisitions in migration and mission need to be balanced for example with how the holy spirit has been involved in migration and mission over the years. storstein haug argues that more empirical research is needed to “document and critically examine the whole range of mission practices of churches, organizations, and individuals among migrants” (2018: 288). dorottya nagy and martha frederiks add that this involves how the relationship between migration and mission affects people at a personal level but also at a communal level (nagy and frederiks 2016). this can be done as nagy does (2016: 38) by bringing the idea of human experiences in the intersections of migration and mission. however, in pentecostalism, the human experience is informed by the experiences and encounters with the holy spirit. therefore, in doing empirical research on the intersections of migration and mission there is a need to involve the work of the spirit in such study. the human experiences do not only relate to the human encounters with other human beings in the context of migration but also the encounters with the divine through the holy spirit and how such encounters affect the intersections of migration and mission. in the descriptive and analytical approach, storstein haug (2018: 290) points out that “missiology has been concerned with describing and discussing how christian faith takes form in different cultures and contexts and elucidating the relation between gospel and context”. in other words, it is within this approach that missiologists can investigate how the intersections of migration and mission have been affecting individuals in communities. this approach is important for example in looking at the challenges of globalization, transnationalism and migration in the intersections of migration and mission in world christianity. frederiks (2016: 24) points out for example that theologians and missiologists are faced with the task of contextualizing the gospel amid globalization, transnationalism and migration. fredericks continues: this “task” comprises the development of a conceptual and methodological toolbox that enables meaningful reflection on the contextualization processes of the christian faith, amidst the complex realities that globalization and migration produce, thus attempting to keep the christian tradition relevant and germane. 28 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19723 28 this points to the approach of descriptive and analytical approach that a missiological approach cannot just be about descriptions and analysis of the status quo on migration and mission. however, there is a need to also investigate the current challenges posed by globalisation, transnationalism, and migration as posed by frederiks. the main question is how can this be done in response to frederik’s suggestion almost a decade ago (2016). in this current study, i try to come up with an approach that can respond to current challenges posed by the intersections of migration and mission. even here the role of the holy spirit is pivotal in navigating the challenges of globalization, transnationalism and migration. therefore, there is a link between the intersections of migration and mission and the role of the holy spirit in migration. the theological approach refers to the theological dispositions on the intersections of migration and mission. in other words, it is within theologizing of migration and mission where theological reflections can be made on migration and mission. storstein haug (2018: 286) points out that “some examples of these migration theologies include immigration theologies that use biblical and other theological resources to criticize ways of thinking and acting that violate human rights”. in other words, it is in the theological reflection where the bible particularly the migration biblical texts becomes useful in studying the intersections of migration and mission. nagy (2016: 42) states that  if “migration is identified as an additional locus theologicus, it needs to be brought in relationship with other loci of the theological assessment through the scriptural reading of a more complex ‘reality’.” theologizing migration and mission is also helpful in demonstrating that god is the god of the migrants from genesis to revelation. storstein haug (2018: 287) continues to say that proper biblical reflections on migration can lead to a deeper understanding of what god has been involved in throughout history in using migration for the propagation of the gospel. the research gap that this current study wants to fill is the approach to migration and mission particularly concerning pentecostalism or its theology of the spirit, pneumatology. this current study works with three theories of pneumatological imagination, missiological spirit, and missional imagination to construct a missiological approach to migration within the pentecostal movement. 4 framing a pneumatological missional imagination in migration and mission the pneumatological missional imagination is developed here using three theories of pneumatological imagination, missiological spirit, and missional imagination. in addition, it is developed to make important contributions to historical, empirical, descriptive and theological reflections on migration and mission. 