Leadership is the key
The church in the United Kingdom has now been in decline for nearly 100 years. Almost certainly for at least half that time the problem was not taken seriously by most church leaders. Those who are familiar with the church in the first half of the 20th century note that church leaders either sought to adjust to the modern world by seeking to make the church more relevant or simply hoped that times and trends would change and eventually people would come back to church of their own accord.
It almost certainly dawned on church leaders after the 1960's that a more serious intervention was required and huge attention was paid to the training of the clergy, the introduction of new programmes, doing what we have always done with a new professionalism, and at a deeper level seeking to renew the spiritual life of the church. At the turn of the 21st century it is clear that even this more intentional response to the problem of decline, while more positive than earlier reactions, has not taken into account the nature of the problem we face. There is no quick fix or single programme that can meet the challenges we face. What we need are not just new strategies but leaders with different kinds of gifts, vision, cultural awareness and training. Leadership is undoubtedly the key but we need leaders who are equipped to understand and respond to the situation that we face. We need leaders who are able to cultivate environments in which imagination and hope take centre stage. We are not used to producing such leaders.
Riding the Quake
Once in every few hundred years, cultures that have been relatively stable for some considerable time necessarily undergo massive transition as the inherent tensions that are always present in any cultural system, increasingly fail to act as meaningful interpreters of the realities around us. The effect is rather like living in the midst of an earthquake – pressures that have been building for a considerable time eventual spill over and dramatically reshape the landscape. In a cultural sense, we are living in such an earthquake zone. The impact of that change is felt by the church in at least three critical areas.
Post Christendom arrives
For hundreds of years we have operated with the shared assumption that the Christian story shapes society’s public imagination and that therefore there is an agreed set of Christian values within which our nation operates. In such a setting, the church occupied a place of privilege (even if not actual power) in the overall scheme of things. In that kind of landscape, the church expected access to schools, civic ceremonies, influence on legislation and to minister to the vast majority in terms of the rights of passage (hatching, matching and dispatching). As long as this was the landscape we knew how to operate - primarily through the pastoral and teaching offices. We might be able to improve our act but fundamentally we knew the script.
But that landscape has now gone and to quote Peter Berger, the sacred canopy has been dismantled. The Christian story no longer informs our shared imagination and the church has had privilege removed. In all probability, it is the consumer narrative that shapes the practical aspirations of the majority. We are still unsure how to operate as minister as leaders in such a climate. We can see we are in a mission field but it is an unfamiliar land for which we are as yet ill equipped.
Mission is the agenda
To some extent mission has always been something the church has had on its agenda. In the days of Christendom mission was something that took place overseas - in heathen lands, while evangelism was something we did at home. Today, mission is not just on the agenda, it is the agenda. But what does it look like to lead a church for which mission constitutes its entire reason for being? What does a church that lives, breathes and eats and drinks mission actually look like? Once again we are in uncertain territory.
Discontinuous change is here to stay
To add to these difficulties we are not just living in a time when many things have changed and are changing, the changes we are dealing with never settle down to allow us to grab hold of them, understand them and respond. Change itself is also changing – that’s what we mean by discontinuous change. How do you exercise leadership in a time when everything keeps changing and five-year plans become impossible to devise? Leaders are often expected to supply certainty so what does leadership look like when it’s impossible to deliver such a commodity?
Shaping a new kind of leader
Together in Mission (TiM) has a passion for church planting, and in particular for the planting of churches that will know how to communicate and live well in an ever changing cultural environment. That requires new kinds of leaders and so new forms of leadership training. To address this need, TiM has devised a Missional Leadership training programme. The course is designed around the three themes of character development, the impartation of specific skills and a missiology for the western world. It uses a dispersed campus model so that students can access the course near their home. That approach allows for an "action / reflection" model of learning that allows students to put lessons learned into practice and then reflect on how that has worked. The course can lead to an accredited MA and there is also an unaccredited option.
For more information on the course access the Together in Mission web site at www.togetherinmission.co.uk
