Theological Education for
Leadership from the Margins:

Implications for Leadership Training in Inherited Churches

by Rob Mackintosh

The notes in the text are hyperlinked into the end notes; to return to the text, click on the end note number

INTRODUCTION

The last decade has seen an upsurge of interest in new forms of mission - 'emerging church' - against a backdrop of continued decline in adherence to the 'inherited churches'[i].� The general view is that the 'Christendom'[1] stage in the West, inaugurated by Constantine I in the fourth century, has since the sixteenth century gradually given way to competing mini-Christendoms, and now to the present post-Christendom era.

This raises a question over whether there is a future for the inherited churches in the current ferment of 'emerging church' growth, and what might the implications be for leadership education and practice?

THE MARGINAL ROLE OF THE CHURCH

Alan Roxburgh (1997)[ii] and Callum Brown (2001)[iii] both make the case that marginalisation has become the defining reality for the churches in Britain.

Anthony Sampson's Anatomy of Britain Today (1962)[iv] viewed the Established Church of England as small, idiosyncratic and anachronistic; and Sampson's Who Runs this Place?(2004)[v] adds the single update that over this period "...the Anglican Church lapsed into confusion..." (p35), reinforcing the impression of a church both on the margins and on the ropes.

Archbishop Stuart Blanch, whose arch-episcopacy fell precisely into this period, reflected that "the acute institutional stage of the Church may well be over."[vi]

In the United Kingdom the Anglican Church seems to havelost its social location in the wider culture, so that "the single most far-reaching ecclesiastical factor conditioning theological reflection in our time is the effective disestablishment of the Christian religion in the Western world by secular, political, and alternative religious forces." (Douglas Hall, 1989)[vii]

Liminality is the awareness that as a group we have become largely invisible to the wider society. (Roxburgh, p24)�The experience of being marginal in contemporary culture accounts for much of the malaise currently affecting the inherited churches and their leadership. Few have yet come to terms with how far this process has gone in late modernity. The Christendom phase of the Church's history in the Western world is over; in Britain we may find ourselves back in the liminal role experienced by the Church in post-Roman Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries.

THESE ARE CONFUSING TIMES FOR CONGREGATIONS

The world of late modernity is a de-centred world, and for Christians it is no longer our world. There is no longer a� 'centre-periphery' dichotomy, rather a flux of ever-shifting and competing forces within the culture. In complex societies such as ours where there is no longer a coherent 'centre', we are all on the margin.

It is futile to attempt re-entry into the lost world of an earlier age; that door is firmly closed. Church leaders feel vulnerable, defensive, and confused about their roles in a de-centred world. In these uncertain times, clergy bear one of the most difficult roles in contemporary society. Congregations blame their clergy for the current malaise, failing to grasp that a wider cultural shift has marginalised the church.

However this experience of liminality is not a new one for the Church. Even prior to the Christendom era in the West, the emerging churches of the late second century yearned for social acceptance by the 'centre' rather than identification with those on the margins.[2]�People of education and wealth were fairly well represented in urban Christian communities, and more than two centuries before the conversion of the Roman Empire[viii] these communities already drew most of their leaders from among the higher social ranks. These did not socially locate themselves with the poor and marginalised any more than in the later Christendom period.� Neither the abolition of the institution of slavery, nor redressing the inferior socio-political status of women, made any significant progress in European nations until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The urge for the church to return to the former certainties of 'Egypt' clearly has a long history, and remains strong. Yet ancient Israel's wilderness experience is a paradigm for the kind of changes that liminal places can bring for the future of the church. In both Hosea and Exodus the desert is the place where Israel enters her most profound reshaping experiences of God. There the potential for a new future is forged. God promises Israel that through the process of wilderness cleansing she will become a new people.�

Reflection on where God may be leading and shaping the church for a new future will take new awareness, create new roles, and require exceptional wisdom and leadership competence over the next decade.