29 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19723 29 4.1 pneumatological imagination this theory, developed by yong (2020: 152) is developed on spirit engagement, sensory engagement and creation engagement and can make an important contribution to the theological reflections on migration and mission. the pneumatological imagination is not only based on the encounters between god and human beings through the holy spirit but also on the encounters between an individual and other fellow human beings (yong 2019: 29). this is seen in the pentecost narrative when those who are baptized in the holy spirit did not just speak in other tongues (glossolalia) but also spoke in human languages (xenolalia). the pneumatological imagination does not only make the connections between the divine and the humane but also the connections between human beings. “pneumatological imagination is a modality of engaging with and then reflecting on the world that is both interpersonal and intersubjective and can be so surely in and through dynamically embodied relations” (yong (2012: 191). in this way, pneumatological imagination becomes a framework not only for divine encounters but also for religious and interreligious encounters. these encounters are important in the juxtaposition of migration and mission in mission and world christianity. but most importantly and in the context of this current study, pneumatological imagination is relevant for the encounters between people of different nations in pluralist and diverse nations. this means that the pneumatological imagination is relevant to the study of how strangers can understand each other in the context of migration and mission. 4.2 the missiological spirit the missiological spirit (developed in yong 2015) is distinguished from pneumatological imagination as a missiological approach. it is not introduced as another spirit but as part of the triune god, the father, the son and the spirit. god the spirit is the missiological spirit. “theologically, then, the missiological spirit is also the spirit of god. more expansively, the holy spirit is the spirit of the trinitarian or triune god” (yong 2015: 227). the contribution of the missiological spirit in migration and mission is that it is the spirit that empowers the believers to be able to minister to people of other nations. acts 1.8 states “but you shall receive power when the holy spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to me in jerusalem, and in all judea and samaria, and to the end of the earth”. therefore the missiological spirit is the force behind the empowerment of believers to move beyond the local area to other nations in the propagation of the gospel. this means that the role of witnessing to other nations cannot happen until the missiological spirit empowers the believers. this is important in the context of migration and mission, particularly in the understanding of the ability of the pentecostal movement to move the gospel to other nations. 30 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19723 30 there are three roles of the missiological spirit in the intersections of migration and mission. first, the missiological spirit empowers the believers to be able to engage in mission work as seen in the pentecost narrative in lukan-acts where the early church was involved in missions because of the missiological spirit. the second role is the empowerment of the missiological spirit to communicate the gospel to others even if they are of different nations. lastly, it is the role of the missiological spirit in turning the believers to become real witnesses of the gospel opening up the possibility of every believer becoming a witness (priesthood of all believers) as opposed to assigning this task only to evangelists and missionaries. 4.3 the missional imagination lastly, the missional imagination is important in mission and migration in the orientation of the whole church towards the mission of god. the proponents of the missional imagination roxburgh and boren (2009: 20) advocate for the church being centred around the mission of god rather  than its mission. smith and niemandt (2022: 6) explain: in terms of a missional imagination, the habitus of the missional church opens participants to the reality of the missio trinitatis. congregants imagine that mission is now possible within the every day and not just the privilege of the elite. this missional habitus invites participants into the bodily movements and poetics of the trinitarian god which is radically different from the habitus of a church that is caught in modes of christendom that distorts the mission by directing it back to the church alone. therefore according to beard (2015: 191), missional imagination can be defined as …the role of god as the originator and motivator of mission shifting the relationship between the church and mission from the church having a mission to the mission of god having a church. if god is indeed the originator of the mission, and if he expects his people to join him in that mission, then the missional church and missional disciples must be in tune with the holy spirit to determine where and how god is working. this is important in migration and mission to avoid the temptation of focusing on the mission of the church rather than the mission of god. therefore, a pneumatological missional imagination is grounded on three principles. first, the role of the holy spirit in making it possible for believers to encounter people of other nations as it happens on the day of pentecost. second, the role of the missiological spirit in empowering believers to become witnesses and communicate the gospel to others. lastly, the orientation of the migrant church is the orientation of the mission of god as opposed to focusing on its mission. 31 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19723 31 pneumatological missional imagination can be defined as the orientation of the migrant church towards the mission of god through the empowerment of the holy spirit in encountering people of other nations. this is important in the context of african pentecostal migrant churches in the recognition of the spirit empowerment to reach out to the people of other nations. this means that pneumatological missional imagination is a framework to preach the gospel beyond the people of one’s same nation. pneumatological missional imagination is also a framework developed on the recognition of the empowerment of the holy spirit in the disciples’s ability to become the witnesses rather than remain members of a particular church. believers as witnesses is a necessary step towards the utilisation of local church members who are familiar with the cultural aspects in the host country. the pneumatological missional imagination is a framework designed to orientate the african pentecostal migrant churches towards the mission of god as spirit empowered churches rather than the fulfilment of their