Talking about Total Church (Part 1)

An email dialogue between Tony Payne, Simon Flinders and Steve Timmis, co-author of Total Church. (Read Parts 2 and 3.)

From: Tony Payne

Dear Steve and Simon,

First of all, thanks so much to both of you for agreeing to participate in this email conversation. Second of all, Steve, let me congratulate you and Tim Chester on Total Church. It really is one of the most stimulating books on church (and more than church) that I have read for a long time. Of course, ‘stimulating’ is usually a polite euphemism for saying that I didn't agree with all of it, but in this instance, I want to use the word more genuinely. You really did set my mind running down lots of different tracks. I found myself annotating furiously, pausing to look up Bible verses, and setting the book down in my lap to ponder my own experience and how it related to your ideas. In other words, the book really engaged me, and that is an admirable and all-too-rare achievement. (And yes, there were bits I disagreed with, but I'll come back to that!) I also found myself identifying with the modern church dilemma that you posed up front. On the one hand, we have the rather predictable, doctrinally sound conservative evangelical church, with its traditional structures (both physical and organizational) yielding an experience of church that people can find “institutional, inauthentic and rigidly programmed” (p. 17), as you put it. At the other pole, there is the ‘emerging’ church, for whom authenticity and personal relationships are key, and who are prepared to experiment with everything else, including, lamentably, the gospel. The conservative church is good at truth but bad at community; the emerging church vice versa. It's a caricature, and necessarily so for your purposes, but we recognize the types. What you are proposing is essentially a third way—an evangelical Christian experience that is gospel-centred and also community-centred. We probably should start by exploring these two core theoretical principles you espouse. First, that Christianity is gospel-centred. You make the excellent assertion that “Christianity is word-centred because God rules through his gospel word” (p. 24), and then proceed to trace this idea through the Bible, showing how God has always announced and achieved his purposes through his word. You follow this with an equally fine little section about the role of the Spirit, and how being ‘Spirit-centred’ ought not to be an alternative to being ‘Word-centred’, as if you need to get the two in some kind of balance. All this will have Bible-loving evangelicals cheering from the bleachers, but I was also applauding when you finished this chapter with a challenge about the implications of having a ‘gospel-centred’ view of the world. If we take seriously the centrality and importance of the gospel, the real question is not “How is the gospel relevant to my daily life?” but “How is my daily life relevant to God's gospel mission and its progress in the world? How is the gospel connecting with everything I do so that my day to day life is a gospel enterprise?” You put all this well, and I'd be very surprised if many gospel-loving evangelicals (bit of a tautology there!) would not be fully on board. Your next section on the centrality of ‘Community’ is where it gets sharper, and I'm sure we need to talk in detail about your argument at that point. But before we get there, I want to ask a couple of preliminary questions. My first question is about the language of ‘centres’. How many ‘centres’ does Christianity have, and how do you decide what they are? It would be possible, I am sure, to run an argument that Christianity was cross-centred, resurrection-centred, justification-centred, God-centred, Christ-centred, Trinity-centred, and no doubt there are other centres besides. How did you hit upon the two ‘centreds’ (Gospel and Community)? Do you think it's coherent to have two centres? And if two, why not three? For example, I could imagine making a lot of the same points you make with three centres: one to do with Word or gospel, one to do with the Spirit and prayer, and another to do with people and relationships. Would you like to comment? My second question is really a bridge to the next topic of discussion. It would be really useful if you could give us your working definition of ‘community’. At times in the book, ‘community’ seems synonymous with ‘church’ (as in our ‘church community’)—i.e. the local, geographically based group of Christians I meet with and belong to. At other times, ‘community’ seems to refer more generally to our relationship with the people of God, not just the ones I meet with in my local area (‘the Christian community’). Before we get on to talking about what ‘community-centred’ means, can you clarify? Warm regards, Tony.