THESE ARE CONFUSING TIMES FOR CHURCH LEADERS

Social movements within modernity have largely shaped present clergy leadership roles. All denominations have sought to define an identity through academic credentials and certification in an attempt to keep pace with modernity's ever-increasing demands for professionalism.

At various stages throughout the twentieth century ordained clergy have attempted to restructure their roles in more socially recognisable terms such as clinician, chaplain to individuals within a privatised church community, coach and entrepreneurial leader of church growth.

Anglican clergy legitimately ask: What is a priest? What do clergy do? Where do they fit? What kind of social function do they have? The further we move into an awareness of our invisibility to the wider culture, the greater the cognitive confusion surrounding the clergy role.

The temptation is to search for a symbolic reintegration of pastoral identity and role able to deal with the loss of status and identity in a society that has already declassified the pastoral identity. That door is also firmly closed.

One indicator of this confusion (that nearly all clergy bring with them to the Leadership Institute's programmes) is the difficulty of defining their ministry priorities, in their use of time, and in defining their various roles. These difficulties are nearly always a proxy for deeper issues such as the inability to connect with an inner calling, vocation, and core values - ie God's 'dream' in us. Having lost sight of meaningful roles and clear vocational goals, clergy normatively work a 60-80 hour week for less and less emotional satisfaction.

Along with this, their sense of 'belovedness' is also lost. Frank Lake's 'cycle of grace' is replaced by the measurable but more destructive� 'cycle of works'.

Parishes rightly call for men and women who possess an inner integrity, spirituality and emotional maturity that combine to form a growing inner wisdom. They seek people who express God's call in deeply held values and purpose, are able to translate this in calling together a community of fellowship, worship, pastoral care, teaching and shalom. They want people who are committed to their own on-going formational learning as well as that of their community. They exercise a careful and prayerful leadership in developing others to take responsibility for their own lives, work, community, and churches.

A CITY ON THE HILL

The aim of the church in post modernity should be to create new and renewed communities that function as the gospel's 'city set on a hill' (Matt. 5:14)

The process for achieving a missionary-shaped future will reengage with the Scriptures and the church's long tradition of holy biography. It will also listen to the marginal voices of dissenting churches and other groups who have occupied a liminal place in our society for some time, but in our attempts to reclaim a social identity, we have failed to notice them.[ix]� The biblical tradition emphasises God's dealing with us from the underside: Jesus came from the margins; the Spirit invites the church to rediscover its missional heart in unimagined and unexpected places.

�Meanwhile, if we continue to take up the cultural symbols of power and success we will only produce an inauthentic church with little gospel, much religion, and no mission.

In the liminal state where the church now finds itself, ranks and hierarchies of relationship and status lose their power to determine and shape the group. The 'Guild of the Ordained' will not survive liminality, nor is there an obvious role for monarchical bishops in a liminal church.

A city set on a hill is an image Jesus used to anticipate the new social reality he came to call into being (as St. Augustine looked to the Acts 4 community as 'the City of God'). A city set on a hill is a distinct but visible society offering an alternative form of life� (as does the sixth century Rule of St Benedict). A city set on a hill is also visible in communities of 'the new monasticism', which are a reaction and response to the values of late modernity. [x]

EMERGING COMMUNITIES

'Structure' gives way to a communitas (Taylor, 1991)[xi] that can call forth an alternative vision for the social and political issues facing the people. A communitas is an agent of socialisation that has the possibility of rediscovering the essential tradition foundational for the group, the essence of what it means to be God's people. This is the way the first Christian community entered history. It opens up again the possibility to dream God's dream. The rediscovery of social bonds rooted in the gospel is again possible.

The promise of communitas is the potential of rediscovering the tradition as a reservoir for transformation. This is an alternative to the central perversion of the church in Modernity, its individualised and privatised spirituality inherited from the Romantic Movement.

This is also the primary opportunity that liminality offers - the church in late modernity can recover its communal sense of being God's people, formed by a new centre, Jesus Christ as the head of the communitas.