own mission. therefore, this framework makes a contribution to missional imagination on spirit empowerment in the orientation of the missional church towards the mission of god. 5 the case of the apostolic faith mission ministry international in the united kingdom the afmimuk is an african migrant pentecostal church in england, wales, and scotland. it forms part of the apostolic faith mission international (afmi) with other sister churches in different countries in the world. several reasons demonstrate that the afmimuk is a migrant pentecostal church. in the first place, the church has its roots in the apostolic faith mission in zimbabwe (afmz). the church was planted among migrants who experienced challenges highlighted in the introduction, including socio-economic challenges and political instability in zimbabwe (sande 2019b: 270). however, some had left zimbabwe to pursue better economic, educational, and even work opportunities. most of these migrants were already part of the church in zimbabwe and therefore gathered to form a new church away from home. therefore, there are different links between the foundation of the afmimuk and migration, which is the link between migration and mission. one can point out that this kind of link is continuous since the migration trend from zimbabwe to the uk has not stopped since it started in the last quarter of the twentieth century. with brexit, there are even more opportunities for many zimbabweans to come to the united kingdom in search of greener pastures. therefore, this church is relevant as a case to explore the relationship between migration and mission in the twenty-first century. 32 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19723 32 the roots of the afmimuk in the afmz can be traced by the members of the afmz who arrived in the uk and established this church in 1998 (samushonga & sande 2020:17; cf. sande 2019a: 73). after five years of operation mainly in southeast london, the church was formally registered in 2003. as many migrants from zimbabwe arrived in the united kingdom many more branches were started. this connection between the expansion of the afmimuk and migration has caused the church to become more faithful to the home church in zimbabwe. although administratively the church received its autonomy in 2009, in practice it is still very much part of the afmz. the foundation of afmimuk, unlike other sister branches of the afmi in zimbabwe, zambia and south africa cannot be attributed to a specific individual but a group of individuals, thus confirming its status as a migrant church. nonetheless, some individuals can be credited as being there in 1998 when the church started. these include rev. trust ndlovu, a graduate of the living waters bible college (sande 2019b: 277). another important figure in the foundation of the afmimuk is rev. t. i. murefu, who worked with lay leaders who had preceded him such as patrick sena (then national administrator), sebastian nyamande, josh chigorimbo (then general secretary) and several others. in addition, many more individuals contributed to the foundation of this church by hosting spiritual services in their houses as the church did not have buildings in its early inception. this speaks to the afmimuk as a migrant church which makes the links between migration and mission very strong. currently, the membership of the afmimuk is at about 3,500 from its different 36 branches in the four regions. the church has some governing structures that are similar to the sister churches in zimbabwe, south africa, zambia and others. these structures are used for the governance and the regulations of the church in the country. in the national structure, they are led by the national apostolic committee, which reports to the national workers council and the national board of trustees. this structure is similar to the national office bearers in south africa. the afmimuk is also governed through a regional structure where the branches are supposed to report on the progress of their churches and missions. the church currently has four regions, namely the northern region (with nine assemblies), the midlands region (with eleven assemblies), the central region (with eight assemblies) and the southern region (with eight assemblies). therefore, in the short time since its inception, the church has been able to establish itself in different parts of england. this is a sign of growth in the context of migration and mission. however, various challenges can impede this growth, necessitating some reflections in the context of the intersections of migration and mission. the same challenges can be contextualized on migration and mission in pentecostalism by using afmimuk as a case study as discussed below. 33 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19723 33 some challenges faced by churches like the afmimuk include the inability to minister to local people in the host country because of the cultural challenge to the mission. the context of many cities in the united kingdom is very much multicultural. therefore, the idea of always wanting to retain the monoculture emanating from the afmz in the afmimuk does not work. the afmimuk is facing a challenge with those who want to maintain the cultural practices that they have brought with them when coming to the united kingdom. samushonga and sande (2020: 28) explain: the shona language and culture are predominant in the zimbabwean population in general. this ethnic segmentation explains why the shona language has dominated and shaped the practices and expressions of the afmimuk. although many zimbabweans are proficient in the english language and spend most of their time immersed in the british systems, the study demonstrates that it is not easy to change one’s language and reach the same depth (i.e., from shona to english) when it comes to spiritual practices. these dynamics are caused by the church’s association with the afmz. some members of the afmimuk are refusing to let go of their own experiences of their home country. sanushonga and sande say that this quest to maintain the cultural practices within