for me, christianity is a community religion. but that's probably my theology - not particularly focused on personal salvation, but a togetherness in god. i see 'the kingdom' as being a great big scrum(?) of people all on the same god vibe, not individuals proclaiming they've been saved and trying to do the same for others.

as for the church as it stands, i think it's gone too far to be redeemed. i'm hoping for some kind of shedding of old skin in which the big institutionalised behemoth of 'the church' will crumble to reveal beautiful little creatures instead. i really can't see any other way forward.

but there are also a lot of people who are not happy doing it that way...i don't really think you stop being connected to a community if you aren't connected to a church...you can still be nourished and enlightened by various sources besides a sermon on sunday, and still try to exhibit the light in your community. you're still encountering people in situations that require you to enact or reject what you claim is your belief structure. what does it take outside the org. church to reinforce that structure is the question.

Church for me is just christians getting together. It does not matter where, when, how many (or what for really!).

This is church.

Even in the big wide scary secular world people are defining their groups as Church (eg. "Faithless - God is a DJ" - This is my Church...) or people say that a social group or pub has become their church.

When I get together in our small gruop, or all together on Sunday then this is church.

But I also have a network of beliving friends across the city who are also Church to me!

This does not mean that I would stop being "part of my Church", but that I have been forced to think wider than just that.

but community is essential to christianity - the question is, what should the community of communities look like? does it require centralised power structures, or are other things possible [and more in tune with the gospel]? the network seems to be an emerging 21st century form with definite possibilities.

Conversation between Soviet communist party official and Russian Orthodox priest.

Official: "Your church will be extinct in 20 years. Look at your congregations - all old women! When they all die, you will have nobody left."

Priest: "Ah, that's where you're wrong. When those old women die, they will be replaced by more old women!"

i find myself in substantial (total? do i do that?! i'll have to read it again...!) agreement with the column - and it is about the forms our christian community takes, which really when you strip it all back can be pretty much anything.

if anything, my only difficulty with the column is that i do not share the reaction to institution because the context i am part of is a community of believers who are confident enough to not mind people acting on their 'well, there's no particular reason to do this like that, i'm going to do this instead', and it's still church in a kind of loose not institutional way. stuff i do is part of church only in the sense that i'm doing it and i'm part of church, in particular the retreat a few of us are about to do. it's loosely known about and prayed for and encouraged by my church community as a creative expression of friendships and faith, but nobody has any desire to suck the life out of it by naming it as a Project of Our Congregation. nor would they do that when i go out or stay in with friends. some of my friends think the world of god and some of them don't.

Apostolic - all Christians are sent out. The Church is Apostolic by definition. And the amount of "apostolic teaching" is pretty limited (and most of us find ways around it anyway)

Catholic - yse, I believe that all who worship the God of Jesus Christ in sincerity are part of the God's people. So, yes, there is one Church, but there is not (because of human failing and the way organisations work) one institution that can bear that name.

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Originally posted by Adrian:
surely any group of christians actually match that crietria? we don't need man-made rules, denominations and ordinations to be one people in god.

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How delightfully Reformed of you. I believe we do, that the Visible Church is a major part of the partnership between man and God.

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Origionally posted by Dyfrig
"Historic" - well, yes, the Church does depend rather on the historical event of Jesus Christ - but are its other historical events absolutely necessary? For example, does it really invalidate the faith of 21st century communties of Christians if circa 1550 a Swedish bishop didn't have both feet on the floor during a consecration or that Benhamin Hoadley was a disgrace to the title of "Bishop"?

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Originally posted by sacredthree:
The idea though, the story is all important.

Couldn't agree more - so what happens when the Church's story isn't the story Jesus told?

The Church is so much more than just a group of Christians, trust me on this guys

Sounds good - what does it actually mean? The Church presumably is those called out by or gathered around Jesus Christ. What else can they be other than a group of people?

let me coax you out of reformation based reductionism and restorationism . Sorry if Im too radical

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The influence of congregationalist protestantism in the Church of England has increased, is increasing and ought to be diminished.

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Originally posted by Cosmo:
You, as an Anglican, do not tell your Vicar what to do, think or say.

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So where is the sense of the vicar as servant of the congregation? Or is servanthood not "anglican" either Cosmo?

