New Parish Models and Resources
by Sam Wheatley
We’ve been discussing the biblical foundation and missional need for a theology of place. One theological and practical response is to recover the idea of parish as part of a local church’s philosophy of ministry. What follows is an interaction with a few recent publications that provide new models and resources for parish ministry. We would greatly benefit from any other resources our readers could recommend in the comments below. Please share!
The Parochial Vision: The Future of the English Parish, by Nick Spencer
Revolution doesn’t always come in a flashy dust-jacket. Parochial Vision is a ground-breaking book with far-reaching implications for the church living in a post-Christendom world.
Spencer’s focus is the Church of England (COE) and it’s 1,000-year-long commitment to the parish system of one church with one priest for one district. This land-based concept of pastoral care lead to the COE falling further and further behind as England rapidly urbanized over the past century. It also created an enormous drain on the church’s treasury to maintain the roughly 12,000 parish buildings. Spencer jokes that the COE used to be called the Tory party at prayer, but now should be called the National Trust at prayer.
The solution, according to Spencer, is a return to the pre-Norman Conquest church model of the Minster church. A Minster church was designed for missional times. It evolved during the period of Roman collapse in response to the need to transform the Anglo-Saxon culture.
What are the marks of a Minster congregation?
1. A regional identity- The Minster congregation has a vision and plan for ministering to a region that is a self-identified unit (e.g. downtown as opposed to the entire region). This region, interestingly enough, seems to be always roughly encompassed by a six mile radius from the Minster Church.
2. A collegial staff- The Minister church is staffed by clergy who have primary pastoral care for distinct congregations/parishes within the overall Minster structure. These congregations are resourced by the clergy but have local leadership in place. This provides a balance for clergy: between direct pastoral care, and the development of specialty ministry areas (based upon giftedness) that minister to the entire Minster community (e.g. teaching, counseling, etc.).
3. A training center- The Minster’s missional focus and larger span of care raises up people who are called to ministry who can receive very hands-on practice tied to theological reflection. The Minster church’s mission keeps in check the tendency for pastoral interns to become overly focused on intellectual pursuits to the detriment of actual ministry to people.
4. Flexible facilities- Central offices of the Minster church could provide meeting space, specialized equipment (e.g. recording studio, video production, etc.), bookstore, library, health center, mentoring programs, classroom space, and even room for commercial or non-profit development.
5. Missional stance- The Minster church’s driving purpose is innovative ministry to a non-Christian culture. It provides a way to share integrated word and deed ministry to a specific region by distinct (yet connected) local congregations/parishes.
Why is this revolutionary?
1. The Minster model is economically practical-
Instead of resources going to maintain buildings that are rarely used, this model treats facilities as a 24/7/365 asset to be utilized for a wide variety of uses (education, worship, commerce, community events/celebrations). It also allows for connected congregations to share resources (human, informational and economic) for ministry excellence.
2. The Minster model is ecclesiastically flexible-
Pastors are able to develop specialty gifts (encouraging excellence and job satisfaction) without losing connection to the realities of ongoing ministry to people within a specific context/culture. This is not an “ivory tower” but a model that deals with real-life, pastoral/mission challenges with greater skill than is possible with typical “parish-driven” models. This model also opens up a variety of ways of serving the local church for more than those called to ordained pastoral office.
3. The Minster model is missionally nimble-
Because the Minster church is able to service specific communities/groups without having to “plant an individual church” it means groups that would likely not be targeted for parish churches–because they are not economically viable–can be developed. Also, new opportunities for outreach are not shelved because of lack of staffing: because of a collegial staff, people are available for quick response to opportunity.
4. The Minster model is culturally relevant and challenging-
The Minster model has a holistic view of ministry to it’s community, thus it is perceived as a vital part of the fabric of the region—which also gives it an ability to speak to and against it’s particular place.
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The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church and The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church, both by Alan Hirsch
Hirsch is writing as an Australian with a background in the missional church going back to the mid-1970s in Australia. Hence he is a Boomer and a lot of his over-enthusiasm can be attributed to that generation. Overall, I’d advocate reading both of these books, though Forgotten Ways is better than Shaping, and Shaping goes into more detail than Forgotten. One highly interesting thing is how close he comes to developing a Reformed theology — I personally think that many so-called “emerging” movements would be open to a well-articulated and sensitive description of Reformed ideas (a la Schaeffer).
The Shaping of Things to Come is an argument for and articulation of “Incarnational Ecclesiology”, and thus is an interesting critique of the modern church’s fascination with the “attractional” model. What Hirsch means by “attractional” is a church that expects people to show up just because they are in town. All efforts of such churches are geared to improving their services, he argues, not in getting out to where people are and giving an apologetic, first for the gospel and then for the church. He also critiques the “dualism” of modernistic spirituality — God for my spirit, reason for my life — that is rampant in the church. Separating the sacred from the profane, he says, is wrong-headed and increasingly unsuccessful. His third critique is an unpersuasive argument against hierarchy in the church where the world/context is increasingly egalitarian and communitarian.
He then goes into some detail about how to apply these concepts. The most helpful was thinking of the church as digging wells to keep the cattle around rather than establishing fences to keep people together.
