What makes church valid? (post the second)

When engaged in the discussion topic 'what makes church (and church services) valid' I often find that once we've got the numbers thing out of the way the conversation turns to location.

'Look at the Roman Catholics,' they cry, 'They've got it right because they only have a few church buildings, in fact there's only one in our town and they expect those who come to travel! That's what we should do - reduce the number of church buildings and let them travel!'

As true as this might be for the faithful in our town where there is one in the centre and another which serves the towns and communities to the North. There are indeed but two for a large number of Catholic church members. Now take another place I know of where there were once seven RC church buildings and some they will have reduced this to but two!

C Peter Wagner used to say that the ideal was a flourishing Christian community (which for the sake of this consideration we will call 'church') in every community and many street corners. This idea that we need to rationalise the number of church buildings based upon proximity might be persuasive to and for some BUT  there are further considerations - spiritual, missional, sociological, practical  and human.

LOCATION
A large conurbation near to us has many church buildings and these are obviously near to one another - some only streets away from the next. The thinking is that closing one building merely results in believers having to walk a further five or ten minutes to the next and there is a logic to this But once we move on from this as a paper exercise and bring people into the equation we also need to factor in the pain too. Other parameters like churchmanship and membership, for not all churches are community churches, increase the factors that need to be considered and satisfied.

PEOPLE & CHURCHMANSHIP
As much as I can understand the location argument and 'short additional distance' caveat the reality is that those who are high church may not find the nearest church building as a venue for their style of church. The same goes for those orthodoxy versus liberal church and the choirs and central church versus worship bands and a more charismatic style.

People will gather with those who are similar to them, this is the reality (and attraction) of homogenous church. So to decide that St Blog's can close with the members moving to St Dingbat's is great on paper but will serve to lose some members from the losing church. Some will cease churchgoing completely whilst others will travel to a similar expression of church and the others, who do go to St Dingbat's will either settle or make it feel more like their own home and this in turn will cause St Dingbat's to lose members too!

Closing churches means the end of churchgoing for many and yet, as one higher placed person told me, 'This is a price that needs to be paid for sustainability!'

SOCIOLOGICAL & MISSIONAL
Now we have a real issue before us. We talk of Church as being light in dark places and yet it is in some of the very darkest places that the presence of the Church is in greatest danger of being extinguished. The mission of the Church is to take Christ into the difficult places and if doing this is costly to the whole body, then so be it.

This does not mean that a church, plant or congregation should not seek to 'pay its way' but it does mean that the sending church needs to accept the responsibility of funding (spiritually and financially) the presence of a church in the community. That said, with some of the building, perhaps the time has come to knock the blessed thing down and replace it with a modern community facility in which the Church resides alongside others (more later).

In response to the first post on this issue, Jante responded with a question relating to a small rural community with small numbers residing and 10% of that population coming to church. This is sure to be an unsustainable church in terms of finance but is quite like to be both sociologically and missionally valid. The problem is that we appear to be placing too much emphasis on money and not enough on mission and yet, as ever, bill have to be paid and we cannot be naive enough to think that money doesn't matter.

THE BUILDING
Working in West London we wanted to do some stuff to the church building we were in. The reason for this was to make it a more inviting and useful building and to render it 'fit for purpose' for the Church of today.

The result was that the Victorian Society - a bunch of people who had no interest in Church as the Bride of Christ and saw it as merely a pretty building with links to some Victorian hero of mine - pointed their toes and conservation and preservation won the day and the building remains useless to this very day! My response was to offer them the building and let them face the costs of roof repairs, masonry renovation and preservation and the like. 'Let them have the Blessed thing,' I cried, 'It's no use to us and since they want it so much, let them pay for it!' But of course whilst they wanted to dictate about the inside, they neither wanted to come into the place nor take responsibility for it.

We need to have some courage and offer what we have to the community (for along with cure of souls comes curator of the community history) and let them pay for the much loved building they want to fight for if we speak of closure. That landmarks will vanish is a sadness but those who want them most appear to also be least willing to pay for their continued existence.

SPIRITUAL (oh yeah)
Truth is that the Church is a spiritual body and the church building is merely a meeting place for it. The number of times I hear someone say, 'We don't need buildings, they're an encumbrance - let's close them and do our services in the local school, sport's hall or whatever - bin the building!" and there is something of merit in what they say. Mind you they've never planted a church or run services from building other than a proper church building have they?

They can't have for having done the school and hall church stuff I know that arriving ninety minutes before a service and lugging stuff up six flights of stairs and setting up and doing the service and then packing up and carrying everything back down six flights of stairs and loading it back in the vehicles and taking it home and unloading and storing the stuff and everything else that goes with not having your own building -IS A PAIN!

The Church is the spiritual body and it should be in a place, in a building that is the (or one of THE) focal point of the community. The doors should be open and the reason for its presence clear because of the spiritual: The calling to be Church in that place; the desire to be Church in that place; the commitment of the membership to be Church in that place and it that isn't obvious then the people need to be grounded in the Gospel and mobilised or the doors shut.

Sound harsh?

Church is not a hobby, neither it is part-time or something for us.

Church is about populating heaven and Kingdom thinking and it we don't want to live in the reality of that then we need to live in the reality that we don't need, no we can't afford, to keep lights on and buildings open.

Church is more than bank balances - it is about transforming lives.

Church is more than two hours on a Sunday -  it's about coming and talking about what Christ has done in, and for, and through us during the other one hundred and sixty-six hours of the week.

