Critique of Andrew Root’s book “Churches and the crisis of decline” when thinking about mission in the Anglican Diocese of Niagara. Ian Mobsby 30th Dec 2023
Overview & Connections with the Diocese of Niagara
The Diocese of Niagara as a Church tradition has been up to very recently over-defined by being Liberal where this tradition has largely died in other Anglican Communion provinces. It is still very much alive in Canada and one reason why so many Dioceses are facing significant decline due in part to the fact that it is totally connected to the values of modernity and the overfocus on mission as social justice or community organising as forms of outreach with again an overfocus on attractional models of Church which are often disconnected from their neighbourhoods operating out of the mindset of consumerist market society principles, (or as it says in the book capitalist church translated to business values rather than Kingdom of God values). This is why in the Diocese the three main traditions of Anglicanism dominate: open evangelical, middle of the road and progressive Anglican Catholic. This is really true. Because of this, the books main theme about the dominance of the Immanent cultural frame and how this impoverishes the Church, mission and discipleship is a key observation. The book tells the story how this immanent frame defined the values and vision of members of the congregation which was only shown to be impoverishing when an unchurched son of a recently died congregant turns up at the Church saying they want to know God, and how the immanent frame and its values really prevented congregants from attempting to meet this need, which they only could engage with once the idolatry of their situation had been exposed and that a process of confession/repentance and re-engagement with Christianity as transformative of life and focus on Jesus rather than religion had been established.
The implications of a Church dominated by the Immanent Cultural Frame
· Church over-defined by doing rather than being – Church as social product over-valued.
· Emphasis on rational knowing – focus on head knowledge rather than heart knowing so dumbing down on discipleship, experience of God and prayer.
· ‘Having’ and resources focused – concern with buildings and money more than depth of faith and the health of the spiritual community.
· Sacraments end up transactional and overly individualistic rather than building up the body of Christ.
· Collude with the separation of the Sacred and the Secular, and then colluding with the forces that diminish real, relational and apostolic mission.
· Focus on control, on resource management, on Church as a form of social provider/business in a market society.
· Impossible to engage with effective contextual and relational mission with this frame, hence why it is easier to think about Church Planting as fits more easily.
· Over-focus on crisis-avoidance and stability, so not open to discernment of risk taking for the Gospel. Over-focus on money and maintenance (for us).
· Unconscious focus on religion rather than following Jesus Christ and for a God that was interventionist requiring trustful waiting, openness, transformation, relationship and obedience.
The example of the three different Pastors as metaphors & the absence of the Mixed Ecology Church
The book gives the example of three very different pastors emphasising the real issues of the Church dealing with the crisis of decline, and the absence and need for mixed ecology here is made by the absence and the story of the parish closing because each of the three Pastor Mission strategies was extreme, preventing mission and renewal. I summarise the different strategies and their consequences and how a mixed ecology approach would have mitigated these extremes.
1. Church Plant drawing on a conservative theology & exclusivist consumptive approach (Church counter to culture)
+’ves
· Instinctively realises that the traditional worship service is not going to be attractive or accessible to younger adults particularly de-and-unchurched so realised that a radical approach to church planting was needed.
· Realised possibly by some missional listening that the name and language for Church and associated worship, mission and community needed to be translated to language that was meaningful for the younger people that were being sought.
· Clearly there had been some success in attracting some younger adults but at the cost of the traditional Sunday morning congregation.
-‘ves
· Took an either/or strategy – so the still healthy but struggling trad Sunday morning service was not supported with little pastoral care – everything was focused on the church plant mission.
· Clearly the Sunday morning congregation shrank, and the theology of the pastor was incompatible with the congregation – as a response to the immanent frame some do go ultra conservative or even fundamentalist in resistance to it.
· The Church planter has created a culture of unity in conformity model – will lead to people leaving the church.
Mixed Ecology solutions
· If the pastor had taken a mixed ecology approach, then the focus could be to develop both the existing congregation to become more missional and grow as well as resourcing the younger adults church plant as a separate mixed ecology FX or if they were dechurched, congregation. This could have really worked! The story of Wez shows what is possible!
· Clearly, and this is a really big issue for us, the Pastor did not have the skills to do trad church, only a conservative attractional church plant so certainly did not have the skills to do a mixed ecology church – this requires skilled ordained and lay leaders.