From: Steve Timmis

Hi Tony and Simon,

Thanks, Tony, for the preliminary comments of engagement and appreciation. Thank you too for the two starting questions. Here is my response. My preferred mode of discussion is face-to-face with a lively debate, but I will do my best to participate in this format! First, your question about ‘centres’. The question of ‘centres’ is inevitable and necessary, and the answer must have some coherence and biblical rationale, rather than simply an arbitrary selection which reflects our prejudices! Our framework reflects our biblical theology, and just as word-centredness is seen in creation, so too is community. God creates by his word, and he creates a community to bear his image. Both of those are evident and significant in Genesis 1 and Genesis 3 where Adam and Eve reject God's word for that of another, and destructive dis-community results. What we're saying is that we are created by God's word as individuals-in-community: community is an ontological identity that reflects a speaking God-in-community. That focus is maintained throughout the Bible. God's word to Abram is to be a community or people that will bless the nations. God's word covenant with Israel is that they will be a community in a covenantal relationship with Yahweh that acts as a light to the nations. Jesus calls a community (the remnant) around him, and calls them to be the light Israel never was. Being church is not incidental nor tangential, but integral to the call that comes to us in the gospel where we are summoned from the dis-communities of darkness into the community of light. We also talk about gospel-content and community-context. That is probably more refined and might avoid the difficulties some people have with two ‘centres’. You might also think of it as different planes: on the context plane, we are community-centred, and on the contextualization plane, we are gospel-centred. You could come up with other planes so that on the human-divine responsibility plane, we are prayer-centred. You also ask what we mean by ‘community’. We often use ‘community’ as a synonym for church. ‘Church’ has become a loaded and misunderstood term, not least by Christians! So we use ‘community’ to convey the network of believing relationships. This means we can talk sometimes of the wider Christian community in much the same way that you might talk of the wider Christian church. We also use ‘community’ sometimes to speak of our local neighbourhood—not only because that is how people generally use the term, but also because it is a term that resonates. In conversations, it has sometimes been helpful to show that the local neighbourhood isn't actually a community at all, despite the use of that term and despite people being very drawn to the idea. This reflects the imagery of Ephesians 4 and 5, with the dis-community of darkness and the true community of light. Christ shines on those in that dis-community by the people of God being the true community. As for the working definition (that's a really helpful term because it allows for future retraction!), within our framework, the Christian community is the people of God—the bride for whom Christ died, the centre-piece of the Bible's story of salvation—a people called by God through the gospel to a defining commitment to King Jesus and to one another by the Spirit. The word ‘community’ is helpful as an umbrella term, encapsulating God's desire for a people—from the very beginning and all the way into eternity. ‘Community’ highlights the continuity in what God has done, what God is doing and what he has yet to bring to glorious completion. I trust this helps to move the discussion forward, and I look forward to your response, Simon. My prayer is that not only the content of our conversation but also the manner of it will commend our Saviour to people, and that it will, in some small measure, contribute to his fame. Enjoy grace. Love, Steve.

From Simon Flinders

Dear Steve and Tony,

Thanks so much, Steve, for your willingness to engage in this ‘conversation’ with two enthusiastic recent readers of your book on the other side of the world! I, like you, would prefer to sit down and talk face to face, but this is a good Plan B. Before we go any further, can I also say a very sincere ‘Thank you’ for your work (with Tim) in producing Total Church. It really is one of the most stimulating books I've read in a long time. I think what I found so refreshing and helpful was the combination of your utterly biblical approach and your willingness to speak honestly and challengingly on a range of topics. Your treatments of social involvement (chapter 4), pastoral care (chapter 8), spirituality (chapter 9) and apologetics (chapter 11) were particularly thought-provoking for this reader! Your book revealed some blind spots in my life and ministry which I suspect may be broad ‘Sydney’ blind spots too. For example, I was left questioning whether the speed with which I tend to refer people to counsellors/therapists might represent an unintentional crisis of confidence in the sufficiency of Scripture (p. 127). I was also left wondering if my whole concept of the ministry ‘day off’ might imply things about how I see church that I don't want to imply (p. 121). On top of that, you alerted me to a sermon by Thomas Chalmers which I've since found and read and which was tremendously edifying (pp. 200-201). That tip-off was worth the price of the book alone! There are so many other insights for which I'm grateful too. Perhaps we'll have more time for discussing some of these later. But I should actually engage with the issues that have already been raised. Thanks for your response to Tony's questions. I thought what you said about ‘community-centredness’ was especially good. You revealed a weight of theological (and especially trinitarian) reflection that, for me, only strengthens the point your book makes about the importance of ‘community’ or ‘church’. But it's to that issue in particular that I'd like to turn, since I think Tony's second question raises one of the main things I'd love for us to discuss. It concerns the definition of ‘church’. I certainly agree with you that ‘church’ has become a loaded and misunderstood term. I also find myself using the word ‘community’ as a synonym at times—helpfully, I think. But I have to admit to finding your use of the term ‘church’ in the book a little confusing. In your chapter on world mission, you spell out how the New Testament speaks of church in two senses: “First, the church is the heavenly congregation gathered around God's throne. Second, it is used of local congregations showing the reality of that heavenly church” (p. 101). At that point, I can't disagree with you. But at other points in your book, you seem to use the word ‘church’ in other ways. You speak of the apostles and all who follow them as a kind of universal ‘church’ addressed by the commands of Jesus in places like Matthew 5:16 (p. 45) and Acts 1:8 (p. 84). You speak of ‘church’ as an ‘identity’ rather than a meeting (p. 18). You suggest that watching a film with friends or babysitting can be ‘church’ (p. 63), as can multinational mission teams (p. 105). At these points, to me, you seem to use the word in a way that goes beyond the ‘two senses’ in which you say the New Testament uses it. My concern is that to use the term more loosely than the Bible does may mean we end up saying things about ‘church’ which the Bible does not say. This is especially relevant when it comes to the issue of the purpose of church (which is something else I'd love for us to discuss). Can you clarify how you see the word ‘church’ operating in the book? I look forward to further input from you and/or Tony. Warmly, Simon.

