I have written on this metaphor before, but it is a big enough deal that I am returning to it this month, as I zig zag back and forth working with churches and leaders across Britain. I am on a Saturday evening train Birmingham to Cardiff as I type this, on my way to preach at Radyr Methodist Church in Wales tomorrow.
The metaphor is fog - it describes the way most of us church leaders are experiencing the collapse of the institutions of church in the first quarter of this century. They have seen this process in the UK much longer, but North Americans are rapidly catching up with the UK post-pandemic in terms of the demise of church as we have known it. As Christendom continues to fade away, a fog has set in. Most church leaders and laity have no new model for how to imagine what the coming church will look like. But there is a point where either the fog lifts or we travel through to its edge where it is possible to see again. I have suspected for some time that we are getting to the end of this fog, and that there would begin a season of ah-ha where we can steadily see the shape of next things emerging around us.
Yesterday, I hiked a couple trails in the Peak District near Sheffield. This is very old England: the road that we drove to the parking area before we hiked is a Roman highway. In tracing back my ancestors, I found a Nixon (or Nickson) from whom I am a direct descendant, living in this same area over 1000 years ago. The guy who guided me yesterday (Tom Rattigan) is around half my age, and one who literally grew up on these trails - he knows them like the back of his hand. In his 33 years, He has camped about a year’s worth of nights out with the sheep up there. He took me to a cave where legend has it that Robin Hood hid from the people pursuing him. We lunched on the rocks at the cave entrance. Compared to the commercial tourism that has overtaken so many old places, this was refreshing, even if the trail was rigorous. Earlier in the same week I sat silently for about a half an hour by the tomb of the Venerable Bede, whom many consider the first English historian, and as such, one of the fathers of English identity and culture. It has been a trip with themes of touching my roots.
As we began hiking late morning, the fog hugged the ground, and we could see only the rocks and flora just in front of us and just behind us. There were no trees. Just massive rocks and grass and flora. But during lunch, the fog began to lift, revealing a magnificent land, spreading out in all directions, with ancient stone walls separating the farm meadows one from the next.
The lifting of fog is a truly magnificent thing.
For me, the fog of what next is lifting. It is revealing a church whose business is inviting people to a counter-cultural way of living, rooted in the Kingdom of God sensibilities of Jesus. Helping people discover and live into the alternative Way, and specifically helping them to find their distinct divine call to serve and to bless the world in specific ways - that is the church of the future. All gathering is simply a means to that end. And the gatherings will change - the circles, the groups, the churches will have short and dynamic life span, each existing only as long as needed, and then fading into new circles and ways of being church together.
A few of our existing churches will survive this rugged season, if they can become hubs of spiritual energy, where they help ordinary people discover how to live into their passions and gifts to honor God and neighbor. But the vast majority of Christians in this near future will not ‘attend’ Sunday worship in these hub churches - they will gather when and where it makes sense as they seek to disciple various demographics and ages all across the community. These base faith communities are sometimes called Fresh Expressions in the USA or Pioneering Communities in the UK. These will proliferate as we organize ourselves to resource ordinary people to create them.
Basically, we are about to find ourselves picking up where we left off in the year 330 when Constantine abducted us and gave the church far too much worldly power.
Once again, we will simply be disciples who serve our neighbors in love, and who march to the drumbeat of Jesus, rather than the Empire. And, that is it. Nothing fancy or unprecedented. All of it, animated by the Holy Spirit.
God is losing no sleep over the demise of the old church institutions. We should not either.
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