the church has led to the failure of the afmimuk to reach the local people. i must add that this is not only the failure to reach the local people but also the failure to reach out to other fellow african migrants from zambia, nigeria, ghana, cameroon etc. some zimbabwean migrants prefer attending other migrant churches which are open to other cultures rather than their migrant, monocultural church. there is also an inability of some of the assemblies of the afmimuk to reach out to local people because of the styles used in mission praxis, particularly when it comes to praise and worship (okyerefo 2014). this can be very frustrating, particularly for young people who are very willing to adapt to new styles of praise and worship. these young people, the second generation of afmimuk, unlike the first generation are not so connected to the afmz and therefore seek newer styles of praise and worship (nyanni 2018, 2020). therefore, the issue of praise and worship affects not only the local people but young african migrants. in pentecostalism, praise and worship are dedicated to singing songs, dancing, clapping hands and shouting. praise and worship become the expression of spirituality amongst the congregants, particularly during a sunday worship service. however, it can be reiterated that in many of the african pentecostal churches, not just the afmimuk, praise and worship are expressed using the african styles more than those of the locality where these churches find themselves. this in a way becomes an impediment in reaching out to local people as some cannot assimilate to the african styles. in addition, the way 34 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19723 34 the sermon is presented by some of the preachers in churches like afmimuk also becomes an impediment to reaching local people. in some cases the service, particularly the preaching of the sermon, would take longer than expected by the locals. in africa for example, a preacher can preach for two hours non-stop and this is acceptable to the congregants. one cannot do the same in other regions of the world such as the uk. these are some of the challenges of mission praxis that are important to reflect on in the intersections of mission and migration. lastly, migrant churches are preoccupied with assisting fellow migrants in obtaining work visas, employment and other needs (chimbidzikai 2021). this at times makes churches such as afmimuk lose focus on the missio dei (the mission of god). the reason some of the migrants join churches like the afmimuk is the desire to have a sense of belonging and to receive help when in difficult situations. at times this sense of belonging impedes having new members, particularly local people, as they too feel as if they do not belong. in this way, religion is used as a unifying factor for many migrants who are away from home. when a new person comes into churches like the afmimuk, it is not easy to become part of the unified group that is formed based on common culture, language and ethnicity, or even formed on the basis of meeting each others’ needs as migrants. this takes us back to the reasons why churches like afmimuk were formed. some of the reasons as highlighted by scholars such as sande (2019a) were to create a support structure for the migrants. other reasons include maintaining their religious practices as practised from back home. it is for these reasons that some of the migrants are very resistant when it comes to adjusting worship styles to accommodate the local people. many would rather maintain the status quo for fear of losing their own religious identity and sense of belonging. while it is good for the migrants to have a sense of belonging, this is not necessarily the mission of the church. as discussed above, the mission of the church should be aligned with the mission of god in reaching out to the people in their diversity. this calls for churches such as afmimuk to rethink their mission praxis to reach out to the local people in fulfilment of the mission of god. 6 pneumatological missional imagination: a contribution to mission and migration the framework in this current study is relevant for challenging the current missiological approaches to the study of migration and mission. in addition, it is relevant in dealing with some of the challenges to migration and mission in the pentecostal tradition. a pneumatological missional imagination is a framework for the empowerment of the spirit in witnessing to others. through the empowerment of the spirit, there is a possibility of being able to minister to people of different ethnicities. this 35 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19723 35 means that the empowerment of the spirit is necessary for the packaging of the gospel so that it is relevant to people in their diversity. this means that through the empowerment of the spirit, as happened in the pentecost narrative, the failure to reach local people is overcome through spirit-filled gospel, spirit-filled songs and spirit-filled sermons. this means that in the pneumatological missional imagination, the goal is not to push for one’s language or even culture but the empowerment of the spirit. it is through this spirit empowerment that leads to a possibility for the church in any place in the world to be relevant to the believers. therefore, this calls for african pentecostal migrant churches such as afmimuk to pursue the empowerment of the spirit as opposed to affinity or loyalty to the home church in zimbabwe. the gospel should be allowed to find resonance where it is located, this is only possible through the empowerment of the spirit. a pneumatological missional imagination is a framework relevant to the spreading of the gospel to other nations. the popular phrase is “to the ends of the world”. this means that the gospel is not limited to reaching out to african migrants or fellow zimbabweans in the united kingdom but to the ends of the world. the same spirit which amos yong calls the missiological spirit empowers the believers to become witnesses. this means that the preaching of the gospel is not only