Episode 332 - What Church Means to Me

About this Episode

This is one's ecclesiology, one's doctrine of the Church, after a lifetime's involvement with it and 47 years' ordained ministry within it. For what it's worth, I think I've "got it now" ("One Monkey Don't Stop No Show", The Animals, 1966).

Where I think it might help, dear Listener, is in the area of reactivity and also in the area of inclusivity.

To wit, if you are on 'The Canterbury Trail', say, as a former evangelical or former Baptist, you won't reach a final or satisfying destination until you reduce the reactivity to near nil. Most seekers after the right church are in reaction to where they started. That is quite normal, but it still won't get you to God in His Church. Your (fluid) "destination/s" will almost always be one-sided or partial. You won't stay there, in other words. Somehow, your initial reactivity has got to decelerate.

Secondly, in my own case the Church of England Evangelicals (and charismatics) answered the question of "Church" because they were Scriptural, orthodox, and brave but at the same time tolerant of the other wings of the Church. (It's the 'left' wing, today, that is less tolerant in the main; and their distaste has probably got to decrease in order for the Church to be comprehensive again.) As I say in the cast, in an anecdote from Blackburn Cathedral that still makes me laugh after almost 48 years, the English Evangelicals learned how to "embed" and not stick out, yet still be true to the Gospel call. To watch them in action was a gift that even now is still giving -- to Mary and me, at least.

So "Here 't'is" (Bo Diddley): an ecclesiology drained -- ideally -- of reactivity and thriving "between the sheets". Try it (if you can find it). You'll like it.