Ecclesion: the Small Church with a Vision

By Dave Mullan

In an age in which Christians have to choose between blossoming audiences of largely conservative theology and dwindling numbers in the corner church, Ecclesion has offered a strategy for a completely new approach to small congregations. Developed twenty-five years ago, this strategy has even more to offer in the present day.
The E-book is a lightly edited version of the original which is still in print and may be ordered from the author. Since this was first published, the bleak picture presented of the small to medium mainline congregation has become only more bleak. The Ecclesion strategy for Sunday is still confidently proposed as an appropriate solution.
The Ecclesion congregation will gather only once a week and will not promote or demand involvement in other activities, meetings or committees. Its people will be dedicated to the service of the wider community and they will spend their discretionary time there rather than in pursuits and business relating to the congregation.
However, when the people do meet they will take a little more time than the customary one hour. They will share in a worship style most appropriate for their numbers; they will engage in serious learning about faith, mission and ministry and they will share fellowship, usually over food and drink. And, significantly, they will make decisions about any business matters as part of the gathering. The deliberate intention is that members will not be withdrawn from the wider community to be “church” except for one single gathering a week.
This basic thesis of the 1990 book is absolutely unchanged. Most of what has occurred since its publication is still completely relevant. However, there has been considerable change in the recruitment and education/formation of clergy. The questions raised in the original chapters have been very largely addressed by the national church. So this section of the E-book has been adjusted somewhat. Similarly, the advent of Local Shared Ministry has fulfilled proposals originally offered. This style of ministry in the small congregation is much more comprehensively addressed in the author’s The Cavalry Won’t be Coming – a Way Ahead for the Small Church. These sections of the original have not been removed but they have been fairly heavily edited to reflect a more current situation.
From the Introduction:
Part of the purpose of this little book is to encourage some congregations to keep looking and hoping and praying for a vision that will be as a breath of fresh air in their situation. Many of them are familiar with the symptoms. Some know of the disease. All too few can actually lift their eyes beyond the immediate situation to see the bright cloud on the horizon. If this book can encourage some just to do that it will have achieved much of the hope of the writer.

1991: An Epworth Bookroom (NZ) “Book of the Month”
2015: Warmly commended by Dr Keith Suter, (global-directions.com) whose dissertation on the Future of the Uniting Church in Australia offers one scenario that would be most appropriately fulfilled in an Ecclesion style of congregational life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dave Mullan
• Release date: Mar 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781877357169

Dave Mullan

Retired Presbyter of Methodist Church of New Zealand. Passionate pioneer in Local Shared Ministry, consultant in small churches, publisher of over 100 niche market books, producer of prosumer video, deviser of murder mystery dinners and former private pilot. I trained for the Methodist Ministry at Trinity Theological College and eventually completed MA, Dip Ed as well. Bev and I married just before my first appointment in Ngatea where our two children arrived. We went on to Panmure and Taumarunui. Longer terms followed at Dunedin Central Mission and the Theological College. During this time I was also involved as co-founder and second national President of Family Budgeting Services and adviser to the (government) Minister of Social Welfare. My final four years were part-time, developing the first Presbyterian or Methodist Local Shared Ministry unit in this country and promoting the concept overseas. Retirement has brought a whole lot more opportunities and challenges. We are now living in our own villa in Hibiscus Coast Residential Village.

Book preview

ECCLESION

The Small ChurchWith a Vision

Dave Mullan

Revised e-edition

2015

ISBN 978-1-877357-16-9

ColCom Press,

28/101 Red Beach Rd, Hibiscus Coast,

AOTEAROA—NEW ZEALAND

Dedication

To all my friends

in small churches

who have helped with these ideas

sometimes without even

knowing about it

Table of Contents

Roadmap

Introduction

1. Where We Have Come From

2. The Contemporary Church

3. The Ecclesion Congregation

4. What and Where in the Ecclesion Programme

5. Membership of the Ecclesion Community

6. Ordained Ministry and Ecclesion

7. Education for Ecclesion Presbyters

8. The Presbyter Role

9. What, Then, Shall We Do?

Glossary

About the Author

Books on Church and Ministry

Dave’s Other Books

Roadmap

I want this book to grab the attention of people who sit in the pews. I hope some of them will want to act on it. But I have to accept that it may have a few roadblocks along the way.

