THE ESSENCE OF CHURCH

"Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst" (Matthew 18:20).

When they were asked what they saw as the essence of Church, most former Congregationalists used these words, describing the Church in terms of gathering, of small numbers, and of Jesus Christ amongst them. This concept of Church reminds us of the New Testament accounts of the risen Christ appearing to small numbers of disciples, to hearten and to teach.

Behind this understanding of Church are theological concepts of scattering and gathering, of scattered grain which grows to wheat and is gathered to make bread, of Christ as the Bread of Life, of the Bread broken, of the Church fed by Christ and scattered again into the world.

There is significant equality in this concept of Church, and emphasis upon the local community, with Christ among His people, providing centre and focus. The intimacy of this encounter was treasured.

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I give thanks that my Protestant spirit is fed by the Word, said one participant. Or perhaps she said, I give thanks that my Protestant spirit is fed by the word.

Congregationalists, those who saw Church as a local gathering around the risen Christ, the Word, strongly emphasised a preaching tradition, one in which the minister each Sunday spent twenty minutes in a sermon breaking open the scriptures, the word of God, which continued to nourish and to guide.

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Scripture as word of God was on the mind of the many participants who quoted John Robinson’s words to the Pilgrim Fathers as they prepared to leave Holland for the New World in the Mayflower, "The Lord hath yet more light and truth / To break forth from His word." These words form the last two lines of George Rawson’s hymn, 'We limit not the truth of God / To our poor reach of mind . . . ', hymn No. 230 in Congregational Praise, and now No. 335 in The Australian Hymn Book.

These Congregationalists held a concept of the journeying Church, the Church as the pilgrim people of God who trusted in continuing revelation and a deepening understanding of God’s will for them. There is glad open-mindedness and movement in this image of Church, which contrasts with the concept of an intimate, settled, domestic Church as a small gathered group.

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Perhaps we can best appreciate these two Congregational concepts of Church if we place them against those which participants might have chosen, but did not.

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Nobody spoke of the Church as the Body of Christ.

Congregationalists received the sacrament of Holy Communion on one Sunday in each month, seated in pews and waited on by deacons who brought the bread and wine from the communion table.

They received the bread and wine in silence, not hearing the words “The body of Christ” as the bread was offered to them, so not being reminded that the people of the Church, as well as the bread, are described as the body of Christ, with Christ as their head, in the Pauline tradition of Col 1:18, 24, and Eph 1:22-23, 5:23.

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Nobody spoke of Church as the people of God with their eyes fixed on the horizon.

This is a contemplative’s concept of Church, one concerned with the gaze, with the role of silence, with the hiddenness and mystery of God, who is nearer to us than breathing, but can never be grasped by our knowing until the horizon of life opens in welcome at our death. This concept is found in the theology of the twentieth century theologian, Karl Rahner.

Congregationalists prayed, but on the whole they were active people. As Protestants, they had no religious orders which could cater for the minority of believers who were contemplatives and mystics, those longing to spend their lives in adoration of God as well as in service.

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Nobody spoke of the Church as people filled with the Holy Spirit’s power.

Congregationalists were not charismatics. They sought to serve God, but in a cooler, more rational way. They might sing “Filled with the Spirit’s power . . .” at Pentecost, but on the whole they emphasised the guidance and presence of the Holy Spirit rather than the Spirit’s empowerment.

Triumphalism was not a Congregationalist characteristic.

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Nobody spoke of the Church in an image of hierarchy.

Congregationalists were resoundingly egalitarian. The laity knew that they were the Church, and they strongly resisted any suggestion that someone else might decide the will of God for them, and attempt to impose it upon them from above. They sought the will of God for themselves.

Resistance to hierarchical authority in Congregationalists dates back to the Savoy Declaration of 1658, a variation on the Presbyterian Westminster Confession. Chapter 25,4 of the declaration states:

There is no other Head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ; nor can the Pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof, but is that antichrist, that man of sin, the son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ, and all that is called God, whom the Lord shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.

In a statement more suited to today’s gentler, more ecumenical times, F. Graeme Smith writes in The Congregationalist and His Origins, that "every . . . church . . . stands in immediate relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ, . . . is responsible to Him alone, and is under the solemn obligation to allow no human authority . . . no Pope or bishop or council, assembly or synod . . . to come between Christ and itself "(44).

We should perhaps in fairness add that many Christians who acknowledge the authority of those in a hierarchy are also determined that these people should not come between them and Christ.

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Nobody spoke of Leonardo Boff, or of Church as a Base Ecclesial Community, but they might have done, for these groups, which grew out of the theory of Boff’s Liberation Theology in South America, are close to the Congregational practice of Church.

In Base Ecclesial Communities, small groups of Catholics who want to live their faith with immediacy are gathering together once or twice a week in order to read scripture, pray, and share the issues of their lives, often meeting out of doors. These groups began with the poor, the laity and the working class; now members of the clergy, bishops and cardinals are stepping down from their place in the Catholic hierarchy to join them in equality.

Base Ecclesial Communities are, says Leonardo Boff, in Church, Charism and Power, “a community of the faithful in which the risen Christ is present” (126). They are “a new way of being Church” (127). The way may be new to Catholic South America, but it is utterly familiar to Congregationalists.

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Augustine sees the City of God and the City of the World as two overlapping groups; some people belong to one, some to the other and some to both groups. He is certain that only God knows where each person is placed. One participant expressed similar views of the Church:

The Universal Church is like a cloud of mist with diffuse margins. It would be hard for any mortal to draw a precise boundary. Some who are most sure that they are within should perhaps be outside, and vice versa, he said.

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For some participants, their understanding of Church grew out of their experience.

What is Church? The church is my life. Worship is predominant but the fellowship of its people has enriched my life and with each church the fellowship has widened. Service is also a large factor of my church experience, and love is the cord that binds us all together.

The essence of Church for me is the fellowship, the caring for one another and for the wider community as much as we can, and the love and friendship we have always found at church.

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A woman who lives in a Melbourne bay-side suburb took inspiration from the sea. She stated:

What colour reminds me of Congregationalism? My chosen colour would be blue— the background colour of the CYF and Pilot badges—symbolising the Mayflower journey, the LMS work in the Pacific and my local church by the sea. But my blue is the colour of the sea, a changing colour. As pilgrim people we can’t stay with one definite colour; the changing hue is the colour of the journey.

For her, the search, the journey and change all formed part of her concept of Church. Woven into her understanding of Church too were images of seed and candle, intimate women’s images, scripturally-based:

It was the Black Rock Congregational Church that seeded my faith journey, she said. I am very grateful to the Congregational Church for lighting the candle of my search for spirituality. My Congregational roots help me to keep searching now. I hope that I will never say, “I have arrived.”

For this former Congregationalist, the Church was both the local community of the gathered people of God with Jesus Christ in their midst, and a Pilgrim people, always on the way.

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Ken Blackwell summed up the Congregationalist position on Church: The individual churches are, like those in the New Testament, conscious of being Christ’s Church because He, though unseen, is in the midst and the members are to seek His will and do it, be it in a joyful or a costly way. The Church Meeting is for all the members to express their mind and together arrive at decisions. Their fellowship is also part of a wider Church, Christ’s great family. So they give help to other churches and sometimes accept help. But they are careful not to hand over to some other body somewhere else the responsibility to discern Christ’s will for them, so diminishing their discipleship.

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Next: Chapter 9. The Church as Family, the Family and Church

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