Jonny - if you had to leave the building, would that make you any less anglican? I don't think so. But does Grace have influence in the church regarding the choice of a new vicar ( i.e. church council representation )? A proper working relationship between the more traditional church and the alternative wings can be very productive to both sides.

In response to the OP, I believe that the church - in the sense of the gathered community of Christians and others - is worth saving, but is only able to be saved by radical transformation. The church of 50 years time in this country will be unrecognisable by current standards, but will still be in continuation of the historic church tradition.

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Cosmo posted forth:
The Church of England is NOT a congregational church.

...

The influence of congregationalist protestantism in the Church of England has increased, is increasing and ought to be diminished.

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Cosmo, could you explain for those of us who are dense at heart and hard of understanding what you mean by a 'congregational' church?

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Originally posted by sacredthree:
I believe thay are absolutely necessary, because I believe the Church is a growing and evolving thing,

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evolving according the rules laid down by a few people. what's wrong with evolving into something without formal autocratic structures?

Of course the Vicar serves the people in his parish just as he serves the Church. However that is very different from the notion that the Vicar is the servant of a congregation and simply does what he is told to do by them. An Anglican Vicar or Rector is not a chaplain to a particular group of people. He is the priest to all the people who live in that parish on behalf of and with the authority of the Bishop and the Church.

If you are an Anglican and don't like this then tough, because that's what the Anglican Church and the ecclesiology of an Anglican incumbant is. If you can't cope with that then you need to think very carefully about whether or not you should remain in the Anglican Church.

A 'congregational' church is the opposite of the Anglican. It is a group of people who meet in a particular place and ask somebody to minister to them and to no-body else. The Congregational Minister up the road from me has no responsibility to anybody else except the people who turn up to his chapel and pay his wages. If they don't like him, don't like his sermons, his doctrine or even the hymns he chooses, they can dismiss him and appoint somebody else. That is congregationalism, a kind of super-parochialism. The notion of a wider Church is very different here than with the Anglican Church.

The Anglican is not congregational but episcopal. The final authority (and responsibility) in a parish rests not with the worshipping congregation nor with the Vicar but with the Bishop. There are too many Anglican groups which neither understand this or accept it.

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Originally posted by Cosmo:
There are too many Anglican groups which neither understand this or accept it.

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Originally posted by sacredthree:
To me, without the Visible Church Christianity isn't the same thing.

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Originally posted by Dyfrig:
What are you railing against, Edward?

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I would also venture to suggest that recent services done by our alternative worship group contains far more liturgy than some of the church services I go to.

The kingdom of God can not be stopped.

If that is too charismatic for you then i am sorry, but thats the way I think it is!!!

Most churches ( anglican or otherwise ) seem to concentrate their ministry on the congregation who attend, and any similar people, rather than focussing the church on the local area, and the local community. I am all for churches genuinely ministering to the local area, but I doubt whether most churches are prepared for it.

Of course, in practice the CofE is now synodical - e.g. it was the slim majority in the House of Laity that swung the 92 vote.

The reality is far more fluid and organic than any theory of church governance can ever control (we all know of "Congregational" set ups which are actually dominated and run by a little clique). The best example of this organic, two-way thing is not Anglican but Roman Catholic - Vatican II had to look at the Church and saw that the theory was far removed from the actual experience of many Roman Catholic Christians. So the bishops ok'd a lot of changes that had happened anyway.

Common Worship did this to a very small degree. Churches had always had "informal" services or used bits out of the 1928 prayer book which never became law. CW now formally authorises both.

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Originally posted by Dyfrig:
Something I like about the CofE is the fact that, in theory at least, it is there not just for those who formally join it, but is there for the whole population of the parish.

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Originally posted by Adrian:
oh, how narrow-minded. we methodists consider the whole world our parish...

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Foh! A children's denomination, pandering to the spiritual needs of mere Christians as opposed to the true service of ecclesiological theory! I am minded of Charles Wesley's words:

So easily are bishops made
by man's, or woman's whim?
W--- his hands on C--- has laid,
but who laid hands on him?

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Originally posted by Dyfrig:
I am minded of Charles Wesley's words:

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Originally posted by Steve:
So if being anglican is ministering to the parish, and being congregational ( i.e. tending to the needs of the congregation ) is so un-anglican, why are so many ( the vast majority ) of anglican churches behaving congregationally?