the task of elite evangelists and missionaries but also the task of every believer who is filled by the spirit. the spirit-filled believer has the potential to reach out to the people of other nations as it happened on the day of the pentecost. the spirit-filled believer does not only witness to fellow migrants but to others as well as is inspired by the spirit to speak other languages. the spirit goes wherever it wills and therefore cannot be limited to the african migrants as is the case in most assemblies in the afmimuk. the role of the spirit in migration and mission is to spread the gospel beyond locality. this is the reason the pentecostal movement has become a recognisable force in world christianity because of its ability to move from one city to the other or even from one country to the other. similarly, the afmimuk through a missional imagination can expand their reach beyond just african migrants as inspired by the missiological spirit. lastly, a pneumatological missional imagination is relevant for the orientation of african pentecostal migrant churches like the afmimuk toward the mission of god. the pneumatological missional imagination is not only based on the spirit empowerment but is also aligned with the mission of god. this calls for the orientation of the afmimuk towards the mission of god as being inspired by the same holy spirit. the church does not have its mission but its mission is based on the primary mission of god in the world. therefore, any migrant church in any part of the world does not fulfill its mission but should align with the mission of god. the pneumatological 36 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19723 36 missional imagination contributes to the orientation of the church to the mission of god. therefore we should reimagine churches afmimuk as churches beyond the sense of belonging or even helping one another in obtaining work visas or even maintaining the religious practices from the home country. the church should rather be preoccupied with the need to fulfil the mission of god here on earth which is the redemption of the world. god desires that all human beings be reconciled with him, anything else that the church does should align with this main mission in the context of migration and mission. therefore, while it is not wrong to help people with visas and jobs, these should be done without compromising the mission of god in the world. therefore, the pneumatological missional imagination is important for the fulfilment of god’s vision which as argued here is important for reaching out to believers beyond the african migrants. in essence, a pneumatological missional imagination is not only a theological approach but is also relevant to be integrated into the life and praxis of the faith communities such as the afmimuk. it encourages the believers to take up action to reaching out to the people of god in the uk in fulfilment of the mission of god. this framework is relevant not only for the afmimuk but also for other migrant churches across the globe. 7 conclusion this article was based on the conceptual framework of the intersections of migration and mission. the context is pentecostal-oriented migrant churches finding their place in the mission of god and the selection of the afmimuk. this subject is important to locate within the pentecostal movement given the current challenges faced by many migrant churches across the world such as the  inability to minister relevantly to the host countries, cultural differences, and the orientation towards the mission of god. however, before delving much into the pentecostal nuances, the article also analysed previous missiological approaches to the study of the intersections of migration and mission with some identified gaps in their relevance to pentecostalism. the contribution of this article is the development of the pneumatological missional imagination as a relevant framework to the study of migration and mission. the article brought the theories of pneumatological imagination, missiological spirit, and missional imagination to develop this framework. this framework is important in studying the challenges concerning witnessing to people of other nations, dealing with cultural differences, and orientation to the mission of god as identified in the afmimuk. therefore, a pneumatological missional imagination is relevant as a missiological approach to the intersections of migration and mission in pentecostalism. future studies on migration and mission can use the same framework to engage further on the subject. 37 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19723 37 about the author mookgo solomon kgatle holds a phd in theology and is a professor of missiology at the college of human sciences, unisa. he is interested in the history, mission, and theology of african pentecostalism. he has published several peer-reviewed articles and books in the field. he is the founder and president of the southern african society of pentecostal studies. he is an nrf-rated scholar and appeared in the 2024 scopus list of the top 2% of scientists worldwide. he received visiting scholarships to the university of birmingham and oxford university (2020–23). he won several other awards including the unisa principal award for excellence in research (2024). contact: kgatls@unisa.ac.za references beard, christopher b. 2015. missional discipleship and adult learning theory: a study of missional spiritual formation experiences and their connection to adult learning principles. johnson university. bevans, stephen. 2013. “migration and mission: pastoral challenges, theological insights,” in contemporary issues of migration and theology, ed. elaine padilla and peter c. phan, christianities of the world. new york: palgrave macmillan, 157–77. boer, harry r., 1961. pentecost and missions. grand rapids, michigan: eerdmans pub. chimbidzikai, tinashe. 2021. “‘it’s a big umbrella’: uncertainty, pentecostalism, and the integration of zimbabwe exemption permit immigrants in johannesburg, south africa.” migration and society 4 (1): 163–71. frederiks, martha. 