From Tony Payne

Dear Steve and Simon,

Based on your answers, Steve, and your further questions, Simon, I'd like to probe the nature of ‘church’ and ‘community’ a bit further. But before I do, and so that you guys don't take my probing the wrong way, I'd like to say that my reaction after many of the chapters in Total Church was: “Exactly! That's what I've thought (and often said) for years.” There's so much good stuff here. I appreciated, for example, your willingness to think outside the box with regard to buildings and structures. If our chief purpose as Christians when we gather is to meet with each other and God, and to spur one another on, then surely there are many ways and contexts in which we can do it. A smaller meeting in a house may be just as good (if not better, as you argue) than a larger one in a purpose-built edifice. And the idea that this smaller group meeting in an ordinary home or space should be the agent of reaching out to neighbours, friends—what a fruitful concept! But here's where I want to probe the language and theological foundations a little, because I don't want to sell short the radical nature of what you're proposing. As I thought about how some of your stimulating ideas might be implemented within the context of the congregation I'm part of, I realized that I may be missing your point somewhat. I don't think you're offering some nifty ideas to graft onto my fairly standard Anglican parish (with its church building, two Sunday services, small group network, and so on). You're suggesting a revolutionary remodelling. Have I read you right? None of this means you're wrong. A “radical reshaping” (as the book's subtitle puts it) may be exactly what we need. But it does raise the stakes a touch! And it means that we need to think pretty carefully about the theological foundations on which you make the argument. This is the point for me to confess that (perhaps unlike Simon) I wasn't as convinced about the theological priority you give to the concept of ‘community’. You start with the trinitarian nature of God as persons-in-community, and how we, being made in his image, are also fundamentally persons-in-community whose identity can only be found in community. And building on this foundation, you argue that ‘community’ is as central to our Christian lives as is the gospel Word, and thus that the church (the fundamental persons-in-community we are part of) is the centre or hub of our lives: “that which defines who I am and gives Christlike shape to my life” (p. 43). I have some problems with this, and I'll do my best to express them briefly (although I think I will struggle to do so!). The first is that, as Graham Cole has pointed out in his new book on the Holy Spirit, arguing out from the inner workings of the Trinity to implications for human relationships is fraught with difficulty, and can tend towards arbitrariness —not only because the mystery of those divine inner workings is not always revealed to us, but because the point of departure may differ. So on the basis of the ‘threeness’ of God, you might posit that divinely imaged humans are basically communal (although whether Adam and Eve add up to a ‘community’ may be arguable). However, what if on the basis of the fundamental ‘one-ness’ of God I was to assert that humans are fundamentally individuals who are accountable for their own actions before their Creator—an idea which is taken up in the rest of Scripture? Which of us has nailed what is truly ‘central’ about humanity based on the nature of the one trinitarian God? Well, you may respond that you would need to see how these ideas play out in Scripture, and how the Bible itself theologizes out from the nature of God to the nature of life, society and humanity. (Graham Cole notes that in the New Testament, the imperatives are almost always grounded on the indicatives of the gospel, rather than on theologizing about the Trinity.) This leads to my second niggle. I didn't find the biblical material on which you build your case for the centrality of ‘community’ all that strong. I carefully looked up all the references in both the ‘Why Gospel?’ chapter and the ‘Why Community?’ chapter, and the differences were striking. Whereas the theological centrality of the Word/gospel was easy to demonstrate (and you did so powerfully, using abundant biblical support), the ‘community’ theme seemed to me to rest on feebler exegetical foundations. Let me give just two examples. In supporting the idea that our identity is fundamentally and primarily shaped by the Christian community of which we are part, and that this takes precedence even over our biological relationships, you quote three references: Matthew 10:34-37, Mark 3:31-35 and Luke 11:27-28. But all of these refer to the priority of Jesus, and to our supreme loyalty and identification with him, not to the Christian community. You may say that since Christ forms a new community around himself (the ‘church’), then our loyalty must likewise be to the community. But this is assuming the point you wish to establish. The verses don't address it. Likewise, when I chased through your various references to fellowship/ ‘koinonia’ (which is the closest biblical word to our English word ‘community’), what struck me was just how much sharing, partaking, communing and fellowship took place that wasn't describing the life of a local church community: our partaking of Christ's sufferings, the Philippians' partnership in the wider gospel work of Paul, the partnership of the Gentile churches with the Jerusalem church in the money collection, and so on. In fact, I have often thought it remarkable (and kind of wished it otherwise!) that the word ‘koinonia’ is used so rarely in the New Testament to describe the common life of a Christian congregation. My third concern is basically the same as Simon's, and is about your rather broad and interchangeable use of ‘community’ and ‘church’ to mean a variety of things. I won't repeat his question, except to add that as far as I can see, the word ‘ekklesia’ in the New Testament doesn't mean ‘community’ in any sense that we use the word in English. (In his book What on earth is the church?, Kevin Giles tried to argue that it did, but completely unsuccessfully in my view.) Steve, I hope you don't mind me sharing these perceptions. I certainly don't want to offend you, or be over-critical. But if your theoretical arguments are correct, the practical implications are massive. And so we need to ask the honest questions. This makes me realize that I haven't really asked a question. Maybe I should conclude with one: How much of your overall thesis would remain intact if you replaced the idea of ‘community’ with the rather more easily sustainable biblical imperative of ‘love’? Enough from me. How about I let you do some answering! Warm regards, Tony.