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I use these terms not because I'm trying to be provocative but it is the case that it is often evangelical parishes, through the notion of the Vicar being the spiritual leader of the congregation and in a position of headship according to the Pauline ideal, who have the worst problems with abuses of authority.

Certainly there are the Anglo-Catholic 'father-knows-best' places where the Priest runs the parish with a rod of iron, but, by and large, catholic congregations are much more likely to criticise and take their priest off of the pedestal. It is rare to find a parish in which a catholic incumbant has abused the trust of his parish by his style of ministry and over-authoritarianism. Basically, a lot of catholic parishes will have people in them who will take the piss out of the priest which prevents him from getting a swelled head or a swelled anything else for that matter. 'Headship' parishes are much less likely to have that because of the theology of the leader of the worshipping community.

Remember I'm not trying to make a party point here. Just trying to say that it is rarely episcopal authority which is abusive. After all, they don't have as much contact with the parishes as the parish priests do.

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Originally posted by Cosmo:

'Headship' parishes are much less likely to have that because of the theology of the leader of the worshipping community.

Remember I'm not trying to make a party point here. Just trying to say that it is rarely episcopal authority which is abusive. After all, they don't have as much contact with the parishes as the parish priests do.

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Scary as it was realising that I could actually hold a reasoned discussion with Cosmo, finding myself in agreement with him is bloody terrifying

Seriously. AIUI, Bishops are mainly facilitators, who tend to step in when they're needed - if they were prone to run things in such a harsh way, they'd never have time to do stuff like, y'know, sleep and eat.

On the other hand, since the charismatic revival, it's often been the way of a congregational leader to be, like, completely in charge - this a problem with the kind of charismatic/evangelical hybrid that's currently pretty much the evangelical mainstream.

(Although an evangelical, I do not identify myself with that kind of evangelicalism)

A case in point, just to show it's not just Anglican wannabes who do this: a former pastor of our church (whose pastorate was, it turned out, short-lived) was one of this kind of evangelical.

The Baptist idea that the pastor (yes, that's the official term) is a servant to the congregation, and must bow to the will of the congregation, represented by the deacons, as expressed in a democratic vote, drove him nuts.

He was constantly moaning about how churches should not be democracies, and making pointed references to delivering the church from 'deacon possession'. It got a lot of backs up.

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Originally posted by Wood:
Scary as it was realising that I could actually hold a reasoned discussion with Cosmo, finding myself in agreement with him is bloody terrifying

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Oh my God.

It definitiely is the End Time.

Many question the continuation of the Freehold. However history teaches us that episcopal authority can be dangerous as well as neccesary. For example there is no way that the Oxford Movement would have been the success it was had the clergy concerned not had the Parson's Freehold. Remeber that the disputes of the nineteenth century had to be carried out in the courts publically (making a number of clergy martyrs in the process) rather than the Bishop being able quietly to sack the offending clergy. Take the freehold away and you would have a situation where the Bishop could dismiss a parish priest just because he doesn't like him or because his liturgical practice is different or because he's gay or because he wants to save some money or whatever.

Unless a priest has the freehold he has no employment rights whatsoever. Indeed even a Priest-in-Charge (or Team Vicar) can be sacked on three months notice for no reason at all. This happened in the London diocese to a couple of clergy recently. No reason, no appeal. My employer is not the Bishop nor is it my parish nor is it the Church of England. My employer, in law, is God.

Thus whilst Chorister might be right in saying that bishops let clergy get away with too much (although 'too much' always depends on your point of view and particular prejudice) they often have little else than rebuke and counsel as a tool. They could withdraw a priest's licence but that would not withdraw them from the parish and would simply leave a parish without a priest. On the other hand there are a number of bishops around (at the moment Evangelical and Liberal but in the '70's and '80's Anglo-Catholic and Liberal) who did, would and do undoubtedly abuse their authority.

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Originally posted by Cosmo:
Unless a priest has the freehold he has no employment rights whatsoever. Indeed even a Priest-in-Charge (or Team Vicar) can be sacked on three months notice for no reason at all. This happened in the London diocese to a couple of clergy recently. No reason, no appeal. My employer is not the Bishop nor is it my parish nor is it the Church of England. My employer, in law, is God.

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True.