Well, it's been a while since I've blogged on my search for a church community. That doesn't mean that the search has been on hold - quite the opposite. I guess I've just been a bit reluctant to blog about my thoughts partly because I haven't wanted to sound critical of some churches that may be functioning perfectly well but just aren't quite what I'm looking for. Then there have been other churches that I do feel quite critical about but don't feel that this is the forum for expressing that...Nevertheless, here I am once again talking about it, and, PTL, I have good news to relate. I've now found a church - I think...While I'm very excited about it all, and confident that it's where I'm supposed to be, it's all quite new and I don't exactly want to speak too soon. That said, I went there today for the third time in a row, and am still happy there. A good sign, I suspect. It's a small evangelical Anglican church in Moreland - not Darebin, but it's only five minutes' drive from my place, and my end of Darebin is practically Moreland anyway (see the attached photograph that I took while going for a stroll near my place - the sign says "Moreland City Council: Diverse Community", if you can't make it out).
Now, when I started the whole church-hunting process, I wasn't exactly sure what I was looking for. One of my housemates suggested, some months ago, that I might want to write out a list of essentials, which I thought was a wonderful idea, but didn't have a clear enough concept in my head of what was and wasn't essential. I suppose what brought me to this position was a fairly naive, faith-driven notion that the church in the inner north was struggling a bit and that, now that I was living in the area, it would be good for me to get involved there, rather than commuting to the east each Sunday. I suppose I also had an idea about localised community, something lacking a lot in Melbourne, and wanted to be part of a geographical church community for the first time since I left home.
Having now found the kind of church I want to be a part of, I've also been able to figure out what my criteria were. And they aren't surprising, but I suspect I needed to go through the last eight to seven months to figure them out anyway. I won't list them here, because they're probably not that interesting to anyone not me, but what's really struck me, and surprised me, has been a growing need for clear orthodoxy.
I say this is surprising because, while I've grown up in the evangelical church, and have been a low-church evangelical Anglican for the past four or so years, I always felt a bit liberal around most evangelicals, but then quite fundamentalist around liberals. I'm still not crazy about categories, but I have to say that, from my travels to different churches in the area, I'm not blown away by how successful the more "fresh expressions of faith" are proving to be. Not because there's anything wrong with being fresh - quite the contrary - but because they are seemingly too caught up in being fresh that they aren't spending enough time going to the "ancient paths" to be reminded of what the foundation of our faith is. Now I'm not talking about liturgy or church tradition here so much as an understanding of the common basis of faith that can unite today's believers with the church as it was at all different stages throughout history. Because, as a member of the Acts 29 Network suggested in one talk, you can engage with culture all you like, but you also need a foundation in faith and doctrine, otherwise you're just "engaging with culture", but what are you engaging them with?
There are a lot of questions abounding about what constitutes orthodoxy. Currently I'm living in an area where the "Orthodox" church is quite prominent, and that's a whole different matter. For evangelicals, orthodoxy often centres around certain recurring debates. Some would say you are not orthodox if you believe in the ordination of women, or if you support gay marriage, or don't believe in predestination, or agree with all the parts of Calvin's TULIP. Now I've deliberately used a mixture of issues where I do hold the mainstream line, issues where I diverge, and issues where I don't know what I think. I'm not sure how essential these issues are to our faith, mostly because I believe that, if we get the fundamentals right, a lot of other things will follow. If we have a healthy, growing relationship with Christ, all manner of sin and heresy will be brought to our attention by the convicting power of the Holy Spirit. And if the Holy Spirit isn't convicting us all that often? Well, male or female, gay or heterosexual, whatever our individual struggles are, if we're never being convicted of sin in our lives, we either don't have the Holy Spirit, or aren't listening.
Here's my suggestion for what should constitute orthodoxy:
That we believe Jesus Christ was God in human flesh, and that He was without sin, but died a sinner's death so that we could be reconciled to God, if we put our trust in Him.
It's possibly not quite that simple. It often isn't. But I've been to some churches lately where that basic belief has not been mentioned once. Should it be mentioned every service? It probably wouldn't do any harm, and it would certainly help keep things on track. The Anglican liturgy offers a mixture of creeds and prayers that cover the essentials every week, whatever the sermon topic. That's probably why, at this stage of my life, I'm most happy to call myself an Anglican. First and foremost, I'm a Christian, but right now, as I search for different ways to minister to the world around me, some involving "fresh expressions of faith", I'm also being reminded of how essential it is that we keep coming back to the essentials, because, without them, what are we standing for?
Or, to put it another way, without getting our foundations right, what are we standing on?
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