From Steve Timmis

Hi Tony and Simon,

Good to hear from you both and thanks for the level of engagement. I am really enjoying these ‘discussions’, not least because I haven't had this level of theological debate over our ideas for a very long time. People tend to question our practice despite my best attempts at convincing them that we're more vulnerable at the level of principles! I have also told people about the tone of these discussions, which I find even more thrilling than the content. This is how Christians should engage with God's word and each other. Okay, now to the substance. This is going to be quite difficult because I'm having to interact and do justice to both of you. At the same time, I want to keep my response to a manageable length. So here's my best shot! I appreciate you not wanting to sell short the radical nature of our proposals, but I don't want them to be so radical that they inhibit any change! In fact, I do think there is a lot that a fairly standard Anglican parish can take on board by way of implementation without demolishing the whole edifice (building and institution). I moved into a fairly traditional (and rapidly dying) church just under three years ago to do a ‘re-plant’. We've planted a number of congregations out of it since then and are now back up to 100+. Of course, the principles we articulate in the book have informed all we've done, but the point of mentioning it is simply to highlight the fact that I am working in a more readily recognized and familiar church context. Simon, you refer to our explanation of church on page 101. I have to admit to being a little unhappy with that, and it was something of an oversight on my part not to have ‘clocked’ it before it went to print. I agree with it as far as it goes, but I don't think it's as eschatologically nuanced as we would like it to be. The heavenly congregation and their counterparts on earth are both pointing to the eternal reality described so eloquently and movingly in Revelation 21 and 22 in particular. That reality informs our identity and shapes our practice so that church on earth points to and gives hints of the age to come in all of its reconciled glory. In other words, we do think that church is more than a meeting, just as Israel were Israel when they moved on from Sinai. The nation was to live its whole life under the terms of the covenant, and not just at the three ‘gathering’ events of the year. It is in that way that we are church as we watch a film, for example. We are the people of God living intentionally under the word of God, and in everything we do, we model for the watching world and commend to it what it means to live under the reign of our King. As each local congregation lives out her covenantal life together ‘in Christ’, she is church! Tony, you raise the trinitarian issue. We are among the first to admit and agree that working from the inner life of the Trinity is fraught. But the idea that we could equally opt to start from the threeness or from the oneness of God is to ignore centuries of Christian tradition which has consistently sought to hold them together. In fact, isn't that a central concern in the very formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity? The individuals-in-community represents the best attempts of the church to hold them together. We are not so emphasizing community that we lose our individuality. In fact, I am persuaded that it is only a distinctively Christian and trinitarian anthropology that gives due weight to both. Tim does justice to this whole argument in his book Delighting in the Trinity, which predated Total Church! It is difficult for westerners to appreciate the extent of our individualism, and I think that cultural DNA makes us instinctively uneasy about a corporate emphasis. For a very long time, our evangelical expression has reflected this individualism. We're deliberately trying to redress the balance, though without trying to overstate the argument. However, in the light of the language Jesus uses in John 17:21 and 23, I suspect it might be difficult to overstate it! As for your second niggle, Tony, I have to confess to having to do a ‘double-take’ when you wrote about the three references in the Gospels referring to loyalty to Jesus rather than the new community. I struggle to see how Mark 3 can be read as not showing that the faith family has priority over the biological family! The context shows that it's not just our individual relationship with Jesus, but our relationship with the community as a whole that is key. Jesus is calling a new community into existence. William Lane puts it well in his Mark commentary when he writes,