So here we are - twelve minutes of mad splurge onto the screen in front of me. The telephone rang whilst typing and I was asked if I was looking for a move as a friend had a vacancy coming up near to them. Nice to know someone wants me but until God say otherwise here I stand, for I can do no more ;-)

Happy Saturday

ps. No one else's agendas here though - just my madness. Discuss it here or at cavedwellers.co.uk

Anabaptism - A source of disunity?

Now here's a bit of a contentious issue for many I'm sure and I have to be brutally honest and say that it's not going to be an easy read for some. It's going to be a splurge for I have just fifteen minutes to scribble this and you'll get whatever it is that I've got when the bell rings!

For I engaged in an interesting discussion today on the attitudes of some churches, fellowships and congregations whereby those who have come from other than the nonconformist traditions are almost invariably passed, once again through, the waters of baptism in what, to be truthful, is an act of disunity and a dismissal of the validity of the baptism of other churches.

As I understand it, There is but one baptism and to rebaptise is to enter into nothing more than a wet witness and make the statement (albeit tacit) that their (subsequent) baptism has greater efficacy or validity than that previously undertaken. Of course this would be a wrong position and one that comes from a measure of ignorance, arrogance and a false understanding of what baptism is (and the way that it was enacted in the early Church).

Now having come to faith in a Baptist church and having myself been guilty of rebaptising others when I was in the pentecostal movement I can say that I know something of the place many will find themselves in. I am also aware that for many the liturgy of the established churches, which for this is example will be Anglican, is but the 'vain babbling of the heathen' and the baptism, even when undertaken as an adult, is considered to be worthless when compared with that pinnacle of the baptismal world: Believer's baptism!

Perhaps we find ourselves standing alongside Stanley Grenz in considering that 'Believer's baptism is obviously superior,' to any other form of baptism and this baptism is, 'a public affirmation of a person's conscious decision to place themselves under the lordship of Jesus!'
(p689, 684 - Theology for the community of God: Broadman and Holman 1994)

Then again perhaps we might care to take a look at the didache or consider the practice of the early Church to baptise, and admit to the Eucharist, infants, children and adults alike? Now some will say that this is a contentious issue and that the only baptism of merit was to be found in that of 'believer's baptism' but rather than extrapolate let's look at the Bible (which is always a good place to start) and consider first of all what constitutes a valid baptism.

We begin with the 'Great Commission' of Matthew 28:
'Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.'

Now here we have it from the Boss's very own mouth. The first step to making disciples is that we baptise them in 'The name of the Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit'.

So if the naughty Anglicans (and others) were baptising in any names other than the 'Three in One' then we'd see that what we had was naught but an improper baptism and therefore a rebaptism was not only legitimate, but could be demonstrated as such by warrant of Scripture. After all, here's an account of rebaptism from Acts 19:
'It happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the upper country and came to Ephesus, and found some disciples.
He said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they said to him, “No, we have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit.”
And he said, “Into what then were you baptised?” 
And they said, “Into John’s baptism.”
Paul said, “John baptised with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in Him who was coming after him, that is, in Jesus.”
When they heard this, they were baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus.'

Whoo Hoo! Here we have it, rebaptism is legal because it's in the Bible and, Oh dear, what's that Sooty? What's that? The rebaptism was done because what they had wasn't a 'proper' baptism' but was that which John the Baptist did when he called the people to repent and prepare for the one who was to come (whose shoelaces he wasn't fit to tie)?

And not only that but the 'valid' baptism here was 'in the name of the Lord Jesus'

(ἀκούσαντες δὲ ἐβαπτίσθησαν εἰς τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ in case you wondered ;-) )Not even the name of the 'Father, Son and Holy Spirit' but merely in the name of Jesus (which I'd consider enough myself but what does I know?).

So the evidence is that you can rebaptise where the former baptism was invalid, but of course when it's done in an Anglican (or even RC) church it is done in the name of the Three! So where's the warrant for a re-dunking other than some sort of misplaced need for 'confession from the candidate perhaps?

Well , of course the baptism is the first step and what we are also told is that there should be teaching, and that this teaching should be geared towards teaching obedience of all that Jesus has taught us. Now the Anglicans don't do this with their folk religion and their sprinkling do they? The words might be right but perhaps we can point to that? But of course neither do many of those who I have seen make commitments, get baptised and vanish in the pentecostal and nonconformist world either. And this is about nurture and discipleship not baptism so it seems that the anabaptists have lost the game anyway - and that perhaps their rebaptism is naught but arrogance and vanity mixed with a large dose of 'our church and churchmanship and beliefs and the like are betterer than what yours is!'

A great lecture from a man I admire greatly put it like this:

'When you start a club you recruit those who can hear and understand and respond. They put their hand up and ask to be a part, making the promises they need to make and changing their lives to become what they need to be to take up the full membership. This is what the missionary Church did - it recruited adults.

Then as the adults get married and have children, they wish for the children to be brought under the same canopy - for Christianity is an ethnic reality, not a Sunday thing. So they add their children who are baptised and brought up as Christians and come through to maturity and discipleship in the Church. This is what settled Church did - it includes the whole family in the promise and the covering of Christ's blood.'

So it's simple - both are valid and since I don't see the demand for a 'witness' in the act, just a coming I feel the anabaptist stance falls even further.

Add to that the number of noncomformists who are dunked and fall away, even though they have been done as older children or young adults, and I think you'll find little efficacy in their baptism when it comes to making disciples either. Mind you, that's down to the teaching and the nurturing of the church itself isn't it . . . or perhaps the taint of a first baptism remained and corrupts ;-)

There we go - bell gone and some food for thought

Apologies for typos and edit errors

Pax