FROM TWO YOKE-FELLOWS IN THE GOSPEL
(from Paul Wallis, OIKOS A.C.T.)
Let me offer you some words of wisdom abstracted from the writings a yoke-fellow in the Gospel. As a chaplain to various group houses and household-based churches, I find these words very relevant. I have changed some vocabulary here and there to avoid confusion. The writer is speaking of the recent appearance of new expressions of church manifesting in the form of small groups. Read carefully and I will add a comment to surprise you at the end.
“[The idea of Small Groups constitutes] the single most significant tendency in the spiritual life…today. It springs from a wide and spontaneous movement…unorganized [from above], which expresses the widespread desire for…community in a world which has been atomized. People find themselves [compelled] to come together [in order to find this].”
“There are three [expressions of such group life].”
“1) There is the group which consists of convinced Christians who meet as Christians in order to grow together in grace and understanding. They will study the Bible together; they will pray together; and by mutual sharing of difficulties and questions will build each other up in the life of Christ. Such a [group] was the original Class Meeting of John Wesley.”
“2) A group of convinced Christians…created deliberately to form an action group…Their main intention and purpose is to train each other for active evangelistic enterprise, either for some [specific] and [defined] project, or over the whole field of their daily lives.”
“3) The open-gathering – a [mix] of Christians and non-Christians.”
“Nothing is gained by blurring the distinction between [these three kinds of gathering]. The first is not evangelistic. The second is evangelistic in intention but not in practice while it gathers. The third has the object of [ultimately] winning the non-Christians. All are essential if the Christians are effectively to do their evangelizing.”
“Another important point is that they must not be too large in numbers. No hard and fast rule can be laid down, but perhaps ten or twelve persons make the best group.”
“I would…personally deplore any attempt to organize [such groups from above, or] any attempt [to turn them into] “a movement”. The very essence of the idea is in its spontaneity and lack of organization [from above]. The freer and more independent all such groups are, the better will be the results.”
“One form of [group] ought to constitute the greatest single evangelistic agency at work today. It is the Christian household. I quote M.A.C.Warren on this subject:”
“’The Christian household [is] a unit in the evangelistic enterprise of Christ’s Church [when its members live] together in such oneness of intention that their main concern is not themselves, but the Kingdom of God…The grace of hospitality is for them not just an addition but the very essence of their being. Such homes are places in which men and women are finding God. The key is to be found in the threefold chord of [authentic loving relationships] a [home-life] which breathes the quietness of God and the ability of [its members] to interpret the Gospel so that the stranger is converted…It needs…neither learning nor wealth, only love…This quality of home is the richest thing the Church has to offer the world, and it is the surest guarantee that the gates of hell can never prevail against it. In a family circle which is never a closed circle, in the table which always has an extra place, there is a microcosm of the true community which can transform a neighbourhood, revive a nation and save a world’.”
I find those words wise and inspiring. They match my own experience and provide some reaffirmation of central values for the kind of grassroots churches so many of us are involved in.
The surprise?
These words were written in the 1950s by two eminent Anglican Clergymen: Canon Bryan Green and Canon M.A.C.Warren. They form part of a lecture which was delivered at St Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne in 1951.
The context of these words is that of a very different time in God’s history, and the Canons’ entire worldview may not accord with ours today. I am still thinking about Bryan Green’s thought that groups should not remain set in concrete indefinitely, but should expect to regroup, multiply, change and sometimes disband. That is a real and challenging aspect of small-church life isn’t it!
Since 1951 elements of the “idea of small groups” has persistently resurfaced in various forms - in home groups, cells and now new grassroots expressions of church. Today I believe the autonomy, privacy, gregariousness, spontaneity and church-hood of local small group expressions are more alive in people’s thinking than ever before
.
I hope too that we are also in a period where Christians are beginning to reclaim the family home as the jewel of great price that it is, and also when a new generation of believers are discovering the blessing of residential expressions of church.
These are just a few of the reasons why I believe that what God is doing today makes these words from more than half a century ago more prophetic than ever.
Paul Wallis