'LEADERSHIP FROM THE MARGINS' WITHIN AN INHERITED CHURCH

In the last decade interest in mission has largely moved away from inherited churches to the emerging churches, and - to a much lesser extent - to new strategies for developing leadership that can sustain new missionary congregations.

Although leadership is also a secondary issue in the Mission-Shaped Church Report, the Working Group noted that "no one practical factor has greater influence than the quality of leadership."[xii]

One potential sign of weak leadership in the emerging church movement is the inability of at least some churches to raise a second-generation of indigenous leadership.[xiii] Many emerging churches struggle to build healthy communities, and have an aversion to leadership that leaves them open to the forces of chaos and co-option.[xiv]

Given the current shift toward emerging churches, are the inherited churches now effectively out of the loop? Or do inherited churches still have a credible role to play from the margins? Or does the 'Anglican brand' still count for something?

Mission-Shaped Church anticipates that the initiatives proposed will take place in the context of an inherited church, and� the Report notes that "many new initiatives will be lay-led... Ministry emerges 'from below' and the role of stipendiary priests changes towards providing team leadership and equipping team members. This is precisely the strategy than can be extended to church plants and fresh expressions of church."[xv]

Although current investment in this area is woefully inadequate, inherited churches nevertheless have some of the experience, processes and training capacity to discern, nurture and develop the leadership potential of their members. In reality, clergy are still the ones who continue to bear the greatest role in shaping the future direction of the church, because:

Liminality requires leaders with the theological, political, and social skills to elicit the new communitas. This involves not just technique but the art of memory and expectation in which the lived experience of the past is indwelt in order for it to become our experience once more.

This requires leaders whose identity is formed by the tradition rather than the culture. It also requires leaders who listen to the voices from the edge. This is where the apostle, the prophet, and the pastor-poet are found. These are the metaphors for congregational leadership today." (Roxburgh, p57)

Taking the long view, there is little evidence that new movements will in the longer term provide less centralised or less controlling behaviour than the Christendom Church - or present-day inherited church - by virtue of being 'new'. A current view that pre-Christendom liturgical, ethical and missional resources may be very helpful for emerging post-Christendom churches "since they do not carry the virus that traditions from later centuries do"[xvi] (italics added) does not stand up well to historic scrutiny:

"The profile of church leaders which emerges is a consistent one. By late second century several urban Christian communities were disciplined and well-organised. While a number of teachers continued to direct the moral and social conduct of Christians, a rigorous ecclesiastical hierarchy with bishops, presbyters and deacons was in control of church affairs."[xvii] (Kyrtatas, 1987)

Reforming what we now have� - "Christendom structures, assumptions, strategies, priorities and ways of thinking"[xviii] - is unquestionably more difficult and time-consuming than starting afresh, but unless the issues are addressed in our present context, all our historical baggage will merely be forwarded to our new ecclesial address.

The inherited church has this in common with the leaders of the churches from the earliest times, that these are people whom any decent society would naturally choose for its leaders. The same requirement applies to leadership in emerging churches.

The significant national and international roles occupied by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the senior bishops in their participation in the House of Lords, and diocesan bishops in their involvement in regional projects, lose none of their value for coming from the margins.

THE ROLE OF LEADERSHIP EDUCATION FOR NEW MISSONARY CONTEXTS

Those who select and train a new generation of leadership face the challenge of prioritising the skills needed for future church over those that once served the inherited churches well, so that, among others, hierarchical models once associated with a monarchical episcopate give way to more relaxed, relational and consensual leadership, and a more equal valuing of the leadership gifts of women.

An inherited church that accepts the paradigm shift from centre to margins, from maintenance to mission, and from institution to movement, becomes capable of stimulating 'multi-gifted communities' rather than emphasising gifted and charismatic leaders.

Both inherited and emerging church need a focus on developing leadership for new missionary contexts, and particularly creating small, transitional communities that offer spiritual 'resting-places' or 'oases' (the Fourth Gospel's monai, John 14:2) for the church's emerging leadership. In theological education, we need to experience a broad tent that expresses a more 'generous orthodoxy'[xix] to re-vision what a journey to a city set on a hill might look like.

