Relationships in the future church Fresh Expressions International Conference Cape Town

The future of the future church? “We need to learn, as a matter of urgency, how to exegete our cultural context.”- Eddie Gibbs

1. Individualism 2. Church refugees – dechurched 3. Secularisation/post-Christendom 4. Consumerism

1. Individualism The individual is autonomous: Individualism spilled over into church life in many guises, such as the individualism in the modern evangelical movement and its emphasis on personal salvation.

2. Church refugees – dechurched The rise of the so-called ‘Dones”. They are done with church. They view the church as inwardly focused and consumed by the politics of its own survival.

3. Secularisation/post-christendom Christianity is losing its normative status: Those members of society who still believe, realise their choice to believe is just one choice amongst many, including the choice not to believe.

Zombies

4. Consumerism Consumerism refers to the phenomenon where people are defined by what they own and buy – the search for happiness through material acquisition. This spilled over into Christian culture where Christians, for example, see worship as a consumer event.

Relationships in the future church

The future church will be driven by relationships  The church as a community rather than a meeting;  A missionary church is relational: In a missionary church, a community of faith is being formed;

1. Grounded in the Trinity  The community of the church is like the Christian faith itself, a Trinitarian experience of God;  This inner communion of the Holy Trinity is the ultimate source of the unity of the church.

The church as imago Trinitatis is at least:  Relational.  Interdependent  Joy in relationality

Imago trinitatis = Relational The life of the church arises from the love of the Triune God. A fellowship of difference and differents. Relationality plays itself out in proximity.

Imago trinitatis = Interdependent Interdependence is to be faithfully present to the other. This interdependence is grounded in love and done in vulnerability. Love enables you to be present to the other.

Imago trinitatis = Joy Volf: Joy is a responsive act of exaltation and thankfulness, implicating one in an extrasubjective relationship.

2. Faith is relational  Faith is relational. Faith is personal, but not individual.  We experience God in the other.  To help people to become holy is to help people to become their holistic selves in community with others

3. Truth is relational  Truth as a person, not a principle.  Christianity has a deep relational component, appreciating a covenant-making God who wants a relationship with us.

4. Sociological  Community is the essential form of reality, the matrix of all being;  Even people claiming that they have had enough of church wants to be involved in relationship formation and cultivation;  Community is the connection to God.

4. Ecumenical wisdom  Living out our faith in community is an important way of participating in mission;  Mission and unity belong together.

Praxis of relationships

1. Meals of joy  Eating is an invitation to enter into communion and be reconciled with each other;  The table is necessarily communal;  It is more important that our churches have tables that are relationally correct than liturgically correct.

2. Rediscovery of the centrality of the Eucharist Wirzba: Eating Jesus is the ritual act that has the potential to transform eating in general so that it can be hospitable at its core and lead to a communion of life.

3. Smaller communities  Millennials and others seek tighter connections and groups;  it is all about the quality of relationships.

3. Communities of praise  Re-imagine the Sunday worship service, especially with an emphasis on the joyful act of praising God. Pope Francis: worship must “…inflame the hearts of the faithful who regularly take part in community worship and gather on the Lord ’s Day to be nourished by his word and by the bread of eternal life.

4. New expressions of hospitality  It is easy to love what is familiar, but we are called to love what is strange. It is easy to love what is comforting, but we are called to love what is disturbing to us.

5. Faithful presence in the community - rediscovering the commons  “Commons” = the interests of the community, and the use of resources for the sake of the common good;  The commons is the space where life is shared with the lives of others;  Faithfully present in the commons = we are listening for what our relationships require of us and responding according to our capacity;

5. Faithful presence in the community - rediscovering the commons  When followers of Jesus share life together in a particular place they become much greater than the sum of their parts— they actually become something altogether new.

Appreciate the parish Evangelii Gadium : The parish is not an outdated institution; precisely because it possesses great flexibility, it can assume quite different contours depending on the openness and missionary creativity of the pastor and the community. *** This life in the parish provides a place where parishioners who long to share relationships together, in and for a particular place, can reflect the nature of God in their relationships.