“The challenge of theological education today is to prepare leaders for a church that we can’t quite see yet.” Rev. Dr. John Vissers speaks from long experience. The moderator of the General Assembly in 2012 served as principal of Presbyterian College, Montreal, for 13 years until accepting an appointment as director of academic programs and professor of historical theology at Knox College, Toronto, this year. “One of the things that we work hard on in theological education is to help those preparing for leadership to think deeply and critically about both faith and the world that they see around them.”
The faith has not changed, but the world we all see around us most certainly has. To some, the challenges are nothing new, indeed stretching back to roots planted 500 years ago. Dr. David Schnasa Jacobsen, now teaching homiletics at Boston University after 15 years at Waterloo Lutheran Seminary and Knox College, spoke at Presbyterian College in 2011. His subject: “Promising Signs: Toward a Public Theology of Word and Sacrament in a Time of Disenchantment.” Huh?
The disenchantment, he patiently explains, referencing sociologist Max Weber and McGill philosopher Charles Taylor, saw the sacramental universe, its people bounded by a world sacred at all times, shattered by the Reformation, beginning the move to a more secular world. Another McGill prof, Douglas John Hall, gets to the heart of what Jacobsen calls Christendom’s old idea of dominance and conquest declining in changing circumstances:
“When I read the scriptures, one of the things I come away with is that the promise is really something that God gives to God’s people and draws them forward in faith even in the midst of vulnerability and difficulty. You think, for example, of the promise given to Abraham that allows him to leave his home and to move out to a new future he can’t fully foresee. To my mind, that’s the genius of the Protestant Reformation, and what I see as being so important for how churches relate to the public context is in essence recovering that powerful sense of what the promise means for engaging others in this public realm in a new way that’s more vulnerable and open to others, instead of being the cultural centre and being in charge.”
Jacobsen agrees that he’s talking about the “missional” church we’re starting to hear so much about:
“For me the theological piece of that is that the mission is God’s mission. It’s a God who sends. The word for mission is missio, which is the sending word. I think that the church needs to discover again and again that it is sent. It doesn’t mean sent to proselytize and control other people, but I think it means to be sent to be engaging in the public square and work with people and participate in what God is doing in God’s good, pluralistic creation.”
If Vissers is not exactly on the same page, he’s in the same chapter as Jacobsen. Through his study window he watches a post – Christendom world of diverse Christian faiths, other faiths and no faith at all, in which the church is increasingly in a minority. He cautions that important foundations not be washed away in a tide of new fads.
“In our tradition, the means of grace is scripture, prayer and the sacraments. That’s what sustains the life of the church. In one sense, ministers are, in our tradition, ministers of the means of grace. They are ministers of Word and Sacraments. And so when we talk about all these other things we should never forget that that’s the core identity.”
It sounds like a narrow path to walk. David Moody, assistant minister at Chippawa Presbyterian in Niagara Falls, Ont., is one venturing toward new frontiers. The married father of three found “a holy convergence” of his business – world computer software skills and God’s call to a ministry of gradual change introduced by lead minister Doug Schonberg.
“People have equated church for a long time with something that doesn’t relate to their real lives, but how you make choices at work, in your home, as a parent, friend and colleague are all impacted by your faith,” says Moody. “A lot of tools that the church used in the previous century were very effective. The culture’s shifted and today’s culture is very visual and emotional, so to speak fully about something in a language they understand we want to engage all those senses.”
Not surprisingly, Chippawa’s website is both inventive and inviting, live streaming services that feature both traditional and contemporary music. My conversation with Moody soon turns to that sensitive word—change.
“One of our approaches was to go slow, to work alongside the congregation, walking beside them. So we’d say, ‘let’s try this and see how we like it.’ And there’s always a willingness to say this isn’t working or we need to change it. Be patient with change. There are a lot of emotions connected to the way that things are done traditionally. We lost a few people along the way. Some came back. But you have to be willing to say this is where we’re going, and we’re going to do it caringly and intentionally. I think you can do change lovingly and see it as a journey.”
Last year, Moody surveyed growing Presbyterian churches in Canada and found that they share common ministries including relevant preaching, inspiring music in worship, Sunday morning children’s programming, local mission, corporate prayer (outside of Sunday morning worship) and pastoral care.
The real measure of growth, Moody adds, is not measured in numbers but the excitement and passion he sees on Sunday morning.
“There’s no reason a person has to go to church these days. There’s no social pressure. You have to come because you want to, because going there is connecting you with something deeper, something you may not recognize as God’s movement within you, but at least you know it’s something true and real and something you want more of.”
His prescription might provide a template for Christopher Clarke’s summer. Raised Catholic, his parents later turned to the United Church. Parenthood drew him to a Presbyterian church where he later felt called to ministry. A student now at Presbyterian College, he dipped his toes into that water this summer at a church plant in the Ottawa suburb of Barrhaven.
“Part of my job is to figure out what works, what doesn’t work, why it’s working, why it’s not working,” he said in the spring before setting off on his adventure, “so that I can take that back to the college so that then we can start some kind of conversation about what sorts of things work and what don’t.”
Barrhaven’s population has grown from 4,000 to 85,000 in the past 30 years, and Ottawa presbytery encouraged the new church development to grow from a failed experiment a decade ago that left wounds not yet healed. Sunday services attracted 15 to 30 attendees, and any small churches, new or otherwise, will recognize the problems of too few people doing too many jobs.
Clarke says the new congregation knew what was coming. The presbytery task force overseeing the Barrhaven church, including Rev. James Hurd of Parkwood Presbyterian, forecast that they would not like much of what he was to try and 80 per cent of it likely would not work, but they encouraged the congregation and its minister to learn together how best to reach out to the young community. An Ottawa tour guide for seven years, Clarke is comfortable on his feet, a strength that played into the range of worship styles and activities he tried.
Getting to know Barrhaven’s congregants and defining their vision of the young church took much time. Experiments with relatively lengthy sermons because, as he points out, “our offering takes 35 seconds,” led to including reference to current news and contemporary culture that worshippers found useful and relevant. He encouraged “passing of the peace” before the service, inviting congregants to introduce themselves to each other and gather more closely in the rented sanctuary. This led to better singing and livelier fellowship during a post – service gathering.
His detailed report to Rev. Dr. Dale Woods, interim principal at Presbyterian College, concludes: “I found that small things like meeting individually with everyone, rendering the bulletin in more modern language, implementing newer, easier – to – sing (and play) songs, adding a children’s time to the service, were quick and easy ways to effect some change and get a bit of excitement brewing before moving into some of the harder work.”
And the harder work will continue as Clarke and his professors and colleagues at Presbyterian College continue to develop their thinking about planting new churches. He reports that as changes were implemented over the course of the summer, it became clear that the longer the covenant between the student and the congregation, the better.
The last words in this brief overview of a new world for preachers go to Dr. Jacobsen, who reminds students to think about who they have in mind when they preach. Are those people really out there? An even better question, he adds, comes from homelitian and historian, Justo Gonzáles:
“What we need is not just to know who we’re preaching to in the pews but who’s not in the pews. If we’re going to step out and engage people in the public square, Christian preachers also need to prepare sermons in ways that anticipate the people who are not there. That’s part of hospitality, too. And hospitality is a key virtue and practice, I think, if Christianity is going to re – engage on the public square in Canada or the U.S. in this humble way that I’m calling for.”