We also need to remap the contours of what it means to exercise the roles of apostle, prophet and 'pastor-poet' in the liminal world of late modernity. Discipleship emerges out of prayer, study, dialogue and worship in a community that strives to ask the questions of obedience as we re-engage with the missio Dei for our time.

The formation of communitas is central in creating the rich, informal networks that are now essential for both emerging and inherited churches in late modernity.

Theological engagement in 'a community of practice' happens naturally when we reflect on our context in the light of Scripture and Gospel, in the memory-wells of our church's tradition, in listening to the voices and experiences from the margins, and in renewing our spiritual life in an authentic worshipping, learning community.

Church leaders can rediscover that their prime calling and foundational role as 'apostles' commissioned by Christ, rather than acculturated professionals providing religious services.

Prophets may once again find their voice, able to address the Word of God directly into the specific situation of the people of God, engendering hope for an authentic missional engagement; and pastor-poets begin to emerge who are able to give voice to their own community's experiences of modernity, calling us to an alternative vision for God's people as a pilgrim people, no longer at ease in this present dispensation.

This is may prove to be the key task of theological education for leadership in the decade that lies ahead.

Rob Mackintosh
Executive Director
The Leadership Institute,
Canterbury

January 2006

End Notes

The notes in the text are hyperlinked into the end notes; to return to the text, click on the end note number

[1] ie a community of Christian nations in Europe under the joint authority� of Pope and Emperor, dominant in medieval western Europe.

[2] This was clearly evident in Alexandria, second-largest city after Rome, by the late second century (Kyrtatas, 1987)

[i] Some publications exploring this theme: "Breaking New Ground". Church House Publishing, 1994; "Mission-Shaped Church" Church House Publishing, 2004; Stuart Murray, "Church After Christendom", Paternoster Press, 2004; Michael Moynagh, "emergingchurch.com", Monarch Books, 2004; Bob Jackson, "Hope for the Church", Church House Publishing, 2002; Mike Booker & Mark Ireland, "Evangelism - Which Way Now?". Church House Publishing, 2003; Bob Jackson,The Road to Growth, Church House Publishing, 2005.

[ii] The framework adopted for discussion in this paper is based on Alan Roxburgh The Missionary Congregation, Leadership & Liminality, Trinity Press International, 1997.

[iii] Callum G Brown, The Death of Christian Britain, Routlege, 2001

[iv] Anthony Sampson, Anatomy of Britain today, Hodder & Stoughton, 1962

[v] Anthony Sampson, Who Runs This Place? The Anatomy of Britain in the 21st Century, John Murray, 2004

[vi] Stuart Y Blanch, "Future Patterns of Episcopacy: Reflections in Retirement", Latimer Studies 37, Latimer House, 1991, p. 41

[vii] Douglas Hall, Thinking the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context, Fortress Press, 1989.

[viii] Dimitris J. Kyrtatas,"The Social Structure of the Early Christian Communities", Verso, 1987.

[ix] Viz. the experience of Black churches in Britain, young Muslims, Travellers, the Homeless (e.g Emmaus), Immigrants, Asylum Seekers, Single Parents, etc.

[x] For example, the Iona Community, Taize, The Order of Mission, Sheffield (TOMS), the Order of Aidan and Hilda, the Northumbrian Community, and many others.

[xi] Charles Taylor, The Malaise of Modernity, Anansi, 1991

[xii] "Mission-Shaped Church", op cit, p132

[xiii] "Mission-Shaped Church", op cit, p132

[xiv] Stuart Murray,op cit, p169

[xv] "Mission-Shaped Church", op cit, p135

[xvi] Stuart Murray, "op cit p110

[xvii] See, for example, Dimitris J. Kyrtatis,"The Social Structure of the Early Christian Communities", p139"

[xviii] Stuart Murray,op. cit., p.100

[xix] For further exploration of this theme: Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, �Zondervan,� 2004