Today I was having my irregular chat with a Jehovah’s Witness (who visits me) and we got onto the topic (unsurprisingly perhaps) of denominational differences and how Churches can oppose each other in some respects (in fact, I note today that Jonathan Bartley observes that Christians even sometimes kill other Christians!).

Naturally JWs come out of this as shining examples of unity – so I was pondering as to why this was and whether the reasons mattered.

Now, JWs claim to be the one true church and so claim complete unity across the one true church. What are the reasons for this unity (the following are my speculation, not to be taken as perfect science!):

1. The Boundary – the JW church has a boundary, you are either in or out.
2. The Institution – the JW church is a strictly controlled institution which cannot be duplicated. It wouldn’t be possible to start another JW church that is separate to the original.
3. The Sect – because it is a sect that is on the edge of the Judaism family tree, if another sect were to form from it, they would recast themselves significantly.
4. Modes of Dis-integration – if JWs leave they do not leave to form close derivative churches, they either leave the (broad) concept of Christian belief entirely or just go into an existing church.
5. The Theology – essential to JWs is the expectancy that one should accept the whole JW Theology. There is little room for disagreement.

These are the major points of difference with the rest of the Christian Church, although many churches will have varying degrees of the above properties.

Examining the above points, what is the problem with the wider church?

It is my impression that differences appear between Christians because they meet in an institutionalised manner rather than in the manner of close friends – i.e. we Christians think it is important to tackle differences of opinion with people we barely know, simply because they are in the same institution and, because we barely know them, it is easy to fall out with them.

Another point is that we often make out that our opinion is our faith. Both myself and Reg (the JW) agreed that there is only one truth, so, for there to be clashes in people’s belief of what that one truth is, must mean that one or both of those people are believing something which isn’t true – i.e. the casting of an opinion as a matter of faith. A bit more humility about what we believe would be helpful, but haven’t we all been taught that we mustn’t doubt our faith? Well if we doubt our opinion, we aren’t doubting our faith! So I wouldn’t worry too much about that!

The wider Christian Church places less emphasis on scripture than the JWs and more emphasis on the personal revelation of the Holy Spirit (often of Scripture). JWs place an emphasis on specific interpretations of scripture and no emphasis on personal revelation. In some ways the JW approach is safer – it certainly appeals to the rules based security that our culture likes so much. On the other side of the fence you could say that the wider church is much more anarchic and dangerous!

My Dad told me the other day that ‘Uncle’ Sid Purse (who founded the the church that I grew up in at South Chard) said:

“The Church is an organism, not an organisation”

which I thought an excellent comment which works in many ways including the understanding of the church as being the body of Christ.

Anyway, I feel that the opportunity to chat with Reg (JW) is a great way to gain a deeper understanding of church – so I would be most appreciative of your comments, but I don’t want this to become a ‘why the JWs are wrong’ thread! That really isn’t the point of this post. Thanks.

Another thing that Bartley mentions (in passing) near the beginning of the book (mentioned here) is the way the church could exclude people, and through exclusion exercise power and control.

This is a very limited form of control, by exclusion one is not actively controlling the life of the excluded, one is simply controlling one’s own life (or a group are simply controlling their own lives) and choosing not to spend much/any time with that particular person.

However, to exclude someone, a tough judgement has to take place: Is this person so bad/far gone that it isn’t wise to spend time with them? That isn’t a nice and easy question to answer, it has hard repercussions. It is also a fairly public judgement that can have a negative effect on oneself (alongside the positive effect of not being adversely influenced by that person).

It’s a tough thing to do, but I do feel that it is a choice that we must continually make. Yes, it is part of the concept of exclusive church (hopefully alongside inclusive mission) and also we can’t expect exclusion to be perfectly exercised – there will always be the ‘weeds’ amongst the ‘wheat’.

I expect that Bartley will cover this more in the rest of the book – so maybe there will be more comment to come on this.

Was chatting over lunch to a guy about the idea many churches have of a slope of activities that lead to faith and church attendance. The idea of contact work, leading to socials, to small groups, maybe alpha and then sunday worship alongside which faith and belonging develop.

I wonder where this comes from and if anyone has any research to suggest it works. Is it another case of having a shallow theology of church and looking for methods that fit this? Joe Myers questions many of these assumptions about belonging. However I wonder how much a deep ecclesiology that is more missio dei in focus and maintains that Christ came that we may have life in all fullness enables us to see the value of each activity in and of itself without needing to see that it fits into a slope and thereby placing a value judgement of one kind on another.

This links to the redefinition of churchidea. Recenty I have been looking at a community profile of the town we are moving to and have been asked to speak to a local church mission group. It would seem that from the profile and capacity within the church there is scope for a family event. A kind of dick and dom meet ant and dec in Noels house party, with quizzes, gameshow, food, live band etc but with a level of intentionality (see point 5) that is in line with a deep eccelsiology and not part of a slope idea. Yet this would be a huge culture shift for the church.

Been working on an essay and came across something in Grenz and Franke Beyond foundationalism. They cited a difference between the early deconstructive approaches that post modern thinkers took (early Europeans) and a more recent more constructive approach, particularly Stiver who talks about postmodernism being:
A rejection of modernity
A paradigm shift
A sketch of the future

I like this approach of not just slating stuff but trying to be more constructive. Anyway it got me into an interesting discussion about this and the nature of truth in modernity. That started with me saying applying Stiver to a theological missional process might look like “this is my truth, tell me yours and lets go on a journey together to discover more”

Great insight from IH who threw in the old story of the monkey with his fist in the peanut jar but wont let go of the peanut to gain more. Perhaps we are so precious about our truth we can let go or break the jar. Could tie in well the need for revolutionary moves in thinking and paradigm shift in how we define churchPaycheck film

In order to prepare for growth and outreach Chard Baptist are looking at Purpose Driven church, one of the principles of which is membership. This raises several issues for me. Membership in itself is not something I am fully confident about and whilst I understand many of the arguments, the approach to membership as we enter post Christendom seems all the more problematic.

How do you begin to grow towards maturity without membership? Murry in The church after Christendom offers a great critique of Matt 18 v 15-17

15″If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. 16But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’17If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

Whilst I accept the possible intended use of the language of tax collector/pagan to signify an outsider, it is interesting that this is only one of two times the bible actually places the word church on Jesus’ lips. I would want to explore the creative tension that verse 17 throws up as we begin to consider how Christ would have treated tax collectors or pagans. Murry points this out but I would want to push this issue towards a maturity without membership, that does admonish one another in a non dislocating way, and uses the process well to reaffirm core beliefs so the whole community matures, but does not exile people who disaggree.