2016. “religion, migration, and identity: a conceptual and theoretical exploration.” in frederiks, martha, and dorottya nagy (eds) religion, migration and identity, pp. 9–29. leiden: brill. ———, and dorottya nagy. 2016. religion, migration, and identity: methodological and theological explorations. leiden: brill. haug, kari storstein. 2018. “migration in missiological research.” international review of mission 107 (1): 279–93. kirk, j. andrew. 1997. the mission of theology and theology as mission. gracewing publishing. nagy, dorottya. 2016. “minding methodology: theology-missiology and migration studies.” in frederiks, martha, and dorottya nagy (eds) religion, migration, and identity, pp. 30–59. leiden: brill. nyanni, caleb opoku. 2018. “the spirits and transition: the second generation and the church of pentecost-uk.” phd diss., university of birmingham. ———. 2020. “changing lanes: second-generation african pentecostals in the united kingdom.” journal of the european pentecostal theological association 40 (1): 32–45, https:// doi.org/10.1080/18124461.2020.1721683 okyerefo, michael p. k. 2014. “african churches in europe.” journal of african religions 2 (1): 95–124. robert, dana l. 2009. christian mission: how christianity became a world religion. vol. 25. new jersey: john wiley & sons. https://doi.org/10.1080/18124461.2020.1721683 https://doi.org/10.1080/18124461.2020.1721683 38 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef19723 38 roxburgh, alan j., and m. scott boren. 2009. introducing the missional church (allelon missional series): what it is, why it matters, how to become one. baker books. samushonga, hartness m., and nomatter sande. 2020. “doing diaspora practical theology: insights into how culture, ethnicity, and national identity shape theological practices and expressions of uk-african diaspora churches.” practical theology 13 (1–2): 109–22, https:// doi.org/10.1080/1756073x.2020.1738673. sande, nomatter. 2019a. “african pentecostalism and gendered roles among people of the zimbabwean diaspora in the uk.” international journal of contemporary applied researches 6 (11): 73–88. http://ijcar.net/assets/pdf/vol6-no11-november2019/5.-african-pentecostalism-andgendered-rolesamong-people-of-the-zimbabwean-diaspora-in-the-uk.pdf. ———. 2019b. “historicizing the apostolic faith mission in the united kingdom.” journal of pentecostal theology 28 (2): 267–83, https://doi.org/10.1163/17455251-02802008 ———. and hartness m. samushonga. 2020. “african pentecostal ecclesiastical practices and cultural adaption in a changing world.” journal of the european pentecostal theological association 40 (1): 17–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/18124461.2020.1714137. smith, thomas j., and nelus niemandt. 2022. “exploring a missional pedagogy for transforming discipleship: implications for missional discipleship within the drc.” stellenbosch theological journal 8(1): 1–24. wariboko, nimi, and l.william oliverio, 2020. “the society for pentecostal studies at 50 years: ways forward for global pentecostalism.” pneuma 42 (3–4): 327–33. yong, amos. 2012. pneumatology and the christian–buddhist dialogue: does the spirit blow through the middle way? leiden: brill. ———. 2015. the missiological spirit: christian mission theology in the third-millennium global context. eugene, or: wipf and stock. ———. 2019. discerning the spirit(s): a pentecostal-charismatic contribution to christian theology of religions. eugene, or: wipf and stock. ———. 2020. “the pneumatological imagination: the logic of pentecostal theology.” in wolfgang vondey (ed.), the routledge handbook of pentecostal theology, pp. 152–62. abingdon: routledge. http://ijcar.net/assets/pdf/vol6-no11-november2019/5.-african-pentecostalism-andgendered-rolesamong-people-of-the-zimbabwean-diaspora-in-the-uk.pdf http://ijcar.net/assets/pdf/vol6-no11-november2019/5.-african-pentecostalism-andgendered-rolesamong-people-of-the-zimbabwean-diaspora-in-the-uk.pdf https://doi.org/10.1163/17455251-02802008 https://doi.org/10.1080/18124461.2020.1714137 ecclesial futures 2025 – volume 6 – issue 2 121 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef25059 b o o k r e v i e w doi: 10.54195/ef25059 b o o k r e v i e w edwards, korie l., and rebecca y. kim. 2024. estranged pioneers: race, faith, and leadership in a diverse world oxford: oxford university press isbn: 9780197638309 reviewed by james butler the thing which drew me to this book was the language of “pioneer”. this is language i’m familiar with because it is used in a church of england context to describe those who feel a sense of calling beyond the traditional spheres of the church to connect with people who are beyond the normal reach of churches. given that one of the critiques of this language is that it is inappropriate because of its colonial connotations and connections, it was interesting to find it used as the language to describe those who sense a call to lead racially diverse churches, or multiracial churches, in the terms favoured in the book. not only that, but having heard korie little edwards speak, i was aware that these “pioneers” that she and rebecca kim had identified had experiences in common with the pioneers i work with, particularly around the ways they saw themselves following an unusual calling, leading to them feeling misunderstood by those around them within their churches and wider denominational structures. estranged pioneers is a detailed look at the experience of leaders of racially diverse churches in the united states. edwards and kim are both sociologists, and the book takes a sociology of religion approach in its methods and in its theoretical analysis. reading sociology of religion as someone based in practical theology is interesting – on the one hand, there is so much which feels in common with my field around the close attention to data and the experience of those living this out in the day-to-day, and yet it always feels one step removed from the kinds of questions i want to be asking. this is not to say it is not a good read; in fact, it is highly readable, and i was drawn in to the accounts, the stories