Mead, Loren B. “The Once and Future Church: Reinventing the Congregation for a New Mission Frontier.”
New York: The Alban Institute, 1991.
Reviewed by Adrian Peetoom
Once in a while one comes across a book that truly hits the spot, a morsel of caviar amidst plain horse d’oeuvres, a sip of extraordinary vintage while filling up with plonk. This was such a book for me. It articulated what I had not met articulated before, so clear, in plain language and in under one hundred pages. What a book for a Saturday morning Parish Conversation!
So?
The author’s focus is on “mission.” Not only because “church” cannot be thought of without thinking about “mission” (see the Gospel of St. Matthew 28:16-20), but also because whatever it understands its mission to be at a certain time determines how it will become organized. As for church today, it seems in transition but doesn’t quite know yet what the end result will be. This book describes the transition/confusion. The old understanding of mission is disappearing, local congregations don’t quite know what their mission is/will be, and familiar roles of laity and clergy seem inadequate (pp 4-5).
He describes three previous paradigms.
1. The apostolic one (the first three centuries of church). In those centuries believers developed local communities out of house congregations in the midst of a hostile, antagonistic and (at times) persecuting socio-political environment. The Boundary between congregation and the world was precise. Inside “a community formed of common values and shaped by a story within a larger, hostile environment: that was part of the story of the Apostolic Paradigm (11).”
2. The Christendom Paradigm. This begins to develop with the “conversion” of Emperor Constantine and took shape in the aftermath of the collapse of that empire. With the Christian faith now the ruling religion, and bishops and princes replacing the remnants of the Roman Empire governing structure, mission changed from being a tight-knit community inviting others in, to a “far off enterprise.” Wasn’t everybody in the neighbourhood a Christian already? Congregation became “parish,” a geographic term. Unity became essential, as did a pyramidal structure of church governance, which diminished the role of the laity. The calling of laity was to obey, and be a “good, law-abiding, tax-paying, patriotic citizen (22).[i]
3. But this second paradigm began to die some 150 years ago. The “unbelievers” were no longer far away – they walked by the church buildings in ever greater numbers. The world resided right outside the church once again. We’re aiming for a third paradigm, but (according to the author), it’s too early to describe it with any confidence. What he does know is this: mission in that paradigm is being mission in the place where a congregation finds itself.
The author sees three polarities at work (polarities being “differences you live with but never resolve – 44).”
i. Are we “parish” or “congregation?”
ii. Is mission about “servanthood” or “conversion?”
iii. Are we to be exclusive or inclusive?
In the rest of this book he spells out the consequences of living within these polarities. Required will be changes in thinking about the role of laity, clergy and institutional arrangements, as well as in theology. Tensions will be great, for a great many current church members reside within the structures and thinking of the Second Paradigm. Arguments about the Lord’s Prayer in public schools and the Ten Commandments carved on monuments are clear examples.
Here is how he ends his book. “In the final analysis, the issue is one of mission. How do we as Christians – whether mainline or sideline, liberal or conservative, connectional or free – find a community that forms and sustains us in an authentic faith and move out bearing that faith into the structures of our ambiguous society? How do we pass those forms of community on to the next generation? (92).
By the way, the author is an Episcopalian (Anglican)!
[i] As a Protestant my first reaction was: what about the Reformation? Did it not change this paradigm? The author argues that it didn’t. Presbyterian and Episcopalian governing structures do not differ in essentials. Roman Catholics and Protestants went about foreign missions in much the same way, and organized their congregations/parishes in much the same way.
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