2. Traditional Ministry and focus on pastoral care and no missional engagement. Expecting attractional worship services to renew the church. (Church as immanent frame)
+’ves
· Sunday Morning trad service focus reduced the numbers of decline, and great to do pastoral care again for those in the church.
-‘ves
· As so often happens, all the work done on the church plant was neglected or killed off by the new pastor – such a waste and creates dechurched young adults – a disaster! A retreat!
· All mission sounds like it stopped – focus only on those with a connection to the Church – so no focus on renewing the church with connection to context and mission.
· Demonstrates again a failure in leadership. Culture now anti-missional.
Mixed Ecology solutions
· The Pastor could have done a both-and – how could the church plant be adjusted to have a non-conservative more contextualised basis to flourish from and continue to grow in a mixed ecology context. This could have drawn on the young adults as a core group to grow the church plant.
· A both-and approach could really help both congregations to grow – where mission was not abandoned because of the bad experiences of the previous conservative church planter leaving.
· Again a mixed ecology leadership skill set is badly needed and requires skills – both lay and ordained leadership is needed.
3. Social activist focus where mission was focused on inclusion and community organising with no attempt to renew the Church expecting inclusion to do the work. (Church as immanent frame)
+’ves
· Great to see that some community missional listening is evident and the potential to reconnect the Sunday morning trad congregation to its context through community organising.
-‘ves
· Another disaster and failure of leadership.
· Shame that community organising colludes with the immanent frame and does not see the importance of growing the existing Sunday morning congregation in numbers, discipleship and mission.
· Community organising can exhaust congregations if its vision is unsustainable – danger of too much doing over being.
Mixed Ecology solutions
· A new community organising missional community could have been a wonderful new opportunity to develop a mixed ecology – where the community organising could have developed a new ecclesial community out of contextual mission.
· The Community organising if done well could have re-engaged with those involved in the church plant, so build on what has not worked out.
· Focus on unity in diversity could have led to the flourishing of different missions leading to new congregations to renew the Church.
Things I want to critique in the book
I want to affirm we live in a Post-Secular context not a Secular one
I was pleased to see engagement with Charles Taylors work and a commitment to ‘out’ the immanent cultural frame. I was pleased to see the focus on transcendence as counter to the immanent frame and the importance of resisting it particularly allowing God to be God, accepting God as being totally autonomous in self-revealing and encounter, and the importance of critiquing religion and getting back to following Jesus, the importance of trinitarian theology that informs mission, and also the importance of the apophatic tradition that is so important to contemplative Christian practice, theology and spirituality.
However, I see no acknowledgement of the dramatic changes as culture has shifted from modernity to post-modernity and more recently I would argue to post-secularism. The use and summary of the term ‘late modernity’ does not cut it for me. Although Charles Taylor never used the term ‘post-secular’ a lot of his writing affirmed its reality, and I would have liked to see more engagement with his writing (incidentally a focus on my next book coming out of my PhD). Later in the book there is a reference to a hyper-spirituality on the edges of the late modern immanent frame which is looked down on by many but no connection is made to this having any integrity or the prophetic fact that edges matter because this is where cultural and ecclesial change begin. As Charles Taylor himself says there are three stages of movement between the immanent frame to Christianity, from the alienated below condition and suffering stage through to the stabilised middle condition to the fullness condition in Christ. So the hyper-spiritual for me is significant as these are the un-and-de-churched post-secular spiritual seekers who know something is wrong with the immanent frame and that unrestrained global capitalism as the market society is an idolatry. So I would say that maybe it is God who has led the de-stabilizing of modernity to post-modernity and its reframing of rational truth and the place in post-modernity and post-secularism for other modes of knowing through experience, through wisdom, through artistic encounter, including experience directly of God. This is post-secular spirituality and why we need to engage with the ‘spiritual but not religious’ and unchurched spiritual seekers. So for me this is an opportunity with God at work in contexts from within people, the Holy Spirit unsettling people to a greater reality and hunger for God. More about this later. So I want to argue that secular culture is dead but within post-secular culture there are still some secularising processes that are eroding the church, and this is why Churches need to get more spiritual……
Jesus is our God of immanence and transcendence
In the book Root rightly says that the Immanent Frame is not totally closed out, and this I would want to affirm, and that we are not just dependent on transcendence to encounter God beyond culture. This assumes that all culture is antithetical to God and Christianity and we remember that Jesus had many rows with the Pharisees about this very idea. In Christ we encounter God who comes in fully human form as an expression of immanence as well as fully God regarding transcendence. So Jesus/God in Trinity can break into culture immanently or transcendently, this is the autonomy of God. So God can be mediated through culture and hence the whole contextual mission approach of building ecclesial communities out of contextual mission. Prayerful encounter is not just a form of transcendence it can be a form of immanence. So this relates to the whole nature of Jesus – incarnational theology/missiology and mission practice (Love of God as Grace) (fully human) and redemptive theology/missiology and mission practice (redemption) (fully God). We need both!
