Being God's People: The Confirmation and Discipleship Handbook

By Robin Greenwood

Each chapter gives material for the members of the group to read in advance. There is a framework or plan for a group meeting, with detailed ideas for activities and discussion. There is also general advice about group processes, including recruiting and running such groups. There is a framework for prayer, and biblical themes to be considered in context. The sessions are equally for seekers and confirmation candidates, and for teenagers as well as adults.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SPCK
• Release date: Jul 21, 2011
• ISBN: 9780281066780

Robin Greenwood

Robin Greenwood, Visiting Fellow at St John's College, Durham University, is a practical ecclesiologist, who over four decades has held posts in parishes, cathedrals and training teams. His most recent book is Sharing God's Blessing: How to renew the local church. His present work includes writing and consultancy to local churches and leaders.

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Introduction

Travelling together differently

In touch with our deepest source

All life, created by God, is designed for and works best in community. God constantly regards us and the whole creation with love. The Church has the extraordinary gift of the Eucharist through which to show the world its true life. Two of the most striking acclamations in the text of the Eucharist are: ‘The Lord is here!’ and ‘Great is the mystery of faith’. What powerful and outrageous claims, that when in gathering, singing, speaking and moving together, we become contemporaries of Christ, drawn more deeply into God’s life and future hope for creation.

" I maintain that what sustains human life is a pattern of practices – good ways to relate to one another, honed in community and developed by tradition, learned from apprenticeship and embodied in habit. "

(SAMUEL WELLS)

In the eucharistic drama, through singing, silence, adoring, beseeching, reading, sharing embrace, praying, offering money, bread and wine, eating and drinking together and going out, we learn to take part in communicating God’s passionate work for the transformation of the whole of creation, including ourselves.

"Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. "

(1 CORINTHIANS 12.4–6)

Christian communities need to be joyfully and seriously lit up. We must be evidence of God’s presence, as pillars of fire on a desert journey (Exod. 13.21–22). We must communicate what we have experienced of the transformative power of true community, built on faith in the gift of God’s love.

The world needs faithful and life-giving church communities, offering gifts for the life of the world. The baptized, gathered around Christ, flourish when worship and learning is how we do church together. Relying merely on the clergy and other leaders to be faithful on behalf of all has been one of the Church’s sustained faults.

" If there’s nobody home, it will be apparent, no matter how many lights are on. "

(BONNIE THURSTON)

Now is the time to be roused from sleep, recognizing ourselves boldly as communities of worshippers, disciples, leaders, evangelists, prophets, witnesses and learners. New Testament writers remind us that whatever gifts we have are for mutual service in urgently building Christian community that turns back all that is a rejection of the Gospel (1 Pet. 4.1–10 and 1 Cor. 12.12–31).

" All members are called to discover, with the help of the community, the gifts they have received and to use them for the building up of the Church and for the service of the world to which the Church is sent. "

(WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES)

Nurturing an emerging future

Positively, we are offering here a Christian consciousness that:

•  we are one with the whole of humanity – seeing in others the presence of the risen Christ;

•  each person has equal dignity, as created by and alive with God’s Spirit;

•  Christian ‘tradition’ is a living, growing movement that responds to changing circumstances and patterns of living;

•  there are many ways to be a Christian disciple;

•  God works in networks of love and mutuality, beyond the confines of rigid religious patterns;

•  we are invited to follow Jesus in his being one with the Father, ‘Abba’, as we pursue our own faith journeys;

•  we can follow Jesus’ way of serving others as friends or as neighbours, losing ourselves to find our own lives.

But for this we have to become disturbed.

" Congregations do not easily enter into conversations about having bigger dreams, doing more faithful ministry, or addressing threats when they are satisfied with the way things are going. "

(GIL RENDLE AND ALICE MANN)

The God of Scripture invites us to stop keeping God’s holiness at bay. For example, we are called to cross the Red Sea to know release from slavery (Exod. 14.21–31), to receive water from a rock in the desert (Num. 20.1–13), to enter with hope in God into the Jordan to know we are beloved by God (Mark 1.5 and Josh. 3) and to receive the living water that is Christ (John 7.38). Our calling is to risk becoming more intimate towards God, one another and ourselves as a deep characteristic of what we call ‘church’.

