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How can we seek to re-imagine what it means
to be the Church and create new communities if we
lack the language and ability to talk and
reflect about what it means to be the Church in
dialogue with Scripture and our tradition.
Steven Croft, Mapping Ecclesiology for a
mixed economy in Mission Shaped Questions.
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Basic questions of church

1. Who?
2. What?
3. Why?

Maybe we should ask Where from? Where to ?
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• Where from ?
• The Body of Christ
• Pentecost
• The Trinity

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Where to ? Following Jesus -
disciple Pilgrims- alien Eschaton- mystery of
the future
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• A retrospective ecclesiology
• A reconciling community
• Foretaste of the Kingdom
• A reconciling unity
• The very essence of church life is that she is
  pressing
• forward to the fulfilment of Gods purpose
• pressing forward to the ends of the earth and the
  end
• of the world.

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• Unity in freedom
• Catholic in partianship
• Holiness in poverty
• Apostolic in suffering

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Three dimensions
Open before God before
humankind before the future
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The missionary church will not aim to
spread its own form. It is not a subsidiary of
the old one. It is a new church of the same
apostolate. It preserves its unity when it
fulfils Christs apostolic mission to its own
historical situation.
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Organised Organic One
Diverse Holy
Charismatic Catholic
Local Apostolic Prophetic
Howard Synder , Decoding the Church. Baker Books
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And so from the start , where Jesus is, there
is the church, the church is the assembly of
those who are finding their relationships, their
lives transformed by the presence of Jesus.
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What happens when the news and presence of
Jesus, raised from the dead, impacts upon the
human scene, drawing people together in a
relationship that changes everyone involved, a
relationship which means that each person
involved with Jesus is now involved with all
others who have answered his invitation, in ways
that are painful and demanding but also life
giving transforming beyond imagination.
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Each Christian generation makes itself
responsible, as did Jesus first friends, for
bringing people into relations with him and so
with each other. When that happens, the Church
happens.
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Relationship of gospel, church, mission and
kingdom
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• Church as a place where certain things take place
• to
• a body of people sent on a mission
• Community gathered by a common calling vocation
• to be a sent people
• God centred mission rather than church centred
• church as missional with calling and sending
  action of
• God forming its identity

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What explains the church, what makes it the
church, is that its life is birthed by the Holy
Spirit as the Spirit gives hearing response to
the gospel.

• Origins in the gospel
• Being originated by the Holy Spirit
• Oriented by the present reign of Christ
• in which the coming completed reign
• of Godis revealed and becomes
• effective in the present.

Hans Kung, The Church, 1967
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Look up and discuss

Mark 1 v14-15 Matthew 16 v18-19 Matthew 10
v7 Matthew 24 v14 Luke 18 v17, v24-5,
29-30 Matthew 7 v21-23 Luke 13 v18- 21 Luke 17
v20-1 Acts 8 v12, 19 v8 1 Corinthians 15
v23-4 Galatians 5 v18-21
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Church shaped kingdom (church and kingdom the
same) World shaped kingdom (church and
kingdom separate) Kingdom shaped church
(interrelated but not identical) Mike
Moynagh, Church for every context. p99-104.
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• A gift we receive
• A realm we enter
• reign of God is an inhabiting for which we are
  destined.

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The church is spawned by the reign of God
directed to it The divine reign expresses itself
in a unique ,though not exhaustive or exclusive
fashion in the church.

• The church represents the reign of God as
• sign and foretaste
• agent and instrument

• Jesus represented Gods reign as
• community
• servant
• messenger

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the danger to be avoided is the separation of
the Kingdom from the church. It is clear that
they cannot and must not be confused, certainly
not identified. But they must not also be
separated. From the beginning the announcement of
the Kingdom led to a summons to follow and so to
the formation of a community. It is the
community which has begun to taste the reality
of the Kingdom which alone can provide the
hermeneutic of the message. Lesslie Newbigin,
Signs of the Kingdom.
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Homogeneous Unit Principle
Donald McGavran 1897-1990
The Bridges of God.1954 Understanding Church
Growth, Eerdmanns.1970
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The key question is How do peoples become
Christians? Peoples become Christians when a
Christward movement occurs within that
society.. A reorientation of the life of the
social organism around Jesus.
The Bridges of God, 1954
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people become Christians fastest when least
change of race or clan is involved.

• Two models of mission
• Mission station model-gathered and static
• People movement- organic, indigenous
• spontaneous

But the truth not often seen or stressed is that
Christianity, like electricity flows best where
there is good contact. The power of God acts
best within a people.
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Homogeneous Unit Principle
HU is simply a section of society in which all
the members have some characteristic in
common. When the church plants congregations
in the many cultures of America or any other
nation, it multiplies credible witnesses who can
readily be understood by the people of these
cultures. While it will be done differently
depending on time and place, it must be done.
Understanding Church Growth, 1980
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Homogeneous Unit Principle

• Key factors
• Church focused not just salvation
• Danger of search mentality.
• sow and leave it to God

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Homogeneous Unit Principle

1. A missional goal
2. A missional first step
3. A missional no-go
4. A focused and connected church

Mike Moynagh, Church for every context, p168-170
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Unity Diversity is part of Gods gracious
purpose but separation and mutual recognition is
not. There must be new forms of church,
outside the walls of the existing church and
distinct from the community from which it came.
Separation there must be- for the sake of
mission but equally separation cannot be the last
word for the gospel is about Gods purpose to
unite all things in Christ. Ecumenical Review 29
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Focussed and connected

• It echoes NT practice
• It flows with social reality
• It corresponds to Gods intention for humanity
• It echoes the pattern of election
• It anticipates the new creation

Mike Moynagh, Church for every context, p168-170
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Two principles

• riches of cultural diversity
• each church should be rooted in the soil of its
  local culture

• unity of the church
• how express the unity of the body. Single new
  humanity

Pasadena Consultation. Lausanne Theology and
Education Group 1977.
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• a HU cannot be complete in itself
• balance need to evangelise and live
• in love and justice
• relation to local culture-idolatrous /self
  centred
• what binds might be evil
• cheap grace or ask too much
• church as sign of eschatological hope

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The Christian in whose heart Christ dwells
inclines toward sister brotherhood as waters
runs down a valley... If Christ in the heart
did not impel toward this, no amount of social
action would help the situation. Jews and
Gentiles--or other classes and races who scorn
and hate one another--must be discipled before
they can be made really one. Donald McGavran
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Anglican ecclesiology

• It did not start in 16th Century
• There is no definitive Anglicanism
• It is global

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The Church of England is part of the One,
Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church worshipping
the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
It professes the faith uniquely revealed in the
Holy Scriptures and set forth in the catholic
creeds, which faith the Church is called to
proclaim afresh in every generation, lead by the
Holy Spirit, it has borne witness to the
Christian truth in its historic formularies, the
39 Articles, the BCP and the Ordinals of Bishops,
Priests and Deacons. Preface to the Declaration
of Assent . Canon C15
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This seems to be a mandate for some
reinterpretation, re-expression and making the
faith relevant, provided that this
exercise, imperative as it is, remains faithful
to the Scriptures and the creeds. one that
is full of vitality and manoeuvrability and which
has the flexibility to make contact with the
contexts of our pluralistic world. Paul Avis,
The Identity of Anglicanism, TT Clark,2007
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• 3 key marks
• catholic and reformed
• Episcopal oversight
• baptism and eucharist