Title: Renegotiating The Church Contract; The death & life of the 21st century church
Author: James Thwaites
Publisher: Paternoster
Year First Published: 2001
This book was probably one of the most challenging books to read. In fact it took me two attempts to read it through properly. On reflection the first time I picked up this book my heart wasn’t prepared for the topic and the first two chapters went straight over my head. It wasn’tuntil I had moved from that place and had some further unsettling in my heart that the Lord allowed me to read it with some understanding a couple of years later. This is not one of those books that you can pick up and and read at any given moment. You must do so when your heart is directed for this book will challenge the way that church is dealt with and how you view your role in the current church establishment and how that relates to your world view of life in creation.
James Thwaites very carefully but pointedly navigates through the emerging wave of thought that is coming over the institutional church. Written back in 2001, the book is extremely prophetic and if what he wrote then was timely, it makes all the more sense in light of today’sconsumer driven church.
James takes the reader back to Greek philosophy and more specifically the thought of Plato. Thwaites establishes that the platonic ideal has infiltrated the church and driven the Body of Christ away from what God’s heart truly wanted for the church.
It’s this Platonic ideal that we need to get heads around in order for us to understand the book’s message. He writes of it
“Plato’s ploy was to make the focus of life and truth something and somewhere outside the scope of human experience…Essentially what Plato has done in messing with our mind isto make us focus on the perfect and ideal rather than the good and created relational present. Out everyday life in creation is considered to be the backdrop, the waiting bay, the shadowland waiting for the defining moment when ‘it’ all comes into focus.”
It is this striving for the ‘ideal’ that has consumed the church and taken it away from the true purpose of God’s divine desire. It has infiltrated the church and what started out in a relational and meaningful way has turned into an organizational body that consumes all desires and makes people serve it, rather than the other way round where we serve each other. Thwaites briefly concludes one chapter with the following four-sentence summary of how, in relation to the church, the plantonic worldview infiltrates;
1. The Platonic worldview programmes us to believe that ideas are more real than relationships
2. Under its influence we tend to dislodge what should be shared ideas between us and allow them to take up a central position around which we are then arranged.
3. Once the idea takes on a separate life of its own and begins to head off, with people following, to its supposed future realisation it becomes an ideal.
4. It is given an existence of its own and as such is able to dominate people’s lives in a a way that God never intended.
The argument is that church was never meant to dominate our lives, yet it has been set up and established so that any other element in a person’s life is subject to it and revolves around the church as a construct rather than our lives in every area serving God.
Once you understand the terms ‘Platonic Agenda’, ‘Church as Construct‘and ‘Church as Fullness’ and ‘Life in Creation’ (the glossary at the back ofthe book helps immensely with this) then be prepared to have your outlook undertake a paradigm shift. When we realize that the church has made itself its own culture and is now chasing its tail we can agree with this quote from the author’s friend;
“Jesus,he says, wanted us to be in the world but not of it. The problem is that we have succeeded in neither. We are not in the world, but instead find ourselves in a church subculture removed from it. And inside that subculture we have become worldly. Every Sunday we demand infotainment and related activities to keep us coming and keep us happy.”
So how do we do this shift away from establishing and rallying people around visions and mission statements (which too are part of the Platonic thought, where one man dictates what a group of believers are going to revolve their lives around)? We need to shift from something old into something new, and Thwaites does say that we need to carry with us what we have come to appreciate about the church – the gathering, the worship, the word, the presence of God –however without the platonic structure that the church currently posses and are configured to.
Thwaites says that to bring about this new, we must undergo the process of dying and removing the centre. How does this process of dying look? Let me again quote from a pastor’s experience related in the book;
“I spoke with a group of pastors about this dying process and, during the discussion, one leader let out a gasp. He said that’s it, that’s what’s happening. The church I pastor has been dying for months now. Whenever I prayed about it, I felt to let go. For so many years I had been trained to rally the troops, get a new vision, scold the wayward back into line. But now my sense was just to leave it and see where things would take us. As soon as I did this I felt so guilty. Like letting a child die or something. However, I didn’t have the energy and could no longer muster the passion. I felt like a really bad leader for letting things slide, but I could no longer raise the flag and get people to muster and salute around it. This has been happening for a number of months now and a few families have left saying that the place is not functioning properly, but again I am not going to rescue it. I know all the leadership stuff and I know I could steady the ark for a few more years, but I also know that wewill come round once again, at an even older age, to the same old question – what are we doing here each Sunday?”
And so when this process of dying begins what does the fruit of it look like? Thwaites continues with the pastors thoughts;
“The young people seemto be going really well. They have seen some of their friends saved and are really enjoying the freedom to create andgrow that the fellowship now offers. They come to me when they need advice and I do keep an eye on things,but they just seem to be getting on with life. Yes, also, a few new families have joined and they are appreciating the sense of community and honesty in the place. It’s strange, these new people and new Christians don’t seem to be noticing all the death that’s going on. They just seem to think it’s great.”
The church is changing, and God seems to be stirring in the hearts of those who hear a message of what the simplistic existence of the early church was about. This book describes what that landscape looks like, and challenges us to strip away the structures and programs so that we can move to the simple and intimate relationship with Him.
For anyone who has questioned or is being stirred about the roleof the local church and where God is taking His body then I would recommend that this is a good starting starting point. If you have ever asked, “Is this it?” in relation to church then this book will challenge and start the heart changethat God so earnestly desires with His redeemed.
Filed under: Book Reviews