It has some specialist words in it and you really have to get used to them. If you are going to bake a cake you have to learn the words that are in the recipe book. So this book asks you to learn a few words that are important for the church, its mission and ministry. There's a glossary at the back to help you.

A second problem is not so much a roadblock as a detour that you can't actually see. I have a great pile of footnotes that I wanted to add but putting them into an E-Book is a bit beyond me at present. This lack of citation may make some statements seem a bit simplistic but I have tried to make the book speak for itself.

The major problem with any journey is where are you and how do you get going. There's a lot of stuff here that might or might not be important for any one reader. So I suggest you start at the beginning in which I set out where I think we have come from and where we have got to as a church. I personally found it very helpful to do this little exploration but you might see it as another detour. OK, that's fine, just leave it.

Then have a look at chapters three to six. Here are my central themes about the Ecclesion congregation. This is the major part of what I really want to say to you. If this gets you going you could go straight to my suggestions for what to do next in the rest of the book.

Chapters seven and eight arise out of everything else but were primarily addressed to the NZ Methodist Connexion and its stipendiary presbyters rather than to you members who hold together the work of the local congregation. A lot of what I wrote here has been overtaken by some very significant changes in the church. So don't feel obliged to wade all through them if they turn out to be heavy going for you. They inevitably have some technical terms and you might be quite happy just to browse a little.

But make sure you round off your journey by asking yourself what you might do from the suggestions in chapter nine.

Good travelling!

Introduction

Heather and George are keen Methodists in their fifties. They have been at St Mary's for almost all of their married life and cannot really imagine themselves being a part of any other congregation.

But they are not very happy. The community around their church has grown up and most of the younger generation, along with their own kids, have moved out. Those who are still in the region do not show much interest in what is going on. But what worries George and Heather more is that many of their contemporaries of their earlier years are also no longer interested in the church.

Membership and attendances at St Mary's have continued to decline over the last couple of decades. The empty seats in what used to be a fairly full church are rather discouraging. Members of the congregation feel embarrassed sometimes when the numbers are really down, especially if there's a visiting preacher as sometimes has to happen because they share their minister with another congregation.

They've had some ups and downs with ministerial appointments, too. They had one year-long vacancy which was pretty hard to cope with as the supply arrangements were not very satisfactory. The new minister, not long out of Theological College, seemed to have a lot of promise but resigned unexpectedly in the middle of the church year. The congregation coped better with that vacancy than with what they understood to be his reasons for leaving the ordained ministry. But it was still very difficult for everyone.

For five years now they have enjoyed a steady and faithful ministry. But the congregation is still not growing and it continues to reflect the older age group. The rising cost of ministry and maintenance on their ageing properties have resulted in some deficit in the accounts. Now the members of the parish council are asking themselves if they can realistically hope to pay their way within a year or two.

About fifteen years ago St Mary's was in a similar financial predicament and on the advice of the District merged with another adjacent parish. To do this a second time does not now seem to be an option. Heather and George and their fellow members are deeply concerned for their church and its mission but are at a loss as to what to do next.

The Question

How did this situation arise? What are the elements in the N.Z. Methodist church that have brought about this situation in church after church around the country? Is there a creative new option for George and Heather and their friends at St Mary's to consider?

In this book I will try to offer a brief analysis of some of the things I sense have been happening in our church in recent decades. I will suggest some elements of a strategy for the future and begin to draw out some of the implications of that strategy for church, ministry and membership.

Much of the thinking set out here arises out of my experience in a series of situations which have demanded theological reflection about non-traditional ways of being the church. The most dramatic experience was a four year tentmaking ministry in an alternative congregation in Dunedin. My thinking was further pushed along by a 1983 visit to the USA and insights into the vast difference between the Protestant churches in NZ and their counterparts in the USA. Experience in the home-setting ministry education programme with self-supporting presbyters and deacons who are trying to chart new paths for ordained ministry has been a constant stimulus to further thinking and writing. And the publication of Diakonia and the Moa, in 1984, while giving me an opportunity to air some suggestions, stopped frustratingly short of setting out some firm strategies for the future. The need for another book continued to be in my mind.

But there are always other responsibilities and interests and most of the notes that were shaping themselves into this book lay around in files for some time. The enthusiasm to try to get into some kind of writing was finally pressed on me when I read John Bodycomb's A Matter of Death and Life. The scenarios which he saw in the Australian scene seemed to ring true for parts of the NZ setting as well.