Contemplative Prayer & Spirituality as a way to encounter the living God in the immanent frame
The book makes many connections with contemplative spirituality and practice – mentioning contemplation, discernment, the mystics, waiting, the apophatic tradition and hyper-spirituality but never makes the connection directly with contemplative prayer practice or mission practice, and instead over-emphasises transcendence largely because the book is based on protestant/evangelical notions of mission, i.e. largely redemption.
It therefore misses the core truth of contemplative practice, the God who speaks from within each human being, the God who unsettles people from within to the reality of God, which then is God engaging with us through God’s immanence speaking to us directly not through transcendence, through what Thomas Merton calls the Truth Self, where we have to discover this in God because of the power of the immanent frame and connections with the egoic false self. This being so, contemplative spiritual questing enables people to discover God even in the immanent cultural frame as people are hungry to encounter the living God. This is all about the nature of Jesus who refused to go along with the sacred profane duality, but promoted the encounter of the sacred in the ordinary to the consternation of the Pharisees. Likewise, contemplative practice when encountering God through the immanent frame at the same time disrupts the values and assumptions of the immanent frame. This is exciting and takes seriously the power of contemplative prayer, spirituality and mission practice if we give room for God to be God. This is all possible because of the shift from secularism to post-secularism.
Surprising use of Barth
The movement from Charles Taylor to Barth is for me a really difficult one. Although I fully recognise the contribution of Barth and that he was a pastoral/practical theologian which is a discipline I am very committed to, at the same time I consider Barth to be totally of Modernity and the sacred secular divide. So it is a surprising move for me to shift from Charles Taylor and a focus on Post-Secularism and then to return to Barth to reach back to the period before Post-Secularism as Modernity and Secularisation. This may be because many Protestant/Evangelicals consider Barth to be a sound theologian who rightly had a lot to say in critique of the Christian liberal tradition which was pretty pervasive across Europe at the time but is now largely dead. Mission for Barth was focused on redemptive rather than incarnational theology and missiology and encounter of God as focused on transcendence because he assumed liberal culture to be antithetical to the purposes of God. So I find this argument for our current post-secular situation very limiting. I don’t think Barth speaks into our Post-Secular context convincingly, the culture of Church and Society in the post-second world war period has long past.
Critique of Chapters
1
· Really affirm the focus on Charles Taylor and the connection between the immanent cultural frame and its impact on churches and the impoverishment this creates.
· The three pastors and three foci relate to what I have said above.
· Really like the focus of Church not making itself its own higher power – it is not the star and can only come to life in Christ.
· Don’t like the negative association with innovation and entrepreneurship rather than transcendence – actually we need all three.
· Like the rebuttal to say that a personal God is important and that a personal God is meaningless in a secular immanent cultural frame.
· It is not wrong to want to set up a mission initiative aimed at young people particularly if in a mixed ecology church context.
2 Nothing to say further to what said above.
3
· Very stark how a mixed ecology approach would have addressed stated issues rather than choosing one approach as a time that killed the church.
· Totally agree that liberal traditions of church over privilege social justice as mission.
· Again agree churches seem to fixate on economics and saving money rather than focus on the Gospel.
· Chapter rightly emphasises the lack missional focuses in many churches.
4
· Barth clearly is very focused on a scientific rational approach to engagement with the bible.
· Misses the experiential and phenomenological encounter with God who is God.
· Rightly equates decline in the church with a lack of vision and imagination.
· Totally disagree with the statement that Barth believes that it is not possible to witness to God’s direct involvement in the immanent frame is impossible – this is idolatry.