Navigating a complex and rapidly changing world is possible for churches, as public bodies in the world, because the risen Lord walks with us on the journey. In every generation, previous forms of church simply wear out and need to be replaced. What we did yesterday was great and valuable, but what the Holy Spirit calls out of us today is even more important.

" Do not try to call them back to where they were, and do not try to call them to where you are, as beautiful as that place may seem to you. You must have the courage to go with them to a place that neither you nor they have ever been before. "

(A RESPONSE BY A STUDENT TO VINCENT DONOVAN)

Churches first need to honour in each place the real situation and people we find here. After honouring what is, we are truly free to move on to wherever God is calling us. Our personal realities may include disillusionment with our lives through illness, bereavement, failure to meet our own standards, broken relationships, and with the Church’s attempts to provide a framework for knowing God. Jesus Christ, as someone born in a Bethlehem stable, in his ministry of friendship to those in dire need of healing and hope and in his despised crucifixion, is a reminder of God present to us often through the trials of human living.

" Christian ministry is the public activity of a baptized follower of Jesus Christ, flowing from the Spirit’s charism and an individual personality on behalf of a Christian community to witness to, serve and realize the kingdom of God. "

(THOMAS O’MEARA)

Organizational development theory and practice helps us to learn how, in times of turbulence and systemic change, leadership comes from all levels, not only from ‘the top’. When innovation derives from speaking and doing things differently, not merely discussing ideas from a distance:

" leadership comes as people start to connect deeply with who they really are and their part in both creating what is and realizing a future that embodies what they care most deeply about. "

(C. OTTO SCHARMER)

Conversations that matter

In preparing to be a leader or participant in the conversations suggested here, consider how effectively core aspects of your own church’s life are handled at present. How far do they create and present you as a community of the resurrection? How far do they invite participants to be broken open, to be drawn into this new life that is a new creation, a complete break with all that has gone before? See Figure 2 (overleaf).

Figure 2: Aspects of church life

How fully these elements of community living thrive when groups meet to talk, eat, pray, enquire and share life together (Matt. 18.20). God in Christ for our salvation not only came into our history as human but in situations of human weakness and vulnerability. Jesus showed how we can find God most easily among the ‘poor’. He showed how to give unconditional support to those whose lives are in pieces or who are marginalized by others. If we are to be a prophetic presence to lift the spirits of all who are imprisoned in some way, we must include ourselves among the ‘poor’.

Travelling together differently

‘Who is God?’ is a persistent question in these pages. Of course, all our words are like dust in trying to describe God, but we can still try. For many centuries churches have behaved as though God were only ‘changeless’ and ‘all powerful’. The long tradition of which we are a part also remembers that God is to be known in experiences of immigration, exile, bereavement, imprisonment, insecurity, struggle and tragedy. Often in our worship we exclaim: ‘The Lord is here’; ‘We proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes’ or ‘God’s presence is with us’.

" The biblical tradition says that truth is found not in abstract concepts, but in an encounter with otherness. "

(RICHARD ROHR)

Personally and as God’s people we need to know God as closer than our very breath and to be known by name. Another contemporary image is that of conversation. Conversation values each person, explores difference, changes our viewpoints and behaviour and, most of all, allows each person to be carefully attended to. Then the impossible becomes imaginable.

As one of another

Jesus calls us ‘friends’ who are known for our mutual love (John 17) and our willingness to show our vulnerability.

To a great extent we become who we are through the influence of others; all of us, without exception, can only follow Christ in companionship with others. Who we are as disciples and ministers is only possible when we let go of our need for control and success and go beneath the surface. As we learn to integrate our outer shell with our inner person, we learn better how to follow Jesus’ way of mutual giving and receiving.

" In the midst of conflict, our question should not be ‘Who is right?’ but ‘Do we believe?’. ‘Faith is first, and the only one who is right is God.’ "

(BASIL PENNINGTON)

We believe that society now needs churches and groups of Christians who experience God’s generous love and gifts. To the extent we allow ourselves to be converted or transformed, we can offer companionship and neighbourliness to others seeking to live in Christ.

To develop a Christian community through collaborative styles of ministry requires more than willingness or skill. Essentially it’s an ethos or set of attitudes we need to be fostering that finely balances mutual respect and