In the “Messianic Spirituality” section he begins a great section where he is advocating a more Hebraic approach to spirituality — Mudhouse Sabbath by Lauren Winner also does this very well.
I didn’t start marking things in my book until section four on “Apostolic Leadership” from Ephesians. Jesus appointed some to be Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, and Teachers. These 5, according to Hirsch, are the 5 core leadership gifts of the church that are interdependent and cooperative: Apostle/entrepreneur, Prophet/questioner, Evangelist/recruiter, Pastor/counselor, Teacher/systematizer. He argues that the Pastor function has trumped the other gifts for so long that the church can’t think past that gift to recognize and encourage the other four.
His final conclusions for the church are as follows:
1. Smaller missional units are more organically responsive to host communities in different subcultures.
2. Church planting for mission should not be founded on a large church model.
3. Being more missional means doing fewer things.
4. Multiplication of churches is more important than growth in size of existing churches.
5. Small groups can fulfill the need for community that has been lost in a fractured culture.
6. Smaller churches are more effective in missional growth and evangelism.
7. Pain and difficulty force leadership to respond and adapt to new situations and challenges — smaller churches are the first to adapt or die.
8. New paradigm churches need to think outside the existing framework for financially supporting their ministry (bi-vocational pastors, missionary support, central funding, or some kind of mix).
Again, Forgotten Ways is a more polished version of the ideas above from The Shaping of Things to Come. In Forgotten Ways Hirsch goes into more depth about his prescriptions for networks, organic growth and missional context.
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Sam Wheatley is the Minster of New Song Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Posted: December 17th, 2008 under Contextualization, Ecclesiology, Mission, Wednesdays.
Comments
Comment from Sam Wheatley
Time December 18, 2008 at 10:41 am
Greg,
I think the idea would be for that regional church;
1) to begin to identify it’s core “minster” - the 6 square mile area around the church that comprises it’s key area of influence.
2) Ask the question, “Does this minster match our congregation?” “Are 80% or greater of our congregation coming from within our minster?” If not then I’d suggest that you are not physically located in your true sphere of influence and might need to relocate or retool your ministry vision.
3) Begin to think about ways to plant in those areas outside of your core sphere new minster-minded congregations that can then become key influencers for that new minster.
4) Refocus the staff to make sure all are involved in some direct pastoral involvement — eschew over specialization within your staff. The core heart of ministry must be people not ideas/program maintenance.
5) Consider how you can start niche ministries in your minster that would never support its own independent congregation (hence why these niches exist), but is in deep need of pastoral care. For example, we’ve got a worship service at a men’s alcohol and drug recovery center with about 30 men running each Sunday, we’re also looking at starting a midweek service at the University hospital complex for patients, families, staff and Dr.s, other ideas we’re toying with is a midnight service for club-kids and musicians. All this is for both getting pastoral care directly to the people who need it most, rather than using it as a means to “grow” our congregation. As far as costs, these events need only to cover their basic overhead, since the clergy used to staff them are already being paid by the minster-church.
6) Retool your budget. Are there various income streams other than congregational giving? What could the church do to off-load all ministry costs from the congregation? This will give more disposable income to shift toward ministry investment. For example we use our facility 5 out of 7 nights for a music venue, this brings people into the church as well as offsets a lot of our building costs. We also have started a couple of community events (a Spring rummage sale and Christmas Bazaar) that bring in money for our building fund and give us greater community involvement. Down the road we are looking at other community service events that will help offset some facility costs (child-birth classes, parenting classes, financial education, etc.).
That’s some initial thoughts.
Sam
Comment from Jamison Galt
Time December 19, 2008 at 9:35 am
Greg,
One thing that may be patently obvious, I’ll go ahead and mention anyway in case it’s helpful.
I know of numerous larger churches that have organized their small groups into “parish groups”. Whatever you want to call it. So instead of having lots of small fellowship groups on offer that individuals can choose from based on affinity, timing, niche, etc, small groups are organized according to location throughout the commuter area. Often elders who live in these zip-codes are assigned to a particular parish group.
Even at our smallish church plants here in Brooklyn, we have organized our community groups according to neighborhood. Some further elements we involve:
1) No one is forbidden to go to any group of their choosing. We just continually encourage people to first explore the group closest to where they live and give it a college try. This usually works for most folks. But it allows some freedom for affinity and process.
2) We make the leaders of our community groups find a service project in their neighborhood and lead the group in regular service there. In addition to just being spiritually healthy for the group and our church at large, this has the effect of getting groups to better ‘own’ their location.
3) From the start we tell our church at large and all of our groups that our hope is that they would grow together as a small group (and in love of their locale) and that one day soon they would get sick of commuting to us and start to beg us for a pastor. Then we’ll find them a church planter that can help them to be a worshipping community in and of their neighborhood.
Probably more, but I’ll stop there for now.
Comment from Greg Thompson
Time December 18, 2008 at 8:05 am
Sam–Very helpful summaries. Thanks.
Can you suggest some ways that this might constructively map onto some of the larger churches in our denomination?
What would this practically require of a large “regional” church if such a model of ministry were to begin to govern its life?