· Agree that the rationalism of secularism seeks to explain away mystery and paradox – but this is not post-modernism or post-secularism but Modernity.
5
· The Church can’t know how to find God – ermm yes and no – it can share personal experience and wisdom as the servant of God – hence the need to avoid some forms of courses that try to deliver certainty.
· Agree that just making ‘new’ might be the wrong focus – sometimes its about fullness of life.
· There is over emphasis in this chapter on transcendence and the absence of God’s immanence.
6
· Agree that there is a lot of idolatry when the Church identifies too closely to God – where the church becomes the higher power.
· Need to avoid focus on community rather than God as this again makes the community the higher power not God.
· Agree with the focus on alienation as a consequence of such idolatry or as others have called it atomisation as a result of withdrawal from participation in God.
· Alienation breeds despondency – totally
7
· There is nothing I don’t agree with in this chapter – crisis creates dependency on God and shifts complacency if they want to see the individual church survive – requires humility and relationship and waiting on God and letting go of being in control – requires surrender – and a mixed ecology approach would help!
8 Too much emphasis on transcendence for me – need some immanence as said above.
9 Agree busyness in itself is not a measure of success – selling out to the immanent cultural frame.
10 largely agree, need to wait on God is critical however I am concerned that mission should be be balanced with discipleship and renewal – feels a bit anti-mission.
11 Not sure about this focus on resonance – not sure I get it.
12 Is the resonance or resilience? – this is different. Agree with the focus of leadership stopping over doing, where missional leadership then is more like curation – Yes to that. This feels contemplative so ok.
13 Surprising chapter as this is all about trans-rationalism as core to post-secularism as knowing through experience.
14 Agree Pietism and individualism as a response to the immanent frame impoverish church and discipleship. Really disagree with comments in this chapter about hyper-spirituality for what I have said above as disowning the contemplative Christian tradition.
15/16 Nothing really to say here other than in 16 I really affirm the commitment to Christopraxis which I think is so central to Bp Susan.
17 Glad to see Trinitarian theology and mission practice stated here – as missing so far and its connection to trans-rationalism.
So what I am taking away as really important from these reflections?
· I have been reminded how powerful the immanent cultural frame is in largely liberal/modernist contexts and very much alive in many churches and how resistant this worldview is to challenge and change.
· The focus of the immanent cultural frame on attractional Church, the inability of the lay and ordained to speak of faith, the overfocus on mission as outreach and social justice orientated, where being Christian is about doing, and the danger of impoverished discipleship and making tradition, church governance, resources and monies the higher power is a very real threat not only for congregants but also for lay and ordained church leaders depending on training.
· Mixed Ecology Diocese Mixed Ecology Parish seems to be critical as a way forward for lay and ordained church leaders – but many do not have the skills or understandings to be able to do this.
· Training regarding stewardship needs to reveal the collusion with the immanent cultural frame and the use of story and dialogue to reveal some of this before talking about stewardship.
· This affirms why the NSML is so important and at the same time why it is so difficult to address regarding orthopraxis as an approach.
· The need for training for Missioners to understand the powerful forces of the immanent cultural frame and how to address it in a mixed ecology missional context.
· Need for training on contemplative approaches to mission and engagement with the SBNR the work Susie Kim is beginning.
· I am reminded of some of the Town Council consultations with Bp Susan and how some of the hostility and rudeness was due to assumptions based in the immanent cultural frame which was counter to the mission explorations of the Diocese.
What are the questions that need to be faced in the Diocese of Niagara?
· How do we provide training for lay people to help them be aware of the immanent cultural frame and how detrimental it is to the renewal of church ministry and mission when it is so strongly held?
· How do we provide training for the newly ordained to expose awareness of the immanent cultural frame and how to mitigate against its detrimental effects?
· How can the MAP Process help expose some of the idolatry of holding tightly to the values and understandings of the immanent cultural frame preventing change?
· The need for deepening spirituality, prayer and discipleship with some of the values identified in the book – waiting on God, Church serving and being obedient to God, crisis as good and enabling, importance of living faith and living relationship to and with God.
· Training on speaking about faith has to come after depth of discipleship and that this might be an unsettling process for some – so how do we enable it?
· In a culture obsessed with economics how do we reduce this obsession in churches particularly when they are under pressure financially?
· Training in skills and understanding for mixed ecology again seems important – what is needed?