Against the background of blindness and hostility Mark introduces the true family of Jesus. They are those who gather about Jesus and who perform the will of God. In dramatic contrast, the mother and brothers of Jesus stand outside while those who constitute the messianic family are seated within the house. This setting provides the occasion for the radical pronouncements of Jesus on the true family in which the demands of the kingdom of God are implied.¹

Furthermore, the context also shows Jesus appointing The Twelve in what seems to be a deliberate re-constituting and re-defining of Israel. It is perhaps telling that you can read the incident as being about an individual relationship with Jesus. It suggests that that is, for you, the starting point for reading the Scripture. The question I suspect we disagree more fundamentally on is, “Is the Bible the story of God saving individuals or the story of God saving a community?” He does, of course, save individuals, but the invitation of the gospel is to become part of God's people who, by their lives together, reveal his glory in the efficacy of redemption. As for the koinonia usage, we are not saying that it only describes the life of the local congregation. However, that it is used to describe it at all is not without significance, surely? For example, consider Luke's repeated use of the word in Acts 2:42 and 44, and then in 4:32. In Acts 4:34, Luke uses language that seems to deliberately echo Deuteronomy 15:4. His point? That what the Law couldn't do in Israel, the gospel has done through the Spirit in the church. Also, I don't read Philippians 1:5 as merely describing the Philippians' partnership with Paul but also their partnership together in the gospel in Philippi. Paul spends a lot of time in the letter speaking about their relationships, and how they are not to be like Israel in their grumbling but that in their relationships, they will shine as lights in the world as Israel was called to be. But if none of this persuades you, then what about the frequency of the “one another” phrases throughout the New Testament and in Paul's letters in particular? Finally, to your succinct question: “How much of your overall thesis would remain intact if you replaced the idea of ‘community’ with the rather more easily sustainable biblical imperative of ‘love’?” Hmm, this is an interesting idea, and I'm not altogether averse to it. I don't want to get hung up on a word, nor, for that matter, get hanged for one! We do talk about love a great deal. In fact, one of our ‘sound-bites with substance’ is that God has made us to be lovers—lovers of God and lovers of others! But I'm not sure your suggestion helps that much. If it makes confessional evangelicals more comfortable with our ideas, then perhaps we should, because all we're saying is that the community God calls us into is a community of love, and that love is expressed in shared lives that intentionally demonstrate the gospel. John describes this phenomenon when he says, “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12). There seems to be an echo of John 1:18 here which is strongly relational: as Jesus reveals God, so in our love for each other we reveal God's love for us, in us and through us. I think I'd better stop there, though I'm not sure how we're going to keep these emails from getting longer and longer. I don't think any of us are likely to be lost for words are we! And to answer your final point, Tony, I don't mind you sharing these perceptions at all. I am not offended in the slightest. In fact, this is the kind of discussion/debate I have been wanting for decades! Enjoy grace. Love, Steve.

Endnote

¹ William L Lane, ‘The Gospel of Mark’, The New London Commentary on the New Testament, Marshall, Morgan & Scott, London, 1974, pp. 137-138.

(Read Parts 2 and 3.)