I've had a bit of response to my post on where i think the future of the church is. One of my mates said it had little hope and another thought we need to be more responsive to the Spirit since the church belongs to the spirit.

rather than post comments to these i thought i'd comment and nut some stuff out here. the dialogue (parrallell blogging if you like) is really important and actually vital for some of the areas i am involved in both as pastor and as member of various other groups.

i need to respond to the issue of my hope in the church. i am hopeful, but it's a hope that is more inline with what andrew hamilton is suggesting, that we will not grow enormously in the next wee while. what that means though is not that we lick our wounds, but we re-establish ourselves. the thing with an incarnational shape of church — as Christ was, the Church is — is that we need to consider what it means to be appealing again. Not in the sense of seeker sensitive, or attractional superficiality, but appealing because we are seen to be doing the thing that people want to be a part of.

Jesus was enormously appealing to the oppressed because he welcomed them, embraced them and dignified them. he touched the leper. he was appealing because he represented God's love to all. Yes even the pharisee (nicodemus, paul and simon) and the tax collector (matthew, zacchaeus). his interaction was multicultural, though not so much necessarily multi-ethnic (though we have the centurion and the woman at the well), and his suffering was universally identified with. his reputation got him in trouble for sure, but his reputation was also overwhelmingly positive among the 'rest' of the people.

Jesus was appealing—and i reiterate, not in the superficial sense.

is the church appealing? how can we re-establish her appeal? that's where my hope is, that we can do this and we will, but it involves a tectonic shift away from the trajectories we are mostly heading down—large scale is not the answer. rather i think the hope is in the smaller churches.

the second thing i need to respond to is the question of listening to the Spirit—which is a salient point. I won't claim that any of my thoughts have any basis to them than biassed hunch! they are certainly not spiritual . . . i have a hard enough time accepting that God would use my sermons, let alone my random musings on things. If it does happen, it's generally not through any 'sense' on my part. the Spirit has much to say to the church. I suspect that 1st, we've forgotten how to listen and 2nd, we don't know how to communicate what we hear.

on the first part, more silence is not the answer in its entirety, but it is part of the answer. more quiet. more scripture. more devotion. listening to each other, and listening to those we encounter out there. listening is hard to do in a society that promotes free speech. listening is hard to do when you don't have to really engage because 'their opinion is theirs and works for them'. listening to the Spirit is a hard task : but let's for a moment assume that it's straightforward.

Communicating what we understand the Spirit to be saying is another matter in itself. not only do we need to be sure enough about what we've heard that we want to communicate it, we need to have the confidence to share it. because this confidence isn't shared by all, it can be suppressed by a process of natural social darwinism. you've seen it a church meetings. only a few speak, when in fact there is wisdom abounding in the silence. extracting the voice of the Spirit from this is very difficult indeed.

and finally issues of language of communication and the filters that are inherent in those who are listening and then interpreting. i just don't see this being a smooth process and frankly history attests to the fact that this process is difficult.

So while i agree with the theology that Stephen is introducing to the discussion, i have less hope in it being possible to do without being quite intentional about it within a community.

Finally, i want to say this. The onus is on us—not God—us. He has 'handed over the keys', he has charged us with continuing the incarnation, he has told us to go into all the world. it is us who are being called to make this work. I am confident that the Spirit will guide and counsel and encourage us, but i'm not confident that we'll listen very well to all that stuff—because our track record shows this to be true.

This issue needs some hard thinking and discussion. thanks stephen and andy for joining with me on this.