3 Beyond the Fringe

By John Cole

"Sir, we want to see Jesus." (John 12:20)

Introduction

In chapter one we saw that the locality is not properly described by merely noting the different groups who live there, the ‘layers on the compost heap’. No less important are the networks in between.

It might not be stretching language too far to suggest that what holds together all those informal associations that we have with other people is a shared ‘spirituality’ ~ and that it is the language of ‘spirituality’, of common bonds of perception and value, which can form the basis of understanding both the similarities and the distinctiveness of the many informal communities out of which human society is now formed.

This spirituality might, of course, be "God-acknowledging", but it might equally well be "God-denying".

In chapter two we learned a similar lesson about the life and work of the church. It is not enough to list the different things that happen in a local church; what matter are once again the connections, the way the Holy Spirit holds it all together and gives it vitality.

In this chapter we explore how the local church (and even the most exclusive ‘gathered’ church for that matter) is caught automatically into the networks of its locality. A process of communication is going on between the church and the rest of the local populace whether church members realise it or not.

And the messages being received by people in the locality are probably not always the ones we would like or assume!

A church will be much less likely to be hi-jacked - remember the beginning of chapter two? - if it sees that its proper place of work is within the networks that penetrate the locality. And its particular task will be to open those networks of communication to the life-giving and community-building energy of the Holy Spirit so that the Spirit is making the connections. The aim is to make the spirituality God-acknowledging and not God-denying.

It is a matter of realising that the local network is not a net to break out of but a net to mend - not a snare, but a network of communication. God’s love can and will travel through this network, replacing self-concern with mutual care and trust; replacing fear with hope, and drawing people to the source and the fulfilment of their love-longing through Christ - but only when Christ’s fisherfolk learn to use the net in a Christlike way (see chapter four).

However, God may not be allowing his Church to continue for much longer in its present form if it is to achieve this task in a society which, though not wholly fragmented, is far less structured.

Stage Five of the ‘Stages of Renewal’ on page 28 points towards an emerging pattern of life for Christian disciples which is more provisional, more flexible and less rooted than much of our inherited church life.

It may be too soon to give a clear picture of what the church will be like once the ‘centre of gravity’ has shifted, but many of the building blocks are in place - and maybe in this book we can offer some first ‘artists sketches’ of what God may be wanting us to build.

Stakeholders
If you attempted the Stake-holders exercise , you may well have been surprised at the result.

You probably found that almost everyone in a local population, as well as many different groups of people from miles around, all have their own distinctive ‘stake’ in what that church is doing. With everyone of these some kind of communication is taking place.

Even those who claim that the local church is of no relevance to them will have formed their opinion on the basis of some impression or image that they have of the church - even if they never made head or tail of 'Religious Studies' at school!

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