and the reflections which came around race, congregations, leadership and so on. i would recommend the book on that basis alone; it draws the reader into the experience of these pastors and raises important 122 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef25059 122 questions about the challenges they face and what that reveals about christianity and the racial landscape of the united states. the book is laid out in five chapters, building from the experience of pastors towards wider questions of race and diversity and the particular challenges for churches and experience of leading racially diverse churches. it starts by describing the different ways pastors found themselves leading multiracial churches (chapter 1) before turning to focus more specifically on the experience of pastors of colour in chapter  2. having begun to point towards the challenges faced, these are made more explicit and explored in more detail in chapter 3. given that so much of the pastors’ experience seems challenging and difficult, edwards and kim then turn to ask whether there are advantages (chapter 4) before exploring the wider racial dynamics of “white pastor privilege” in chapter 5. what i found particularly powerful were the stories of pastors of colour who had a sense of calling towards leading multiracial churches. in reality, they found themselves disadvantaged in comparison to their white colleagues, with barriers to overcome in the ways they were perceived by white members of congregations and predominantly white denominations, and at the same time felt cut off from some of the support structures which would come from their own churches, be that black, hispanic, or asian. much of the book focused on the ways in which identity played out in their roles as pastors, and the ways in which they navigated those dynamics. my frustrations with the book, suggested at the beginning of this review, are around the lack of engagement with theological categories. on the one hand this is understandable given that the work is located in the discipline of sociology of religion, and has a focus on the experience of church leadership within the wider racial landscape of the united states. but at the same time, i felt that important interpretative tools were missing from the work. for example, it was interesting to me that the language of “call” was so prominent within the book, and yet there is very little inquisitiveness about what “call” means to those pastors. it is not really dealt with as a theological category and is seen in quite secular terms in ways which i believe would be alien to the pastors themselves. given that the participants emphasised a sense of calling, it would seem helpful to explore what this sense of call actually was, rather than trying to make sense of it in terms of sociological advantages. similarly, there were interesting points of exploration around racial justice, but little account was given of the pastors’ motivations for pursuing racial justice coming directly from their own faith. for me, this raises important inter-disciplinary questions about how sociological and practical theology research might engage together. it would be interesting to explore how practical theological work on these issues could complement and further illuminate the work done here. my worry with the sociological analysis is that the recommendations can easily be based in assumptions about churches and faith which are not shared with the pastors who have participated. i feel that the 123 ecclesial futures – doi: 10.54195/ef25059 123 recommendations to churches about next steps and implications need to be considered in theological terms to help surface the assumptions which are held by sociology. all that being said, in terms of my own reflection, this has been a really helpful and stimulating book. this is the case not just regarding the pertinent questions of racial justice, multiracial church and leadership on which the book focuses, but also the bigger questions around the experience of following a calling which takes you away from one’s peers, resulting in the experience of pioneering something new while feeling estranged from all you knew. it would be great to explore the overlaps between the “estranged pioneers” of this context, with the pioneers working in the church of england and other denominations in a uk context. overall, i recommend the book; it is an engaging and absorbing read, and one which can stimulate important theological questions, even if it is not interested in them itself. about the reviewer dr james butler, university of roehampton, london, and church mission society, oxford. contact: james.butler@roehampton.ac.uk mailto:james.butler@roehampton.ac.uk ecclesial futures 2025 – volume 6 – issue 2 1 ecclesial futures editorial steve taylor welcome to what is the twelfth issue of ecclesial futures, a journal focused on the mission of god in the world, particularly in local christian communities and the systems that support them. in this issue, you will find seven articles that explore the nature of the mission of god. three of the articles are written by scholars in global south contexts, three investigate charismatic and pentecostal churches, while four study the systems that support local christian communities. these include funding, ecumenical partnerships, diocesan strategies, and digital technologies. together, these seven articles illuminate the interconnected and interwoven nature of god’s mission in the world that god loves. original research the first article, by mishael donkor ampofo and peter white, studies the funding of mission in denominational systems. they demonstrate through empirical research how the dramatic shift in global christianity’s centre of gravity towards africa is transforming mission work dynamics, including in the funding of mission. semi-structured interviews and extensive documentary analysis illuminate how the assemblies of god in ghana have combined traditional church giving with modern technological solutions. the denomination sought to finance 3,000 new churches within a five-year period. strategies