Bodycomb's Gericon scenario pictured an ageing church that is gradually and inevitably getting smaller. The Tenestas scenario spoke of a traditional church tenaciously holding onto the status quo. And Imaginex is an impossible dream—that by spending huge sums of money in one Big Effort the church will finally bring in the reign of God.

In Bodycomb's thinking, none of these three scenarios holds much hope for the Australian church of the future. The question that intrigued me when I first considered Bodycomb, was, would the same be true for New Zealand. If not, is there any hope for Heather and George?

So in 1990 at that time I proposed another scenario: Ecclesion, a small gathering of disciples who have seen a special vision and are prepared to work for it in whatever ways seem possible.

The Ecclesion congregation will be a particular style of Christian community. It will probably be not very much like most of our existing churches. It will be small, flexible, lively and vigorous. It will have some characteristics that in this day and age are not so familiar to most Methodist churchgoers. But in Wesleyan style it will match the disciplined mind with the warmed heart. And its worship and fellowship will result in deepened service to the community and to the world.

The Bodycomb scenarios will continue to be real options for congregations that are learning how to die. But an Ecclesion approach may have something for the church that is moving beyond death and looking for resurrection.

This book is an attempt to offer some possibilities and to show how they could be practicably attempted at the local level by local people. It is not a report for Conference (God forbid!) nor a formula that some Connexional dignitaries can use to develop new solutions to press upon local congregations. It is for George and Heather and their friends in every congregation in the country. If it rings bells for them as it has for me perhaps they can try it.

It is based on the firm conviction that there is hope for mainline churches in this country, that the solutions are within our grasp, and that small congregations will be at the heart of future growth in the church.

This book is dedicated to George and Heather and their real-life counterparts in small congregations up and down Aotearoa. Many of these people have shared their problems with me and every such conversation has contributed to some part of the thinking that is set out here. If this little volume becomes a sort of manual to help some of them take new responsibility for themselves and their life and gain confidence in their mission it will have served its purpose.

1

Where we have come from

The first thing we need to do is reflect at some depth on our heritage, on what used to happen to us and those who have gone before us that has made us what we are. The times they are a-changing and we have changed to meet them. But it may be that we have failed to make appropriate changes. One major reason for this can be a lack of knowledge of where we have come from.

The Hebrew people were always very clear about this. It was fundamental to their life and religion that they could recite the story of their nation and its religious pilgrimage. On ceremonial occasions the children would ask the formal question Why do we do this....? and the response would be a recital of God's saving acts for the people and a reaffirmation that God was with them in the current trials as well.

The old-time Methodist testimony had something of this flavour. It was brought into disrepute because it often became highly personal and turned in upon the individual. It dealt far too much with experience as how one felt and not enough with God's grace on every sinner showed. And it became downright repetitive and predictable. But the recalling of God's gracious actions in the life of the church is a vital part of building up the fellowship. And reviewing the problems of the past need not be a morbid exercise of futility but may be a creative step of insight into what should be happening now.

So we will have a look at our church and consider some of the characteristics it has shown in recent decades.

The Distinctive Church

One of the most interesting things about NZ Methodism is that it has developed a distinctiveness that does not fit easily with the wider Methodist family. We cannot simply point to what Wesley did and say That is the Methodist Church of Aotearoa-NZ.

Nor is the British Methodist Church, in which most of us can trace our denominational heritage, a precise model for our churchship. The Methodist Church in this country has made its own way rather than merely duplicate what existed in the countries from which it came. Often it has done this with imagination and flair. But sometimes in its very innovativeness it has lost some of the traditions from which it sprang. Sometimes it has too easily set aside typically Methodist beliefs and practices and has lost some of the purposefulness which used to be a feature of its life. There is a price to be paid for overmuch flexibility and freedom.

Most of the Methodist Churches in the Pacific correspond much more closely to the Methodism of 50—100 years ago than we do. Our church has been open to change in the most fundamental ways in the last 30 years but this very openness has been its undoing. It has come close to losing its basic reason for being as a denomination. In being open it has lost some of its sense of direction. In adapting to its situation it has failed to retain the central driving purposes which characterised early Methodism.

The Sunday School Church

The theological position of Methodists in Aotearoa is not very clear. They are not sure what they believe and do not find a strong lead from the denomination. The blend of