Baptism
And Fresh Expressions of Church
A
recent period of study leave gave me the opportunity to take a look at
the growing phenomenon known as Fresh Expressions of Church.
What follows is a collection of edited extracts from my paper
focussing in particular on the practice of Baptism.
A
good working definition of Fresh Expressions might be along the
following lines:
“Some
are called fresh in that they look pretty novel; cases would include
those slowly growing among the subcultures of our day… What is common,
and indeed normative, across them is that they involve planting
something that did not exist before……. At the other end of the
spectrum are existing churches making significant changes to their
existing internal life. I am
thinking of examples like churches truly transitioning into cells, those
creating clusters as their normal gathering pattern and those
reconstructing their Sunday worship into far more flexible and much more
engaged patterns.”
One
thing that became crystal clear to me – if it wasn’t already –
from this period of study by observation, conversation and reading was
the need to re-imagine church if we are to seriously develop Fresh
Expressions of Church. That
said, what is meant by this is not something previously unknown.
What is required is a serious re-engagement with the apostolic (ie.
New Testament) and sub-apostolic (ie. early catholic) models of church.
Fresh understandings of church precede fresh expressions.
Or perhaps we might say Refreshed understandings
need to precede fresh expressions.
This applies to the sacraments as much as to other matters.
Growing
numbers of church plants and other Fresh Expressions in recent years
have raised the issue of sacramental ministry.
For example, some churches that embraced the cell church model in
the late 1990s, and subsequently, have wrestled with how to celebrate
the Lord’s Supper in small groups (along the lines of Acts 2:42ff)
without unduly offending current Anglican polity.
Celebration
of the two dominical sacraments lies at the heart of Anglican
Christianity. They form, for
example, a key component in the Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1888.
The
administration of Baptism within a Fresh Expressions church is perhaps
the less problematic of the two. It
is administered occasionally rather than routinely, and can in certain
circumstances have a lay person (usually a Reader) officiating.
This creates space for appropriate flexibility.
Perhaps
what matters here is our understanding of Baptism.
In a mission-shaped church, the emphasis will be on Baptism as
the missiological and eschatological sign of entry into the
Kingdom
of
God
, usually administered to confessing believers (adults or older
children) and often by immersion in water (rather than aspersion).
This stands at some variance with the inherited Christendom
understanding of Baptism as a pastoral office usually administered as a
birth-rite to babies and young children.
The former understanding seems the most in tune with the NT –
an argument that is being gradually won - and in a missional church this
apostolic understanding needs to (continue to) be recovered.
Since
World War 2, there has been a growing number of calls for this
transition. For example, the
influential German theologian, Jurgen Moltmann, has argued for a gradual
transition from the Christendom to Kingdom understanding.
He went as far as to suggest the phasing out of paedobaptism in
the western state churches in favour of its replacement with
credobaptism. And even many
defending a continuing paedobaptism (alongside credobaptism) have called
for its more discerning administration.
One of the best recent works was by Gordon Kurhrt in the 1980s.
He argued effectively for baptism to be reunderstood as
“Christian Family Baptism” in a missiological context.
Fresh
theological thinking about Baptism in post-Christendom culture has gone
a long way towards the establishment of a fresh understanding which sits
easily with the concept of emerging mission-shaped churches.
It
would be useful to include in future editions of Update
articles and stories arising out of the experiences of those involved in
Fresh Expressions of Church. Contributions
to the Editor, please!
Stephen
P Corbett
George
Lings:
Encounters On The Edge No.35 – “Changing Sunday”.
Sheffield
Centre,