included collaborative partnerships, including with technology companies to support automatic mobile micro-giving programs. a feature of the article is the attention paid to indigenous approaches to mission funding. the implementation of robust accountability structures and cultural sensitivity marked an alternative to traditional funding models, which can create unhealthy dependencies. a second article examines the limits and possibilities of missionary church development in the cities of europe. given a lack of research into interconfessional unity in contemporary church planting, thomas kräuter and jack barentsen interview church planters and ministers in vienna, austria. they found that ecumenical cooperation is very limited, due to theological assumptions and time constraints. looking forward, they propose a regional ecumenical church planting hub across confessional 2 ecclesial futures 2 boundaries. in response to the isolation of church planting, a hub would encourage missiological togetherness through relational support, mutual learning, and spiritual community in developing new forms of church. in a third article studying the systems that support local christian communities, andrew dunlop investigates how dioceses as a church system might support innovation. he draws on the term “mixed ecology” which has been used by the church of england to affirm how traditional and new forms of church can mutually flourish rather than simply co-exist. the article analyses almost every diocesan strategy in the church of england, along with vision statements and publicly available documentation. dunlop encourages dioceses to work at “amplification”, where the sharing of stories legitimizes innovation and invites creativity. a fourth article examines another system, that of digital technology. heidi a. campbell and meg boone develop findings from a three-year study of how indiana churches utilized and integrated technology to sustain community and spiritual life amidst the covid-19 pandemic. a central insight is the realization by church leaders that technology is not a peripheral tool pre-pandemic but an essential component. the research also affirms the value of intergenerational collaboration to enrich decision-making around the adoption and adaptation of technology. older church leaders tended to favour facebook as a platform, while younger leaders favoured platforms like instagram and twitter. mission challenges remain, including “digital divides” within congregations and among smaller and rural congregations. in a fifth article, sara oliva examines faith formation in independent charismatic communities in perth, australia. she offers an invaluable insight, first, because of her empirical work on new expressions of independent community churches as an under-researched population. second, she focuses on the journey of faith as she extends empirical work on recent converts in australia and applies it in relation to supporting congregants in lifelong spiritual journeys. the article thus has practical relevance for church leaders as it affirms the importance of relational authenticity in nurturing faith during seasons of doubt, crisis and transition. (on a personal note, i was privileged to supervise sara oliva in her post-graduate research and to explore with her ways to publish her findings. my thanks to ecclesial futures co-editor nigel rooms for coordinating the double blind peer review of this article). a sixth article examines the growth of african pentecostalism. mookgoo solomon kgatle defines and develops two theoretical concepts, missio spiritus and indigenous provenance. the work of the holy spirit – in witness, redemption life and creation – is argued to be central in the development of indigenous expressions of african pentecostalism. thus, kgatle’s demonstrates that the growth of african pentecostalism is “informed by the way africans have embraced the mission of the spirit”. this challenges how pentecostal missiologists understand missions, indigeneity, and world christianity. equally, kgatle also challenges african pentecostalism by outlining how 3 ecclesial futures 3 embracing the role of the spirit of creation can strengthen engagement in environmental issues. a seventh and final article examines unity and diversity in pentecostal churches in ghana. working with recorded sermons and members’ experiences, eric manu compares vida bethel prayer ministry and believers worship centre. the research is important because it rejects generalizations by paying attention to living praxis. rather than contrast unity and diversity, manu argues for a coexistence of unity in shared elements and diversity in distinct differences within the pentecostal practices of these two churches. the article offers fascinating insights into how pentecostal worship and leadership practices support participants in the challenges of everyday life. significantly, the research focuses on the emergence of women’s leadership in community service and their pioneering role in what has historically been male-dominated communities of faith. the seven articles are followed by five book reviews. the reviews are evidence of a community of scholars who are reading, thinking, and interacting together about the mission of god in the world in and through christian communities. we always welcome book reviews, particularly of manuscripts relevant to mission and the future of the church in the global south. as always, my thanks to my colleagues nigel rooms (co-editor), patrick todjeras (editor of book reviews), christopher pipe (copy-editor), and the team at radboud university press and open journals for their skill and care. because of diamond open access, original research is available free to authors and readers. to receive updates about new articles and developments in ecclesial futures, please sign up to receive our newsletter at https://ecclesialfutures.org/. about the author steve taylor, director angelwings ltd and research affiliate, university of otago | ōtākou whakaihu waka. contact: kiwidrsteve@gmail.com. https://ecclesialfutures.org/ mailto:kiwidrsteve@gmail.com