There is a lot of talk and energy surrounding Emerging Church and Fresh Expressions of Church, many have caught the vision and seen the need for a new way of connecting, a new way of relating the gospel in the 21st Century. There are of course pit-falls and problems on the path ahead, and there is a need to avoid syncretism and ask serious questions about what constitutes church, it is in allowing these questions and not ducking the challenges and criticisms that will inevitably come for if where these are met with openness and integrity there is a chance for real growth.
Yet, I find my heart going out to smaller churches as they struggle with facing up to the need for change, and seeing first hand the process of pain and letting go that faithful folk are choosing to go through. Often times in rural settings change has been slow in coming- and it seems to some small congregations that they woke one morning to a different world so rapid has been the change of life around them!
Several of our small Chapels in the rural Norfolk are being faced with change like this, they want to embrace the future and have been/ are willing to lay down past ways of being in order to become more accessible to the communities around them.... but in that laying down the old there has been and is grief, along with a sense that the new has not yet come...
I use the analogy of Easter Saturday because it was a time of waiting, of deep grief and of despair, as I speak to folk involved in the decisions to change there are times when the only questions that seem to hang in the air are "where is God?" and "what have we done?". These questions are asked by those who have entered into a building project and those who have changed the format of their services, they are being asked by those who are discovering what it is like to have a collaborative ministry team working amongst them rather than one Minister whom they can rely upon to be there....they are being asked by folk who are often in their later retirement years who have bravely allowed much that they hold dear about church to fall to the ground and die in order that a new seasons crop may be harvested.
These are painful times, times where questions and doubts outweigh hopes and dreams, and they must be acknowledged as such, yet they must also be seen as times of transition into that hope. Jesus gave many " clues" about his own resurrection, he was certain that the cross was not the end, he entered into the pain and anguish of Good Friday and the waiting time of Easter Saturday because he could see the hope of the resurrection.... His disciples and followers were blinded by their grief, and in a small way that is where many faithful Chapel folk are right now- what they knew and held to is gone, dead or dying- they need a new way forward, and have laid themselves and their version of Church down....pastorally they need to see the hope that is before them...
To hear Gods word to them that they will not be deserted, to remember the promise that the Spirit has been given, to be assured that their prayers will be heard- all of these things shed rays sunshine hope through the gloom of grief... if all they have to hang onto is surely this cannot be the end- there is hope...
To be a minister in these situations calls the ability to " stand in the gap" between the now and the not yet ( Jane Leech talks about how a Minister is called to "Stand in the Gap" in her Chapter in "What is a Minister?"- this calls for a similar stand) ... there is a need to hold out hope whilst acknowledging the dying and grieving process. My concern is that with so much emphasis being placed upon successful expressions of Emerging Church/ Fresh Expressions that the process is hurried through and griefs and pains go either un-noticed and unacknowledged, or worse good folk find themselves criticised for not being forward looking enough.
My prayer is that we will embrace the waiting time, acknowledge the pain, and remember that even on Easter Sunday many found the truth and wonder of the resurrection too difficult to believe!... but for those who were able to embrace the truth the gift of faith and of the Spirit quickened and energised their lives- but they'd all lived through the Easter Saturday....
